what a great race
when I heard the news, that we received a penalty for not allocating the drivers, I was a bit sad. but then I thought "at least I've nothing to lose"
as I only had some 50 minutes or 1 hour of practice and for that reason not really a good but at least stable setup, i decided to take the risk and use soft tyres and make a 2-stop-strategy. I also set my aero to low downforce in order to get past the opponents fast. that worked out pretty well, but of course there was also some really hard fought fights. I really enjoyed that
but I was concerned about my tyres and was wondering if they would just go off from one lap to another. but they were pretty good despite of the hard fights and so the old soft tyres were as fast as old hard tyres (or even still faster), so I could keep a good pace until the pit stops got underway. at the first stop I only took some new tyres and went out again. again there were some good fights and really fair - hat off for that!
in my last stint I have to apologize for a misunderstanding at the pit entry... I was behind someone else coming out of the last corner and he covered the inside line. I thought he was going to fight for his position and drove around the outside - until I remembered a nasty crash in my virtual Touring Cars career
and slotted back in behind the other driver. he then braked for the pit entry and I ran into his back... he could just gather it together, but it was a shocking moment for sure, so - sorry for that...
then I backed off a bit just to make sure the engine and tyres would hold on and finished third
from the back of this pretty high-class grid way more than I could expect and so I'm absolutely over the moon
in the end I was lucky, seeing Marcin stopping again just before the final laps and making some progress from other, earlier incidents of potential podium-finishers, but... to finish first, you have to finish first and so I inherited a lucky podium spot!