fast race for me It was a good qualy, as I'm not riding well on the track I was doing very well in the first few laps, keeping a good pace, but I made a silly mistake on lap 5. I crashed the car and lost the right rear wheel. Congratulations to Paul, leader of the Series See you next time!
Qualifying Did a PB by a mile as my previous best was a 1:23.1 so a 1:22.0 was a major surprise. Job done Race Got a good start and lead into T1. Saw that Jim had dropped back and then the car right behind me (not sure who) span out. So after all that I got a few seconds lead over Jim. I knew from testing my tyres weren't going to last so I set about pulling out a lead, not from Jim he had more than enough pace to keep up with me but from 3rd place. If I had to pit and Jim didn't then I needed a 30 second lead over 3rd to come back out in 2nd. Jim kept up with me but some kind of mistake from him saw me gain a 12 second gap. Then just after overtaking a backmarker and my mind on what was for dinner I span hitting the rear of the car against the wall. I saw in my mirror that I left something behind and I feared this was my rear spoiler. I drove rather cautiously to finish the lap but the car felt fine and I began to push again. The gap to Jim now 7 seconds. I got back into the low 1:23's so although the rear was all marked in yellow damage the car felt like it had before the spin. Thank god it's only 50% damage as that would have taken me out of the race. About midway I was relieved to see Jim pitting and a couple of laps later I went in for new tyres. My strategy at the start was to only change the fronts. This was before the spin. Now I came out of the pits fearing I'd made a bad mistake as my rear tyres we're both in the red. I came out with a 7 second lead if I'd taken rear tyres as well I would have either lost the lead or had Jim crawling over my rear bumper, if it was still there. In the last 15 minutes Jim was flying and reduced the gap by 3 - 4 seconds. After the race I saw he was putting in mid to low 1:22's. Cracking race pace Jim but another mistake from him saw the gap in the final 5 minutes rise to 12 seconds. I could now drop my pace and nurse my rear tyres to the end . So that decision not to take rear tyres paid off as I'm sure it would have lost me the race as it would have been an extra 5 seconds to fit them Well done to the podiums Onto Long Beach. Another street circuit. Should be fun.
That was me and I didn't actually spin out. Following you going through T5 I saw your car go straight into the barrier on the right, but before I could think about that my car went at a strange angle into the barrier on the left, so I thought it was a disconnx but it must've been a network lag. When control came back to me I had hit the barrier and was drifting across to the right, luckily not getting collected by the cars close behind. After that I probably pushed a bit too hard to try and recover, resulting in a few half-spins, so getting back to 5th at the flag was lucky. Grats to the team with Paul in 1st and Ed on his 4th place.
My race was going nicely until tires went to yellow, then I started to hit the barriers and lose positions. And the last 10 minutes with tires in red that was more like a nightmare, spinning and crashing everywhere. Maybe a one pit stop strategy to change the tires is more interesting than a non-stop one.
