Not sure why, disconnected on my out lap from the pits.
How were your tyres? I was hoping to be able to use superior tyre wear to my advantage to close the gap down. I expected the Impreza to have the pace on the Celica over one lap, but perhaps not over the course of a stint. In the last 2-3 laps of my stint I was closing the gap (not including your mistake at the last hairpin), but if you'd not made that mistake, the gap would still have been 6-7 seconds over 15 laps, and I wasn't exactly cruising behind you.
I could perhaps have gone on to do a 1-stop but it would have left me with very poor tyres towards the end of each stint so I thought to 2-stop would keep things simple and might be quicker anyway. When I pitted I still had just over 1/2 of my tyre left actually but I'm guessing the Impreza was much worse for wear?
Shame to disconnect anyway; although you and I were on our own on the track, it was at least quite intense to keep up a good pace and have a battle from distance anyway. Did you pit the lap after me, or later? Would have loved to see how close we would have been at the pit exit! I came out just behind Paul and leeched off his slipstream for the first half of my out lap, so was going pretty well!
The tyres were not too bad actually. The Subaru's front tyres like to wear down quickly, the rears are not a problem. Heck, they hardly get warm
. So I used brake balance 0/10. Surprisingly it did not make the car too weird, but helped a great deal with wear, and with turn-in as a bonus.
I could start out with 25-26's and stay within 27-28's after 15-17 laps. Then it would quickly get much worse, when the fronts wear below half.
I tested a 25 lap stint and got well into the 30's, so a 1-stopper would have been a complete disaster for me. A stop is only around 30 secs, and they are quickly earned with those times. I even considered 3 stops but decided on 2; 16+16+16 laps straight. But I had no idea about other cars' tyre wear.
I was quite nervous in first stint, I got a gap quickly but then you got more up to speed, gap stopped growing and I feared it was tipping over. Maybe your tyres could last much longer, and if you did a 1-stopper how would the 6-7s over 12-14 (?) laps hold up? And while I had those thoughts I forgot to brake properly at the last corner
- and then you started gaining more...
good pressure you put on, I admit I was relieved when I saw you were at least out for 2 stops.
That was on lap 15 I think, and I pitted on lap 17, you could surely have closed those few seconds (even more so with a little buddy help from Paul
). What shame you disappeared
I got out between hellboy and Paginas, but they had not pitted yet, so I got back in front after a while. Funnily on my second stop I again got out right in front of Paginas, I speeded and he was just at a distance where it did not seem to slow him down, hope it was ok.
The rest of the race was rather uneventful. No more big mistakes, no jumping lag cars like last week. And the guys I lapped were very kind to let me pass, almost too much so, one guy (forgot who sorry) even put himself in the sand.
Nepalii, Tony, Tony Jnr....
..... youve been warned
.
He blew up before me. Actually, i was already blown up earlier today before the race started. 
.
