Talking about it instead of writing worked always the best for me in these situations, but thats not my cup of tea.
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Really glad to have enjoyed another smooth race. During preparation i really struggled with consistency and speed in general on this track. In addition to that, Neil put some killer laps down on the practice server, i couldnt belive it. I stayed on the server, watched him, looked at the replay: Couldnt find bi mistakes from my side - he was just quicker. I expected a tough race, maybe a Top 5 result considering I was 1 sec down and havent seen some of the quick guys from the last event - in addition to that, Erik was pretty damn quick in practice, too. Yesterday finally something clicked and I was able to improve, even more today.
Before the start of the race it became clear, that Neil was able to use an older verison of the Mini on the practice server. The older one is quite a bit quicker. With that glimmer of hope i set a PB in the qualification and threw away an even better time (1.41.4), while Erik and Chris managed to get 1.41.9s. That gave me confidence and after some pressure in the first few laps, Chris made a mistake and I was able to build up some space. That first stint was phenomenal! I expected the undercut from Chris, since he was pretty pacey without a tyre change in Watkins, too. It even nearly worked out, but i was ever so slightly in front of him after the stops. From then on it was basically done, as the tyres were a bigger factor than last week.
Without Neil basically pushing my ego with the older Mini, I certainly wouldnt have had that pace. Would have been really, really tough against Chris, Erik and Neil. Especially Erik was really quick in the second stint and got the fastest lap aswell.
The Nordschleife will be a different one for sure. See you next week, was really fun