Well, qualifying was a load of rubbish. Threw away a front row start, and here starting 8th probably isn't the best because it is just so tight here.
Race start was great, jumped
@Osterkamp at T1, and then was able to pull a nice move on
@Mitti87 into the chicane, and then at the end of the lap,
@camo had a wobble out of the final corner and I was able to pass him so I had gained 3 positions in just the opening lap which felt great.
After that it was a case of defending for a bit from Andy, and also trying to catch up to the guys ahead. I couldn't really do that until
@Kptk92 starting having really good battles with
@lokitekki which helped (although, at this point it had been happening a lot anyway, but now it was serious business and was helping us behind). The top 5 got within 3 seconds each other. But as soon as I came close, I made a half spin at the final corner so decided to pit early and see if I could gain any time back. I think after the pitstop phase,Kerry got a good jump,
@J-F Godin had had an issue at some point and fell quite far back and Michael had caught up to me. We both got close as he was exiting the pits as I hadn't seen him there so I almost drove into him, but luckily noticed and... Well, didn't.
The end of the race was mad for me. Once again I had managed to get myself to 16 incidents, and with 12 laps to go, it was always going to be a struggle to fend of Michael. We had some great side by side moments lap after lap. Constantly he would have a faster run out of the hairpin, and also out of the final corner. 5 times we were side by side through T1 and 3 or 4 times into the chicane, which had me on edge due to the incident limit. Lap 33 was especially close into the chicane but was brilliant, as was that whole fight. Great race Michael!
3rd is great after starting from 8th. Definitely helped by both Jean and Jouni having their own mistakes, but I'm still mostly happy with how I drove. I think up until I started getting a few too silly errors I was driving about as well as I could, but then I was on a downward trend for a while. The last 10/12 laps of the race were great though defending for so long with no incident buffer. Anything wrong and it was curtains and it was brilliant.
Onto the Glen next. That'll be interesting in cars that don't slip stream from about a mile back. Also, grats to Kerry on the win. Does wonders for Aperture Motorsport.
