Second qualifying I had to make up some lost ground on Dias and make some set up changes that would help the car in producing a better lap time. From the lack of practice time from overheating difficulties I couldn’t set the car up as quickly as I would have liked. Going into second quali I was reasonably confident that the changes made would help but after 5 laps I soon realised that the car wasn’t quite the balance I would have liked.
I kept pushing to try and get a better time out of the car but after 8 laps this was not possible. The overheating problems had not seemed to stop which also helped in making my job more difficult. I ended up qualifying 2nd in the national class again to Mr Dias this time a dismal 0.6 of a second off and 16th overall.
After many hours of talking with my engineer, from looking into the existing handling issues we tried another couple adjustments on the car in hope of making up some lost ground. After warming my tyres up for the race I prepared myself for a decent start which I succeeded in doing, it was a great shame that I managed to get caught up in the first of many spins and collisions that I had to avoid, this put me way back in the order to 4th place and 20 seconds behind Dias.
I had to make up lots of lost ground and push like crazy to try and catch up. Other cars in the way were the first obstacle I had to overcome and after overtaking 4 of the 5 cars in between myself and Dias I went on a mission to try and set fastest lap and catch up to the back of Gabriel.
After putting down very competitive lap times which at the time was very similar to the international cars I managed to catch up Dias by 0.7 a lap. As the laps went down I still kept pushing but to not luck in the end, the deficit was too great and even though my tyres had seen the best of them I managed to get within 0.1 of a second of the fastest lap.
I had to settle for 2nd place again which in the scheme of things still seemed fairly promising with only 4 more races left and now a points difference of 53 in the lead, I currently have a big advantage in points and which at the end of the day will win the championship for me as long as I keep my head cool and my focus high which I intend to do.
Off to the Algarve next where I intend to finish the championship off and in style. After a few disappointing results I am more than ever focused and wanting to win and the Algarve is the place to do it.
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