Firstly, congratulations to @Knuckles it was an excellent recovery from your early difficulties. It was an epic race for me, I actually had a surprising battle with Knuckles for pole. I thought I had it with a 2:11.1 until he unleashed a 2:10.8 or 9 to snatch it on the last lap. I started on SS and knuckles was on SM so I took the lead at the first chicane and set about building a lead. My heart rose when I could see that @Bluemoon was in second and I was increasing my lead. There must have been some incidents as my lead grew quickly and I was about 35 seconds ahead when I pitted for SMs. Knuckles used SMs as well for his second stint and he closed up some of the time in that stint. I pitted on lap 29 for my final set of SM and unfortunately for me lost a little time by putting about 20 litre too much fuel in then running into the sand at turn 2. I had about 29 seconds and felt hunted as Knuckles was now on SS and closing fast. I could see by the map that the gap back to third was big enough for me to have a spin and still finish second so I pushed as hard as I could to try and stop Knuckles from catching me. I lost time however by pushing too hard and ran wide at the right hander after the 1st timing marker twice. The inevitable happened and Knuckles cruised past me with about five laps to go and I nearly punted him off trying to stay with him. I thought it wise to give him some space but keep the pressure on as much as possible hoping he might error. He drove perfectly though and I eventually fell back from 4 seconds behind with on lap to go to over 8 seconds at the flag. I gave it everything I had and finished 2nd where I knew before the race was the best I could hope for. Knuckles race lap time was 1.2 seconds faster than I could manage and I feel good that I was only 8 seconds behind at the finish. The next two races are going to be very exciting, I need to get podiums to keep my lead in the championship.
Last edited: Aug 22, 2016
