What a pleassure racing with you guys!
I didn´t expect to much for this track as I was not able to reach a laptime below 1:25. I struggled alot with finding the right stiffness for the stabis, even made them a bit softer between qualifying and race - something I never did before, change setup that late..
I did a 15 minutes powernap before quali and sweared to myself one thing: brake supersoftly
Quali was ok, on my last attack the first corners were superhot, but early came the bigger mistakes - so P3, ok for me.
André had a good start, Rainer struggled a bit and I could manage to have a good run on both of them through the first corners. Then Rainer had a realy bad exit at the beginning of Norwich Straight, André was a bit to close and even had to brake a little. I thought now is the moment. I sheared out to the right in hope for a good run on André, maybe even Rainer. But in the middle of the long straight André appeared again and fast on my side – he got Rainers slipstream, even braked perfectly late and I had to pull back. Further on I lost contact to them a little and started to manage racepace as I knew the race will last longer. The two in front had very strong laps but after a few laps I recognized I could follow André and it is not over yet. From then on it was managing tires and laptimes, finding a flow, push but not loose it – everybody knows what I´m talking about ..
Then, in the middle of the first stint, Rainer was pulling away and I was already giving all by hunting André and very slowly closing on him. When he made his tiny mistake that led to an excursion throught the green and these unwanted 10 secs, an „uff!“ for me as he is a real hard nut
I was save for the moment and plan b started to appear in my head – bringing it home. P2 the new target as Rainer was unbeatable this evening – realy great, consistant performance mate!
Pitstop ok, no probs, a few tiny mistakes before and after, even a dropdown in my tension and concentration around the middlpart of this race, but, and that realy saddisfies me, I could find my pace again and keep André off my tail – very difficult ..
All in all I could bring it home safe without any danger, gained 3 points on André and championship...very happy!
As always I watched the replay and stream and that was a great show from us all, especially the first quarter of the race. Everybody could see real great racing from front to back of our field, superb!
The best season for me so far, ever! It´s realy great André, racing with you and everybody else!!
Thank you all!