Season 30: Specials. Round 7: Brno (10 laps) (67 GT cars)

To Brno we go, and I notice that Greg has also picked the GT40 Mk2 for this race, and Axel has gone with the Mirage.  After grappling with the Mk 4 in practice I gave up on it when I couldn't stop it locking rears at the end of the long straights.  I prefer the feel of the mk2.  This is such a tough race track, it's relentless.  Laps are over four and a half minutes long, with a wide range of fast straights, hairpin bends, hills and fast hidden turns.  It's great.

Greg took pole, though.  By a long way too - about 5 seconds faster.  That got my attention, it seems Greg was really hooked up - able to brake later than I can, and his car looks much more stable.  I lined up second on the grid with some trepidation.  And then it all went my way.  As the flagman raised his flag (which I needed because until then I wasn't sure where he was), Greg took off - jumping the start.  He immediately stopped again but he'd lost the momentum and as the flag dropped we all swept past him.  Axel got a better start than I did and I followed him through the fast section of bends ok, then down the long straight I got a draft and went by on the inside - braking neatly into the slow turn ahead.  It kicked off behind me.  Carlos in the Ferrari outbraked Greg, and then himself into that same turn, locking his brakes and hitting Axel, spinning him around.  Greg tried to come through only to get tipped into a spin by Carlos.  Greg rejoined fourth behind Carlos and Doni.  Greg caught up to Carlos but the whole middle of the track is technical, and Carlos in the Ferrari was good enough to keep him at bay until they got onto the start/finish straight.  There was a moment as Carlos maybe blocked, but eventually Greg was through.

That put behind Doni, and again he had to spend a lap caught behind him, so as they wound up on the s/f straight again Greg was hot to get past.  He bombed down the inside line into the super fast and tricky turn one, but left his braking too late.  The back swung out and clouted a telegraph pole.  He tried to continue but he'd bent something, and needed to do a reset, then come around to do a penalty stop and go in the pits.  That put him far behind me.  I'd had a small silly spin on lap 3 when the car had got onto the grass under braking, but other than that it was under control.  The car had started to understeer as the tyres heated up, so it was a case of just driving carefully to the end.  As others made mistakes Greg got back up to second, and that's how we finished.

I'm still not thinking about the championship, the slope is too steep.  Just concentrate on the next one.

Mixed Mod - Drivers Championship (scoring)
Rank	Drivers	PP	Total	Vehicle
1	GregT (FT)		318.0	*Mixture*	50.0	50.0	43.0	50.0	50.0	32.0	43.0
2	Mark Jones (FT)		272.0	*Mixture*	43.0	43.0		43.0	43.0	50.0	50.0
3	Cookie (FT)		196.0	*Mixture*	37.0	28.0	32.0	28.0		43.0	28.0
4	Carlos Cendejas (FT)		181.0	*Mixture*		25.0	50.0	32.0		37.0	37.0
5	Doni Yourth (FT)		134.0	*Mixture*	28.0	37.0		37.0			32.0
6	AnGex (R1)		69.0	*Mixture*		32.0			37.0
7	Jani Posta (FT)		48.0	*Mixture*		23.0	25.0
8	Tom van Ostade (R1)		37.0	Lola T222			37.0
9	Walter Conn (R1)		32.0	Porsche 910	32.0
10	DLogan (FT)		28.0	Shadow MKll			28.0
	bagrupp (R1)
	Gareth (R1)
	Iestyn Davies (R1)
	Rainier (R1)