Managed to slowly catch Chris back up. The battle I had with him then took the mantelpiece of best battle at RD
Wow, thanks very much Lee
I have to say that's one of the fairest battles i've ever been involved in and cetrainly, for me, the best one at RD so far
Qualifying 1, I knew I was quick from practice, although I thought maybe I could only get second because I saw someone in the 34's. In qualy it quickly became evident that was done one low fuel, and my choice of super-softs didn't pay off and spun on both my quick laps, so had to settle for 13th. Got a good start to race 1, seems like everyone was sleeping, and was up to 9th by turn 1. People going off the track promoted me to about 7th I think, but later in the lap Ozan went wide and I spun avoiding him, had to wait for the entire field to go through. The next 19 minutes was all about speed and consistency, and I quickly caught the cars in front, who were all busy having their own battle and allowed me (surprisingly) to get past quite quickly. Kept putting in the good laps. I knew from talking to Toby on TS that he and Lee were locked in a good battle. I was desparate to catch them but unfortunately he span out which gave me another position. Mattia and a few other drivers were all battling, I was stuck behind them for a few laps but eventually managed to muscle through. Then it was a clear track to Toby, I caught him at about 2s a lap, was looking forward to a great battle with him. Unfortunately, when I did catch him he made a mistake which allowed me through, then on the next corner he applied a bit too much throttle, span into the wall and wrecked. Then it was just a case of bringing the car home
Qualifying 2, I had learned from my mistake and qualified on softs, which easily gave me pole, my first ever in an RD event. I was actually quite nervous as I had never controlled the pace of a formation lap before. All went well (I think) and got another clean getaway in race 2. After the first lap I pulled about a second lead but in the opening stages of the race I didn't seem to have the same pace as the last race and Lee caught me, for a few laps I managed to keep him behind but he slipstreamed past on one of the straights, which signalled the start of an awesome battle, with many position changes, very good overtakes and defensive driving by Lee throughout the whole race. I managed to get back in front and kept it there, although Lee was never more than a second behind. The unrelenting pressure meant I kept making a few mistakes, which allowed him to get within 3 tenths of me. Last lap, I went wide at the double right hander and felt sure that Lee would past me, but he didn't, to me looked as though he struggled to get the power down, then I just had to drive as quick as I could to the line, I knew one mistake from me would hand Lee a wel-deserved win. I managed to cross the line in first 1s ahead of Lee.
My thanks have to go out to everyone today, in general we saw good clean racing (ask Toby, I'm normally shouting on TS about how someone is driving like an idiot) but most of all to Lee for the best battle I've had on track during my time at RD, good hard, clean and fair racing. and yeah, at least we didn't crash into each other like in Hungary
Thanks again to Ivo for the great organisation, Remco for being admin and again, the entire RD community
