Top nights racing, but one or 2 errors on my part and some aggressive driving on others, ensured it went down as an " if only " sort of night.
Like Andrew, couldn't find anything like my afternoon pace so started P11. Not sure what happened at the start, but Phillip tried to squeeze by Dan, touched the wall and lost a lot of momentum which I couldn't avoid and damaged my suspension in the coming together.
Pace was well off from then, but with 1hr, 19mins and 30secs to go there was still plenty to fight for. Cars where flying everywhere so I was able to slowly get up to the top end of the runners. Had some good early race laps with Dave, who was showing some good pace, until the powers that govern the universe duly decided enough is enough and Dave disappeared somewhere to the background chorus of "I was actually in 6th":rotfl:
A few laps later we were reunited after I had an off and nervously watched as :male-fighter2: Rickard "Banzai" Javanainen firstly narrowly missed both Dave and I at T1 (Ryan, nicely captured, classic :laugh2
Then inevitably a couple of laps later, it was good night Vienna, as I got broadsided. Still, it left me behind Grant Powell and we had a rather few good laps, until I clipped the grass and spun into him, spinning Grant also, sorry for that mate.
This left me in the middle of the track, and as I waited for Grant to pull off, I could see from the onboard map that the leader was rapidly approaching, I was like a rabbit in the headlights, not knowing what to do so I left it where it was, considering it was a fairly slow corner, hoping they would see me. Luckily it didn't result in the horror fest I imagined and Gary, then Ryan and a whole train of cars went though, apologies guys.
With only 18 laps gone upto this stage it was a relief still to be in the top 10. The car still felt fairly good and for the next 5/6 laps it was pretty quiet, until I noticed a car coming down the pitlane and on direct trajectory with me for T1. As Kennet said in his post above, he took the position fairly, but not because of "soft" driving, rather that I ran a little deep into the corner and rather than turn in with you unsighted somewhere beside me, I relenquished the place so we could both race on.:wink2: And what a race from there it was, really great defending and driving Kennet, it was the highlight of the evening for me, especially on the last lap coming up the hill side by side :good:
Finnished P8, which considering all that had happened, wasn't bad, like I said " if only "
Well done to Gary(sublime pace) Ryan and Bob.
One thing that does deserve a mention was Andrew's "moment" with his wheel. It was clearly audible over TS and at first I thought something electrical had given up the ghost the "Crack" was that profound. Here's hoping you get it fixed soon mate :skywalker:
Thanks to Andrew for setting the event up ( I, like Matt, really enjoy the Enduro's) and the "Gang" on teamspeak, especially Dave, because in adamvaugh.com's absence I was apparently his "Bee Eye Tee See Haych"
Top night
arty2:
