I had a very enjoyable race, I surprised myself by qualifying third behind beats (about 1/2 a second faster) and anders and ahead of some very fast guys. Anders and I opted to start on RM and that made for some interesting racing with the pack of RS drivers behind. Beats just took off into the distance and I tried to get around anders over the first lap only to fluff it and fall back into the grips of the soft runners behind me. Over the first 4 or 5 laps I was bundled back to 8th (would have been 9th but someone ahead had spun). Once things settled down I was able to sit behind the still battling pack of soft runners and look forward to the second half of the race when the roles would be reversed.
I wasn't too far back from second but there was a huge gap out to first place that I knew I was never going to close. I pitted on lap 10, some of the RS guys had pitted a little earlier.
After the pit stop I came out 5th right on the tail of ovlov, him on RM and me on RS. Ahead, Beats was even further ahead with moon way behind him, both having not stopped yet and razorpod on his fresh RM after his stop.
It took 2 laps and a bit to get by ovlov as he was defending very vigorously. Once by ovlov and with Moon having pitted and now behind I was third behind beats now on RM and Razor.
The gap to Razor wasn't much and I closed over a couple of laps and was able to use my tyre advantage for an easy pass.
By this time Beats was still about 23 seconds ahead but over the remaining laps I was able to take about 6 seconds out of that to finish a still discouraging 17 seconds behind.
I was lucky to score 2nd as I think it was anders who was ahead of me on a similar strategy that spun and also blunty on the same strategy was forced to start at the back of the grid having not got to the timing marker before race start. Blunty came through the field and with about 1/2 a dozen or so laps left started to close the gap to me. He may have beaten me if not for his last row start and an early spin.
Last edited: Jul 19, 2021