After two thirty-minute practice sessions the car was pretty much set up to how I would like, just making a few minor tweaks for the qualifying session upcoming later that day.
I qualified 2nd national for the first race which was only one row behind Gabriel Dias (my main competitor). Unfortunately I did not get the best out of the car and did not hook all of my best sectors up which would have put me on the same sort of pace as Gabriel or even faster but due to yellow flags at the last corner this was made more difficult.
Going into the first race I was optimistic about a decent result as I could show the pace on a longer run and knew I had a more consistent car than Gabriel. The conditions were pretty decent and reasonably warm, this meant warming the tyres up wasn’t much of an issue. Coming onto the grid I made sure I had a few practice starts in the plan to get into 1st place by the first corner with a good start.
After the lights went out I managed to get away very well and did end up getting into first place by the first corner and overtaking 3 cars by the 2nd corner. After a good exit I managed to get a good slipstream down the back straight and succeeded in getting up a few more places before the main hairpin down the straight. Under the braking zone I saw in my peripheral vision a load of smoke and three cars spinning, coming down the inside which I narrowly avoided and putting me back many places from this.
After chasing back down Gabriel for 1st place I gained position only to lose it again the next lap by a mistake on my behalf. While battling closely I saw a chance to regain track position into the stadium complex, Gabriel seemed to have missed a gear in which I went down the inside only to find Gabriel turning into me and having contact which spun me into the gravel. Unfortunately I could not get restarted and that was the end of the race for me.
While walking to the barrier I also saw Gabriel had stopped – I found out later that he had a differential problem and he was slowing down out of the previous corner due to that. Gabriel apologised for his lack of awareness, which I accepted and did realise he turned into me without seeing me there.
After that whole race I still managed to pull an extra point out on him from my fastest lap so some good came out of the race!
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