Automobilista Round 4 Curitiba

Qualified 4th. Got a good start to get into 3rd behind Ramon. Spent a couple of laps behind him until I got down the inside down the start/finish straight and made the overtake through the chicane. I was now a few seconds behind Manuel and unable to close the gap. By halfway I was going to pit if Manuel did but stay out otherwise. He didn't so a no stop was on. By 3/4 distance I thought I could survive. In fact even by the penultimate lap I thought I'd be OK but then the front left tyre gave way down the start/finish straight. Hate that AMS message 'One lap to go'. Thought I'd finished the race then that message flashes up. Could still drive it so I limped around the final lap. Had a 30 second lead over Ken and was looking OK until halfway around the lap when I locked up and slid off the track. I went a long way off the track and nearly couldn't get it turned around, almost getting stuck behind a tyre wall. I got back on track 5 seconds ahead of Ken. The last 2 corners were tricky and trying to accelerate down the straight was difficult but I just managed to hang on to 2nd.

Well done Manuel

 

First congrats to Manuel, impressive.
Given that I was quite ill yesterday (and still am) I wasn't expecting too much in the race. Qualifying took me by surprise as I wasn't expecting a second, it wasn't a great lap. That surprise starting position led me to a fatal error, wich was changing the setup prior before the race to try to win... As you may expect that wasn't a great idea at all...

Car was hughely unstable in the first laps, particularly in the braking zones, wich caused me to go off track several times and even damage the car. That put me 7/8 and thought my race was over, so just relaxed and started cruising, since Philipp was always at same gap.
More or less three laps to the end, I started to close the gap to Philipp, not my merit but I saw a lot of of dirty in the air, you know sand and smoke clouds and stuff like that. So I decided to push because I still had tyres for at least 10 more minutes.
Last corners were a little bit of a madness, as unexpectedly everyone in front of me was going quite slow, Paul being the worse looking one. I suppose Philipp was near to a puncture because he did the last corners terribly slow, allowing me to slipstream and pass him by nothing more than a coin.

Given the circumstances, better result than expected so quite happy about that.

 

You suppose right. The car already behave odd, I could feel it at steering. I was trying to go as fast as possible to preserve my left front. Maybe I could have gone a bit faster, but it was only a small bit left of that red bar
On the other hand I lost it by the tiniest margiin, we will never know. But as I had to retired the last time my tyre blow, so I feared the risk.

My first race after a four week pause felt a bit weird. Needed a while to get rid of the rust. My tyre management was not really good. At 22 min I had used more than a half of my front left. So I had to save more in the second part. So I had not really the option to attack Ken, and I think even if I would have tried, my decision to run 3 rear wing backfired, because I was too slow on the straight. Hopefully I will do that better next time

 

It was clear from practice that the best strategy was a no-stop race. But tyres at the end of the race could be difficult to manage.
Qualy was close: 4 places separated by 4 tenths. Ramon's lap was very quick, just 22 thousands from my lap. Congrats Ramon.
Got a good start and built a 3 seconds gap. By then Paul was second and gaining ground. He was driving quickly and smoothly so
I assumed he was not going to stop.
I had to save tyres for the end of the race to avoid the tyre's performance drop when below 10%.
I did not pushed. If Paul catched me I would let him by, saving tyres was more important.
After a while the time difference started slowly getting bigger.
At the end Paul had a drop on tyre performance and a flat tyre but still managed to hold on to second. Good driving Paul.
Next stop Campo Grande.