Before we start, happy new year everyone! I hope this year brings what last year couldn't.
Qualifying
I was not comfortable. At all. My laps would be inconsistent and messy, so it was no surprise I had my worst quali of the year, placing down in p5. My teammate, Max, didn't do any better, struggling even more down in 8th. It was not a good session for us and not the start to 2020 we were after. Surely the race would make up for it, right?
Race
Well, not exactly. The start lights confused a few people. There would be 4 red lights that would come on
then a set of green lights acting as the fifth light
and then the lighs would go out and we'd be racing. The set of green lights caught a lot of people out, resulting in a number of jumpstarts. In all the commotion, the start was very messy, for me and others. On the exit of turn 2, I got boxed in when one of the Iris cars spun in front of me.
I had to wait for him to roll off the track to get going, by which stage I had dropped to 10th. A disastrous start to a bad race. I began to pick up a few positions over the next few laps and I was in 7th at the start of lap 3. There were a chain of 3 quick guys ahead of me, all locked in a battle with each other. Joe Gillet, Edijs Batars, and my teammate Max were trading places, allowing me to catch up to them by the middle of the next lap to join in.
Max and I both decided that I would go ahead and take a stab at passing the others, seeing as he was at the back of the queue at that time. But not even half a lap later, I went wind on the exit of turn 8, hit the astroturf and spun inwards. I was lucky not to hit anything, and continued again, albeit this time in 8th. Now I had to reel that group back in all over again. I almost collided head on with a spinning Joe Gillet a few laps latter, in exactly the same place that I spun. So at least I wasn't the only one! As it turns out, Joe had been replaced with Dimitris Giannopoulos in the battle up ahead. I caught up and began lining up an overtake on Dimitris. He defended a lot better than I expected and we ended up going side by side all the way from turn 15 to the exit of turn 2, where he held onto 7th. I eventually went through on the inside of turn 14 after he made a mistake in turn 11. Next car up the road was my former teammate, Edijs Batars. I tried going up the inside of turn 15, but was surprised when he was still alongside on exit.
We were neck-and-neck down the main straight, with me just edging in front before turn 1. I was now behind Max and catching, but I had mere laps to go before my stop. I came in just 2 laps later, but I didn't realise that I had damage, so my stop was painfully slow. I ended up dropping to 9th, after being in what was effectively 5th. I now had my work cut out. Over the next few laps, I was bearing down on Joe Gillet in front. I had a few half-spins along the way, which didn't help. But then, just 3 laps from the end, I was alongside Joe, I clipped the grass at turn 13 and spun, fully, putting me out of contention for any higher than 9th.
So I finished in P9, my lowest finish of the season. Max finished in P5, making this the first in 7 straight races to not feature an Eight-Six car on the podium. The eventual winner was Jacob Reid, so very well done to him.
Thank you all for reading.
Thanks,
Peter J
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