That was such an exhausting race for me, I was almost completely drained at the end, not the least because of the very hot weather here, even if it was past 11 PM already...
I generally do very well at Adelaide and having raced the 2F and Porsche in the past, setting times in the 1:30-1:31 range, I expected that I could bring the Mirage within a small margin to those times. How wrong I turned out to be though!!!
The car was handling awfully, both in corners, where it would snap around without any warning, and when running over curbs, where it would pogo too much, scraping the ground, going sideways and what not. I thought it's probably too soft and low, so I stiffened it up, especially bump and rebounds, and also raised the suspension, but to no avail. It improved a bit, but there were still places where, if I didn't go through exactly the same speed, line and angle on each lap, it would cause me lots of grief and I had to turn the steering like a madman to catch the car, as well as do a lot of pedals work to balance to constantly changing weight distribution. For the moment, I obviously suck at setting up some of these cars or maybe I was simply over-driving the Mirage in my attempt to compensate for its lack of grip.
At one point during Qualifying I had Evil right behind and he was putting up a lot of pressure, so that helped me focus better and with the aid of some minor slipstream from other cars in front, who luckily got out of the way, I managed to set my pole time. Juha apparently set an identical one, at least down to the hundred of a second, but second is what he got, so I led off on our rolling lap.
I made some changes to the setup just before the start, so it was a bit of a gamble, but it didn't really make much of a difference and after going cautiously on the first lap to get a feeling for the heavier chassis and to let the mechanical and rubber parts warm up, it started behaving as bad as in Qualifying once I pushed it harder. And I really had to, because it was obvious I was holding up Juha, but he couldn't really find a way to get past as I was always getting the better exits in the place that matter, particularly the corner leading on the backstraight. I could also brake a little later for the hairpin, so for a while it looked like I might be able to hold Juha up, as long as I didn't make big mistakes.
He was very aggressive though and I had to keep looking at my mirrors to make sure he has not dived on the inside, because he constantly made false attacks by going to the side and then braking slightly later, especially in T1 and the 90 degree corners. With him in my blind spot, I had no option but to go a bit wider and then that compromised both of us on the exit, allowing Evil to catch up. I was getting a bit frustrated after a couple of laps going like this, and after another such false attack by Juha as we entered T1, I lost control and hit the wall on the exit, which then sent me back to the left side of the track and it led to a collision between myself and Juha.
I was the first one to recover and continued in the lead, and I couldn't really tell if the car was damaged or not, but the handling neither seemed to improve nor get worse.
It was now Evil's turn to put pressure and if I thought Juha was quick, I wasn't really prepared for the speed difference of the Porsche vs. my Mirage in the corners. After a few laps of blatantly holding up Evil, I decided to just let him go through and try to keep up with him using the slipstream, and hopefully be able to improve my pace and make an attack near the end. Evil misinterpreted my going off the line and we both lifted up together, lol, but then I ran wide at the hairpin and he was through. He began to pull away a little bit, but at least I had no one to trouble me now and could just concentrate on finding a way to drive the car more efficiently.
That never came to be as I lost the car soon after and dropped a couple of seconds back, with Juha now having gone up to 2nd. Surprisingly and perhaps having gotten used a bit to the weird handling of the Mirage, I managed to reel him in, though slowly, and we had a very good chase for a few laps. Within those few laps, Evil seemed to disappear from the lead and what was a battle for 2nd suddenly became a battle for 1st! I eventually made a bit of a risky dive in the braking zone for the hairpin, but just managed to slow on time to keep my car on the inside and complete the move - back into the lead now!
Once I was in front, Juha somehow found his speed again, or maybe it was down to slipstream, but the intense pressure from the opening laps was to be experienced again, with Evil (again) closing up on both of us after apparently having returned to our dimension. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for Juha, he made a mistake after a few laps and was flipped over by Evil who couldn't avoid him, so I gained a couple of seconds lead as Evil must've managed to continue without any big delay.
By the time the fuel load went down and after trying to decipher the car for the whole race, I managed to speed up a little and do some consistent quick laps, which was enough to maintain the gap to Evil and then even increase it once he dropped back again because of his issues. The fastest lap right on the last one was probably more telling of what potential the Mirage has, if set up properly, but there was no way I could do those sorts of times consistently. I also just had Fulvio in sight and tried to lap him, but he just escaped into his last lap as I took the chequered flag!
Grats to Team Red for the 1-2! And commiserations to Juha after his very strong drive.
