This was the weakest track for me. For some reason I always lacked a little bit of pace here and I needed wind, even high wind to give me a chance. It happened so and I nipped it to pole position, absolutely thrilled with that.
The start and the whole of lap one was going well and the race was set to be a big rape of points for me. I was secretly hopping for Isaac to finally make a mistake and fall into a battle with Joe, which would then give me a chance to pull a bit of gap. However, before you know it he is trying a hugely optimistic moves on me to say the least. Not quite understandable from someone who follows Alonso the most in F1 to do something like this, when you remember Alonso not doing things like this even with Petrov back in '10 finale. I'm not sure if he thought 'if he can dive on me, I can dive like that on him' or something of that sort, but he deferentially needed to win this race to have a real shot at the title. I knew he was going to be a real opponent in this race though and I had no allusions I would just pull a gap like that to him. He probably had more pace than me in race on this track and only because of wind I dared to fight him.
Anyway, with the wind or no wind, I couldn't just let him past in that corner, slowing down too much would cost me a place or two down the straight. And honestly when I dived him the last round, he held the outside as well and was allowed to do so. So, I can clearly see he is launching it down the inside and from his experience I have trust in him that he can keep it right there. I also know he can't really back out of that and I'm not far enough ahead to just shut the door, which would have been also futile. Therefor, I hold the outside line knowing that I can carry more speed than him now and hustle it off with a clean move. This would have also trew him into the mix with Joe and worked perfectly for me. And you see, every single day I would fight it off like this, it's clean, reasonable, exciting, thrilling even, real racing spirit in my eyes and it has nothing to do with being overly blocking as I have been called. If I had just turned onto him and caused this accident, I knew I'd be the one to blame and I just don't need that. Everyone saw what happened and there is no need for me to explain and I don't want to put a blame on anyone. In some other series this might have been a clear penalty, in this one it's allowed even though it's from a driver who is on probation and it sets a very bad example, but I think you can expect this sort of racing being encouraged by Americans. :P Still, karma or something worked it out and he was in pits soon enough.
And there you have it. It was a moment of destiny for him and it certainly didn't help me out. Joe just lucked out thru this and this might have been the first race he actually didn't have more pace than us. It's just a shame we missed out on this. When you look back, we can clearly see that Joe was actually pretty lucky in round 2 after his fuel mistake. He is now in the lead with points obviously. Nevertheless, I believe this can still level out and there will be chances for me too at least to fight for the championship in the last round. Either way, I think I have shown some speed with three pole positions. Constantly battling Joe and Isaac is also a thrill and it's nothing like I have experienced before. These guys are absolutely full off energy all the time, real fighters down to the core, always quick.
Now, the race itself after the crash was not a very pleasurable experience. Personally, I don't really enjoy fighting out of position. In some way it was a little bit of de ja vu of gt1ws r1 after sc and this time I made sure I didn't overpush into a silly mistake which would then cost me even more positions in close racing. From 15th up to 6th mostly thanks to people running wide in T1 and weirdly enough only then I made a mistake in T1 running wide after I finally got a little bit of clean air. Very frustrating, because I didn't really push more or less than before, or changed level of concentration or anything, so it just happened, twice in a row and I was down to 9th or so when I snapped out of it. Now, that's something to work on for me when I get in situation like this again and I surely will one day. Things like that just happen in racing sometimes.
Then came the battle with Joonas who dropped few places and was at the end of the train. I knew he was really gonna go for it, even though I'm a title contender, someone like him has no respect for things like that. It became clearly obvious to me after he made the most terrible block move when he rejoined the track with no regard to anything getting into my line whilst I'm carrying unexplainable amount of speed more than him. Again, just a warning and more thrill for Americans after we both almost retired from the race.
It's going to take some serious play to get past this man and I have to, I just have to get past him. I was much faster and after some fighting like it was the last lap of the last race for 1 milion dollars I finally made it. I got out of it with little bit of damage which hampered laptimes only slightly till the end of the race.
This cost me mighty gap to people in front and with this camber damage and horribly understeery car and awesome pace from everyone ahead I never had a chance to move up from 7th. I needed a SC to give me a chance to move up from there, but it was never going to happen on Westhill.
I hope Joonas has now blown all of his steam out and paid his dues for our FBM race from a year ago or whatever has been causing bad feelings between us and that we can now have reasonable racing when we meet again. During this whole fight I was passed and repassed by R.Belo constantly and all well done to him for enjoyable racing and not missing a mark once even with H-Shifter.
There you can see why I sometimes get so very frustrated with some people and criticize. I mean when someone of Isaac's caliber can make a mistake he did on lap one and slip into an accident, surely anyone can. When I make this critics and maybe you try to point out I'm a hypocrite I just want to say right now, if we look back, the big majority of accidents I was involved with the other driver was handed the penalty for or it was a half a blame for both when we both lacked some luck. Many times I allowed a driver to make an overtaking move down the inside as well, since I just knew it would cost me time to fight him as I was just lucky to be that high up the order in that race. Or in other cases I was defending with outside line as it was just faster way. I'm only trying to make sure we both stay on track pointing out things like this. For that to happen we all need to be more aware of the danger and the risks we are taking in this simulated environment. Someone can control more risk than someone else and everyone's limit is different is what racing has thought me so far and that is exactly why everything is so very unpredictable.
Congrats to Franky for finally making a good result.
I'm very glad that Isaac said he is going to drive a little bit more safely in the last round after all this events and it's all I have ever asked of you.
The shortest track of the calender with loads of corners is maybe not the best place to hold season finale, but it's surely going to be very exciting.