ARI Fun Race #12 Palm Beach

[Lecram]

Qualify:

Qualify went very smooth for me, I set a time similar to my F3-pb here, quite confident it would be fast enough for pole.

As stated earlier by Gorka, pole is good if you want the inside line into the first corner but not so good if you want to get away from the start faster than the 2nd placed driver. I've stopped blaming my bad starts solely to myself, it's also the non-rubbered part of the track that plays a part in there. :-\

So prior to qualifying, I was pretty early on the server and drove about 40 laps, hoping I would get pole and therefore, each practice lap I crossed finish line at the left instead of the race-line. From what I could see it didn't help me much in terms of seeing a rubbered groove appear there.

Race 1:

So knowing all this, I tried my best to avoid wheelspin at the start but it still seemed too much as Gorka passed me and I had to let go first place entering the first corner. I stayed close to Gorka, he drove in the middle of the backstraight the first laps and I was hoping he would do that too if I had a good enough slipstream to get alongside. My final gear was not really setup for slipstream, it was long enough for solo-laps but I missed a bit topspeed when behind someone. After a couple of laps I was able to pull aside Gorka at his left on the backstraight. Knowing I had the rubbered line and knowing Gorka would have a hard time on the green part, I could brake quite late and pass him on the outside.

From there-on I tried to get away and that worked out very well, finishing 1st.


Race 2:

Oops, the rubber had dissapeared. Yeah, that explains why my start was better than the one from the first race and so I entered turn one in first place. Nik Babin showed great pace in the first race and I had him almost on my tail for quite some time. I was still in cruising mode which I got used to in the last part of race one but that wasn't enough to keep Nik off my back so I had to push a little more. Until the point where I think Nik gave up or had a battle with Gorka, I dunno, I got more and more breathing space so 1st again


Race 3:


Starting from the last position on the grid, I took it very easy the first laps. A lot of drivers went off track so that was easy until I was at the rear of Paul Ceglia. It was soon clear he wouldn't let me pass easily and it was then, I really regretted not setting my final gear one click longer cause it was quite hard to get aside of him at the backstretch. So I tried to make him nervous by staying as close as possible through corners and braking without crashing in to him, meanwhile seeing the others run away in the distance. Luckily, after some laps, Paul made a mistake in the first chicane and got onto the grass exiting so that made the way clear for me to catch David Cruickshank and Nik Babin who were in the lead, 3 or 4 seconds ahead at that point. At first I made some mistakes here and there and I was thinking: 'well they sure could be gaining on me while slipstreaming what I gained to them by pushing it under braking and in the corners so I may never get any closer', but I managed to drive some quick laps and I was able to catch them finally, while they were having a great battle from the way it looked.
A bit too much of a battle at the end so it turned out because they touched each other while entering the final corners of the track and though not easy, I managed to avoid them and while Nik waited for David to get going again, I was driving in first place again. I almost couldn't believe it! Again I had to push to get a gap between me and those slipstreaming cars behind me but for the 3rd time this evening I got to enjoy the top of the podium! Very happy with my first hattrick here at ARI. (first ever? probably not )


Thanks a lot all and as I said many times before, a big thanks to the SR4L team, great effort by you guys and , not only because of my results till now, a joy to spend time with you all!