I'm not a Timothy, but...
It was a good battle. I was out qualified by 0.02 and it is next to impossible to pass. I was basically staying in his draft and waiting for a mistake. DrWatson made one, but I could only get to his bumper. Then the dirty air made me drop back to about 0.75 behind. I was going to short pit, but he "very" short pitted so that was out. I ended up "long" pitting hoping he would get behind traffic or if I could catch him I'd have better tires. That was a mistake. I came out about 5 second behind And really couldn't make much of a dent... I started closing once and got in a rhythm, but then we lapped some traffic and all gains were lost. I tried to put pressure, but DrWatson never cracked.
Good win Tim!
PS> And we didn't get "Virtually" lapped by Twissy! See:
Hey, dropping less than 1s per lap behind Twissy is better than I hoped. And I am technically a Timothy.
I was pretty pleased, had a good race with very little drama.
In qualifying we really only got 1-shot since the tires took 2 laps to get sticky, was pretty surprised to hold onto pole TBH. I had a decent s1 but got on it too early in the loop and had to lift late to stop from under-steering off the exit. Ended up costing about 2-tenths but I was able to put in a solid s3 to keep it in the healthy 17 window and on the happy side of the razor blade finish.
In the first few laps I pushed pretty hard and managed to carve out a nice 2s gap which stayed pretty consistent for a while until somewhere around 14 when the fronts started to wear down and I made the most painful "small mistake" possible for this track. Understeered wide in the last corner and dropped the outside 2 wheels in the lawn... totally killed my speed and clicked in a 1:19 completely erasing my lead. Wasn't able to make any ground, just keeping enough speed in the right places to make sure Tim didn't have an opening to challenge. But with the draft on the main straight I knew there wasn't any hope of getting my lead back without taking some risks. The tires were looking like they'd be good for 25+... So I pit mega-early to try and break draft and possibly get some tow off the pack before they took stops.
Didn't get as lucky as I hoped. As I caught cars on the end of my out-lap they were peeling off into the pits, so I didn't get any tow. Then the next lap I caught more cars just as they peeled into the pits. But I did get a nice healthy gap on Tim back as I was crossing the line and getting a tug from MadMax just as the traffic cone was coming down off the jacks. Must have been a good 5s of cushion. As I closed in and the laps went by it became apparent that MadMax wasn't going to pit so I setup a pass coming out of the s2 hairpin and into s3. My tires were 20 laps newer so he wasn't able to battle for it, though he did surprise me by staying staying next to me longer than expected and I clipped is front bumper when I'd though I was clear... my bad. But I got the worst of it and that lap ended up being a dismal 19 due to the drift I put myself into and lower cornering speeds from being side-by-side.
Got away pretty easily after that and started clicking off lots of high 17s until I started seeing Tim behind me clear of MadMax. At that point the gap was a nice 4.5s so I just tried to stay consistent and manage the gap.. any time he took a bite out of it I'd push a bit to keep it around 3.5s. During that last 10 or so we only hit one lap car and he didn't slow us at all... So that's pretty much how it ended.
Lots of pressure all race, but thankfully I only made one costly mistake and kept everything in the mid-17 to mid-18 range for most of the run. GR everyone. 👍
had some free time, so I put together the USA race:
http://youtu.be/g5DWtKQhq94&hd=1
Pretty good race going on behind WRP and I ... looks like RPH did a great job. 👍
