First of all, I was happy to have arrived on time. Due to some traffic jams I almost didn't make it. My qualifying looked accordingly – I had to get used to the car again after a week or so of no practice. 19th place was as expected.
My strategy was not to change tyres and refuel somewhere around halfway.
I did a good start (surprisingly), avoided the lap 1 wreckage before the back straight, shat in my pants when Gajda flew past everybody on the straight, and then I let everyone behind me deal with Gajda's spin in the last corner. So I entered lap 2 in 11th and drove behind Ulrich until I eventually passed him on lap 6.
On lap 12, I made an attempt to pass Bernat on the inside of T1. I wasn't successful, but he made a mistake going onto the backstretch, so I passed him easily. I stayed in ninth until the SC came out.
The SC helped me quite a bit, because I was just about five laps before I would've pitted for fuel, so I dove into the pit lane immediately. When the queue sorted out, I had gained two positions and restarted from seventh. However, Østgaard was closer to the rest of the pack than before and he passed me shortly after the restart.
I had a little moment at the beginning of lap 42, where Remco had a spin, and Rony and I had to avoid him. No damage though, only a few seconds lost.
I knew Telkkälä was going to close the gap on me rapidly, although we were doing similar lap times. From lap 60 I had to deal with lapping Wdowiarz and lost a few seconds because of that. Telkkälä got his draft, which helped him get closer to me.
I tried to hold him off till the end. It was really tough
Eventually, when crossing the s/f line to start lap 72, I clearly didn't block the inside enough and he sneaked past me. At that point I thought it was over for me, but 2 laps later, he made a mistake going out of T1 and did a 360 in front of me – positions swapped again. But despite the spin, he managed to catch up and overtake me on the back straight for good with three laps to go.
I thought I would finish eighth when, on the penultimate lap, Wiśniewski was really slow through the last chicane. It turned out to be really thin tyres and a right rear puncture. Really unlucky for him, lucky for me. Seventh place is more than I expected.
It was a real shame that neither of my team mates made it to the finish. Better luck next time!
(laps are -1 from LFS laps because of the formation lap)