Some cracking racing tonight :good:
Nascar layout
Quallied about 3rd I think, felt pretty comfortable round here. Went a bit cautious into T1 as there were a lot of cars flying about all over the place, more to do with high speeds, high weights and small brakes rather than any reckless abandon on the driver's side. Managed to make it through OK, and soon I was having a great race in the top three with Avi & Amir. We all led for stages of the race, swapping positions regularly, but Avi & I were noticeably less aggressive on the car than Amir. I kept an eye on my tyre wear and it was pretty high for me while I was being as smooth as possible, so every time Amir locked up and threw the arse of his 'Vette round, I was wincing.
I've managed to delete the replay but I
think that Avi was already in the lead by the time I managed to get past Amir decisively. I'm guessing that this was just after half distance, and I spent the rest of the race trying to close up on Avi, I managed to have one little charge and close right up, but couldn't get past and that closing up took just enough life out of my wellies that I started to get some unruly behaviour in some of the simpler corners. I could see Kevin in 3rd slowly closing the gap, but at the rate he was going he didn't have anywhere near enough laps to fully close, unless I made a dopey mistake of course, so I settled back and accepted a fairly comfortable 2nd rather than pushing on at Avi, and probably going into a wall somewhere and giving 2nd (and probably 3rd) away.
Great drive by Avi, grats to Kev.
Long layout
After the first race, I knew that qualifying was probably less important than tyre conservation, so I kept my race fuel in to get an idea of what my race times would be if I kept driving smoothly. That put me in about 5th, 2 laps within 5 hundredths of each other 2.11.759 + 2.11.808, which I thought would be a good race pace. Kevin pulled out a ludicrously quick quali of 2.10.122 to get a superb pole.
Dropped to 6th, Marty flying through into 5th, and I settled down for an entertaining drive through the field (hopefully). I managed to out brake Croucher into the chicane for 5th, and I was up on Marty's tail who was now in 4th. Marty superbly held a really nasty grass instigated slide going into the Boot, but it allowed me to close right up and keep my momentum up into the tight right hander and nip through into 4th. I kept the right lines through the rest of the Boot, and I rejoined the Nascar track closing in on Avi & Warren, a couple of seconds ahead.
Avi tried a rather ambitious dive up the inside of T1, and it didn't end well for he & Warren, pushing me up to 2nd as they waited and recovered respectively.
I set off in pursuit of Kevin, but to be honest I wasn't entirely confident I'd be able to catch him - if his pole lap was anything like his race pace, there was no way. It soon became apparent that there was more than a chance, as the gap dropped, and kept dropping, until I was right on his bumper. On about lap 6 or 7 I got a really good slipstream through the Esses and the front straight, but had to back off early to avoid taking us both out in the chicane, although I kept the gap down to about what it was the previous lap, 0.3-0.4 sec. Again, I got a good run through the Esses and was right on Kevin's bumper as we entered the Chicane. Kevin braked a bit later and turned in a bit later too, whereas I was a little slowly but on a much straighter entry. As Kev tried to turn for the second part of the chicane, his rear tyres let him down and he went into a slide, allowing me through into 1st.
From then on, it was a case of managing my laptimes and my tyres, and as soon as I dropped from comfortable 2.11.xxx into high 2.12's and low 2.13's I decided it was time to change my wellies. Luckily I had been contact free, so I knew there was no damage to repair, was running with full race fuel, so I took it easy, came in and got 4 new boots. Kevin and Avi flew past me as I was stationary, Croucher came in the same lap as me as took 3rd as his pit stall was just beyond mine. I was away long before him, and rejoined the track in P3.
As soon as I had the new tyres up to temp (about 3 corners in the 'Vettes
) it felt so much better I couldn't believe I had been driving on the old ones, and so I pushed on to make sure that I would leapfrog Avi & Kevin at their stops
Straight down into the mid 2.11's, past Avi & then Kevin as they stopped, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, a 2.10.6. That opened up a comfortable enough gap for me again to just keep an eye on times and tyres and come home for the win.
WD to Croucher & Kev for the podium.
TS was - as always - extremely good value, especially Steve & Warren when Steve took to the skies.