First of all, grats to Juha for keeping the pressure on all the way through the race and being there to take the win when I made a mistake. Maybe a lesson there for everyone ...."the race isn't over until you see the flag".
Because I had the 2F for this race I knew that I ought to be somewhere near the front of the grid! With that much power on a circuit like this I felt that I had to make it count. My problem was that Juha had similar ideas!!! He quickly set a stunning low 1:47 lap which was about 1 sec faster than I had managed in private practice on race fuel.
I squeezed a lap out on race fuel that moved me up to 2nd spot, but I got the feeling that with that much fuel on board I was never going to match Juha's time. Pole position would give a clear track and that has to be an advantage through some of the sweeping corners around Zeltweg. So I dumped a load of fuel and left enough for about 7 laps and went out to try and beat Juha's time. Slowly I chipped away and got closer and closer. Then with one banzai lap I got pole by 0.01 secs!! Well, I was sure that Juha was just going to take that pole back again, but he didn't
So the rolling grid set off and I knew that Juha was going to be all over me like a rash for this race because our times were so close. Plus Hristo and Sam were only fractionally slower!!
As I suspected I had Juha all over my tail pies for the early laps. He was definitely faster through T1 but I had the edge through a couple of other turns and so the gap opened and closed with each lap. We were running in the 1:48's from the start and it looked like being a very close race.
Hristo dropped back in his Porsche unable to live with the straight line speed of our 2 Chapps and I concentrated on keeping my lines as clean as possible and remembering to brake early enough to get turned in to the corners.
Then Juha ran wide at T2 and I had a small gap, but big enough to deny Juha any slipstream, so I tried to push as hard as I could for a few laps and build a cushion.
For the next 20 laps I maintained the gap back to Juha, but I was driving just about on the limit to match his pace. Each time I passed a backmarker I lost a little of that gap, but then I could tell when Juha passed the same guy, because the gap was restored again.
The gap was not big enough to allow any mistakes and Juha was relentless. As the fuel load came down towards the end of the race we were both putting in 1:47 laps and matching each others pace with about 500 metres between us.
Then I blew it!!
I caught and passed Al as we approached T1 and because I did not want to risk any contact I stayed to the right until I could see him in my ( virtual) mirror before moving back on to the racing line. Al did nothing wrong and held his line as I passed. But I was so concentrated on my mirror and avoiding Al, that I ran too far and too fast into T1 and was out on that slippery green stuff before I could scrub off the excess speed. The spin was rather prolonged and to make matters worse I ended up nose first into the fencing on the outside of the track needing to reverse on to the racing line to recover!!
Of course, I had to let Juha through before I could recover and when I did, it soon became apparent that bouncing along the fence had not done the suspension/steering any great favours!!
There was no chance of catching Juha with 5 laps to go, especially with a car that had become very unstable under braking, so I had to settle for a cruise into 2nd spot.
Hristo did a great job in getting the Porker home in 3rd place and Paul soldiered on to get some points the Mirage. Not a bad day for the Red Team, but it should have been better.
