Thanks
Firstly I would like to thanks a few people for the season:
- Steve Crossland for running such a professional and friendly league and all your hard work, very good job mate, also for allowing me to join the league 3 races already into the season
- Mitchell Chapman for allowing me to join team Spy Gate Racing
- David Street for all his help with setups of the car etc
- And to all who raced this season, this league wouldn't be what it is with out everyones support
Race Report
I had 1 goal coming into the last round of the season, I was sitting in 4th position on the championship table behind Mark Brunner by 10 pts, so my main objective was to try and beat him by 11pts to take out 3rd in the championship.
Q1 - 6th
Interesting session, I couldn't find the pace of what I had the day before in practice 1 so could only manage a 1.29.0. Right up until the last minute I was sitting in 5th and thought great I'll get to do my first super pole lap, unfortunately for me David Street pimped me right in the dieing seconds so I ended up 6th.
Q2
Its always a pleasure to watch the aliens do they're flying laps - its just incredible to watch how quick they are.
Race - 3rd
Starting from 6th and on the inside line I thought I may have gotten swamped a bit but I got a good start, got past Lutz and moved to the outside with David Street on the inside, I thought there may have been a bit of mayhem at turn 1 so I wanted to take the outside line, to my amazement turn 1 was very clean - well done guys. Lutz took the inside line and got back past me through turn 1, coming out of turn 2 David Street gassed it up to much and went off to the inside, sliding back onto the track half way through turn 3 right in front of me (thought my race was over for a second). I just nudged him but didn't receive any damage which was good, then going into turn 4 David had traction and was right beside me, our wheels may have touched or something and I got pushed wide loosing a few spots.
Sitting in 9th or 10th now I quickly wanted to make some places up as Mark Brunner was a few spots in front of me. Bob was just in front of me after my excursion of the track and I managed to slide up the inside going into turn 5, Mitchell Chapman was the next in line (mate you got a flying start
) coming out of turn 8 and 9 I had better speed and sliped past Mitchell, next was Mark, for a few laps we had a good battle, we both had similar setups I think as we were pretty evan. Unfotunately for Mark he made a mistake coming into turn 1?? (can't remember off the top of my head) so I took back my 6th position.
From there it was a matter of chasing down David Street, he'd pulled a bit of a gap and we were both chasing down Lutz in 4th, Lutz seemed to have had some suspension damage possibly as David and I got past him. The battle then came alot closer between David Street and myself after he'd had a spin, we'd battle for a lap or 2 then he'd pull away and then make another mistake and I'd catch up. David and I were on similar strategies pushing to get through to around about Lap 27, David had another misfortune and I made up the position. Now sitting in 4th with Peter Marshall about 13 seconds in front I was feeling pretty confident with my pace, especially when I saw Peter, Ivan and Chris all in the pits at the same time. I briefly took the lead as I passed Chris as he was exiting pits, I was probably a bit too concerned about Chris and kept watching my mirrors that coming out of turn 10 I lost the rear of my car and slid into the wall sideways.. Luckily I didn't loose a wheel but did suffer suspension damage.
After being able to go about 4 laps longer than Peter and with a shorter pit stop ahead with medium tyres I was pretty upset with my mistake, I crawled back to the pits and had an extra long stop for fixing the damage. On exiting the pits Mark Brunnar caught up and exited the pits at the same time as me, we battled for a couple of laps but unfortunately for him going into the last corner he made a mistake and lost 8 seconds to me. From here I was 30 odd seconds behind Peter Marshall, I was catching him about 1 second per lap, then every now and then I would make a slight mistake and loose a couple of seconds, Mark dropped out of the game unfortuately for him as he would've secured 3rd in the championship.
For the rest of the race I was just trying to catch Peter ahead just in case he made a mistake, but Peter didn't so to his credit he finished 14 seconds in front of me, if it wasn't for my accident then it could've been a bit closer who knows... Finished in 3rd behind Ivan and Peter who had great races which I was happy about.
Overall very happy with the result, this meant that I take out the championship in 3rd position which is an awesome result and better than I had expected, especially after starting at round 4 and missing the Silverstone race so with 5 races - 2 x 2nds, 2 x 3rds and a 6th I'm extremely happy with that. Next season I'll be chasing down my first win hopefully.
Hopefully see everyone over the off season and can't wait for the next season to start!!