Zandvoort was always going to be a hard race, but as qualifying went underway the action was furious, myself managed to qualify 2nd with a decent lap, but still nowhere near the pace of Maarten Steverink. The battle for 3rd spot was extremely close with Herman just missing out on 3rd by .180th of a second. The race was rather uneventful for me, it was a light to flag second place all the way with a consistant pace but for some reason the car would not perform the lap times to stay in contention. Herman was battling for 3rd and unfortunately lost out some places with a couple of minor spins and finished 5th but with the 3rd fastest race lap in race 1!
Race 2 was an odd race, I decided my best chance of winning was to have a short stint of 6 laps to try and leapfrog Maarten and then settle in with a long stint for the remaining 20ish laps, however I got bogged down at the start and ended up losing ground to Maarten whilst battling with Jamsek who defended brilliantly for 2 laps until I managed to squeeze past and set off after Maarten, then someone joined the race which put Maarten back 20 seconds - somehow i had gotten the lead all of a sudden, but with an average pace before pitting I couldn't quite make that 20 seconds count, and after the pit stop the car had no grip I was able to regain the lead as Maarten made his stop, but it lasted for about a lap as I knew I could not keep him behind me and struggle for grip, so we had a battle into the first corner I held the inside line, and raced into the second corner but having the inside line for that corner would only of ended up with both of us in the tyres so I backed off slightly and let him pass around the outside, I tried to keep him in my sights but the pace was just not in the car and with no grip what so ever I tried to just secure second place and luckily I crept home in 2nd. The obvious pit strategy failed me but still a great result. Herman was again the 3rd fastest car on track at the very end of the race but finished the race in 4th, which marked a great debut at a very hard track to master, hopefully as a team we will build on both results and come back at the next race even stronger
With a high rate of disconnectors it was a hard race for everyone, but an extremely fun and challenging race, thanks to all that took part and I look forward to the next race in the Ftargets!
Results are here:
Race 1
gpcos_all-round_series_official_result_2011.04_zandvoort_gp_2011-10-27.pdf |
2gpcos_all-round_series_official_result_2011.04_zandvoort_gp_2011-10-27.pdf |