WOOOHOOO I won
(sorta)
What an awesome and so nearly catastrophic race.
In quali I got a new pb, got 7th place, just behind Yann.
The start was, um, interesting. Zanetti span so I gained another position on the formation lap. However, I completely messed up the start by telling people the wrong lane :doh:
Deko went green earlier than I expected, but I still got a much better start than the others around me. I ended up stuck behind Taha down the home straight, with yann and dan next to me on the right. I managed to pass some people into T1, after starting 6th I got into 3rd place. I then got goo drive off the corkscrew and overtook Dan coming into the North hairpin. This put me in second place. Ken was miles and away faster than me at this stage, so I just set my own pace trying to get away from the chasing pack; dan, yann and Darryn. On about lap 6 two of them span and it was left to Darryn to chase me. Deko so nearly brought out the SC (and I'm sooooo glad he didnt!!!). On lap 12 I had one of those moments braking for the north hairpin, i touched the grass and only a handfull of opposite kept me on the straight and narrow. In the next laps I just aimed to keep the 3-4 second cushion between me and Darryn in 3rd. I'd put too much fuel in, so I knew that I could pit when I wanted, and was glad when Darryn pitted with about 35-40 mins gone. I decided now to push really hard, and got two new pbs in that time. When I pitted, I decided to make a few set ajustments, lowering ma tyre pressures and removing a bit of front wing. I'd forgotten, however, that there's an LFS bug where, when you set it to change sets, it fixes your damage. So, I had a 10 second pit stop and so nearly lost the position to Darryn
AND the setting changes were shockingly bad. I lost about 1sec/lap cos of that, and nearly rolled it with 2 laps to go :S
However, I stayed in front for the rest of the race and 'won', 30 secs behind Ken.
Really glad about this race, just kept within my own abilities, didn't fail (well, apart from almost failing at the last corner THANKS JOE!) and just pushed only when i needed
Congrats to Ken for winning in such a convincing way, congrats to Yann for winning the championship, and to Darryn for giving me a good race
Thanks to Joe for SCing (not that badly) to Deko for all his hard work, and to you, the racers, for making this such fun.
Hopefully see some of you online in future, and maybe at some future NDR events