Thanks Alex for hosting at the last minute, shame not many people got to start.
Just thought i'd finish up by saying that although there was a much reduced field we still made a race of it and I had a lot of fun as well. First time ever managed to get the LMP2 setup fast as I spent the best part of a few days getting my head around how to set it up to not understeer like what happened last weekend at Imola, although now suffered from heavy throttle inputs making the car a bit slow out of the hairpin, ended up in pole for the race in front of Matt!
Reduced field also meant it wasn't quite as stressful lapping the GTE class so it kind of worked out, it was also good practice in building up patience in the LMP.
I cannot believe I had the pace over Matt le Gallez but did, first few laps I got 4 seconds on him, but as we all know experience is king in multiclass. Made a small mistake passing a GTE too heavy on the throttle and span out (no contact). Matt passed of course, I followed 1 second behind and kept pace to just over half distance where I had to pit for fuel, and this is where the contest ended. Pit strategy was too simplistic taking fuel half way and taking way too much and lost time, must have been 10-15 seconds too much. Matt must have filled the tank and put only what was needed to finish which was the faster strategy. Clawed back the defect to 13 seconds with 10 minutes to go and that was the best i could do, started making mistakes again and capped off with another 10 second mistake off track on the last lap and so was 25-30 or so down at the end. But coming 2nd to Matt is still a big step forwards for me, I think proves that setup and lots of practice does work. Also gave something for him to think about!
Also running medium tyres was another mistake, but given I cooked the softs in the GT3 on Friday was not confident, and they were consistent enough.
I really hope we can do more multiclass races in the future as its definitely what i'm into, but maybe held at more traditional wider race tracks that suit it. Thinking anything on the ILMS or WEC calendar would make sense.
, today is everything ok (at the moment). BMW please
