what a great race!!!!
i have to watch it again and reflect what went good and what went wrong.
quali:
kind of disappointed. trained really much for it and had some reasonable pace for one lap. i couldnt pull it off. ended up with a 1:39,5 which is 1,3 seconds slower then my pb. really hoped and thought i could drive a 1:38,x when it matters. Kind of a bummer but starting from 10th is still way better then anything i managed in any of the 4 races i attended since joining you guys. so still an achievement for me.
race:
really great. i have to see this evening what happened in this long lasting 65 minutes.
but in short. no huge mistakes, 2 or 3 half spins and ran wide 2 times in t8 i think. missed my breaking points an a few occasions but nothing dramatic. i bumped someone (dont know who it was tbh) but not that hard. no damage done i think.
but that wheel to wheel racing was some crazy stuff
so much fun. really really nice. fair all the time and so rewarding even if you come out of it with loosing the place. the satisfaction you get by going wheel to wheel through the last three corners on to the main straight is so awesome.
i will check this evening who was involved in wheel to wheel with me. and the come back.
maybe i can do a short highlight video with some battles. there were many of them.
pitstops:
that was a huge problem for me in the last races. but just as everything else i trained those and now feel comfortable with them. i lost 2 or 3 places in battles before my first stop. and then decided to pit one lap early to try the undercut with fresh tires. worked really great. got 2 places back.
the only thing that is a little unsettling for me is the fact that i obviously totally abuse those tires. my strategy was to pit in lap 13 and then again in lap 26.
at the end of my first stint i struggled a lot. so as i said i pitted on lap 12 instead of 13. and then got tyrewarning on lap 23. that was really unsettling at that moment. so i pitted on lap 24. and hoped i can do it to the end. glad it worked. although i struggled really in the end and bob got me a few laps before the end. i was scared that i might loose some more places but could hold on to it. 2 or 3 more laps and i would have been in huge trouble.
still dont know how the 1 stop guys managed to do that.
overall:
man i am more pumped for this season than before. that was some start for me.
i trained a lot for this race. and it showed.
i had 2 dnfs in my first two races. one last place in my third race. and one 12th place in the last race of season 11.
i ended up at place 11 yesterday only 1 place better then the last race. but compared to my final performance of last season i was on another level in this race. i am really seeing progress in every aspect of my racing, thats some good motivation.
my new pedals do their work and i only have them for one week. i hope its only going to get better from now on.
guys, so much fun to drive with you. from now on i am going to train for melbourne although due to my work i am not at home from monday till sunday in the upcoming week. so i guess i have to use this weekend and monday and tuesday before raceday as much as i can.
i will be back this evening with some more infos from my race yesterday.
later guys