I hesitate to use the word "disastrous" but it's fitting in the circumstances. I didn't know I was racing until about 5 to 8 when I realised Barlin wasn't going to turn up. Qualifying went reasonably well, 13th just ahead of my team mate. Things were quite tight around me, from half a second covering 8 drivers. The start was good, lost a place to Stoney but everyone was clean, no serious contact. At the end of lap 3 I got a bad exit from the last turn and Arrow was right behind me. I took the defensive line into 1 and 2 to protect the place. Next time around I got an even worse exit and he was right behind me, sending morse code on the rear bumper out of the last turn. I realised he was significantly faster so I gave him the inside line into 1. Luckily for me he ran wide on turn 4 immediately and gave me back the place. I was now nearly 2 seconds behind Stoney, who had been infront of Jos but was now back behind him. By lap 8 I'd closed up to the group of 4 infront of me (Cawwa, Jos, Revolt and Stoney). However, Arrow was right behind me again. Stoney, myself and Arrow all passed Revolt and he ran wide off the side of the track coming out of 4. At the start of the 10th lap Arrow was with me again and I moved to cover the line into 1 again. Just as I started braking he ran into the rear of my car and pushed me into Stoney. Stoney and I both half-spun and Arrow got past me. Stoney held his ground and stayed ahead. Next lap around and now Arrow was harassing Stoney and I was under pressure from Brad. I was too busy watching Brad coming up the right hand side into 2 and left my braking a little late, hitting the rear of Stoney and costing us both places. The first rule in racing is don't take out your team mate and I'd just broken it. Sorry again Stoney. I had a little bit better race pace than Stoney so he let me past on lap 15. I closed up on the MG boys but ran wide myself and lost a few seconds and the place to Stoney again. He let me back through at the start of 18 and I got my head down to try to close on the MG boys once again. I was making significant gains on them, 0.3 to 0.6 seconds per lap roughly. DaveWS pitted and came out between myself and the MG boys, which I was quite happy with as he was harassing them and holding them up. Revolt made a stop on lap 25 and I was right with Brad. I pitted at the end of 27, from 0.33 behind Brad at the split beforehand. I'd done about 5 practice pit stops, and it was a decent pit entry but then I shifted my focus to keeping below the pit lane speed limit and didn't pay attention to the pit lane. As I looked up to the lane to pick my box I realised the one I was headed for was already occupied, so I panicked and went for another box. Bit of a farcical stop which left me over half a lap behind the MG boys. I came out a few seconds behind C. Krognes, who'd now lapped me. He was in a battle with Cawwa so they were both lapping quite slowly. I quickly caught them up and was myself being held up. Remembering Suzuka 1993 I wasn't going to try to unlap myself to catch the MG boys so I sat behind and patiently waited. I got past C. Krognes as he violently stopped (presumably the pedal trouble he mentioned). I was now just over 18 seconds behind Brad and determined to close in the last 12 laps. I ran wide on the exit of the last turn at the end of lap 39 and had to let C. Krognes back through. I closed up to 12 seconds behind Brad and then I believe he had a coming together with Kajojek and I closed to just 7 seconds behind with 6 laps to go. I ended up roughly 5 seconds behind Brad and had it not been for my bumbled stop I would have finished ahead of at least one of the MG boys. Ah, well...
Congrats to Mr. Mooney and all the other finishers.
(Took Revolt some time to get past brad when he caught him up! Revolt was much faster, just is pretty hard to pass there at times :schwitz