And what a way to get it..at my home track in the F1 Pro series! albeit it with more than a small slice of luck.

Having not even had a podium away from touring cars it felt great to cross that line taking not only a podium but a win! It also felt good to repay Steve for the faith and support he'd given recently and the amount of practice we did for this event was great.

On to the race, I was more prepared than ever for this race and it showed. Pace and consistency were bang on and I was very sure of my race strategy.

Quali was going to be important as it was proving extremely hard to work a pass round Silverstone and I was reasonably pleased with putting the car 5th on the grid, 0.7 off of pole considering the hard tyres. Steve did a great job and slotted it in 7th right behind.

The race...got a really good initial getaway but had to life off as Ryan ahead bogged down which meant there was a little bit of chaos as I got hung out wide at T1, praying no one that was flying across wide from the inside collected me. Having survived that I settled in on the back of the lead group for the first few laps as I waited for the tyres to come in and I knew they should be the quickest option after 5/6 laps. For most of the first stint it was the most fun I've had in an F1 race. A great 5 car battle over 2nd place for a long period with lots of really close but careful racing definitely get the concentration at a peak!
The 2 stoppers on softs pitted but I was still stuck on Ryans gearbox as his mediums had been slower for a considerable amount of time I just couldn't follow close enough to make an easy pass. Tristan caught and passed us but then after a couple of laps his tyres started to slow and the gap held at a few seconds! Sneaked past Ryan just before he pitted which put me briefly in to 2nd...got confused and pitted 3 laps earlier than I meant to but I knew the tyres would still easily go to the end so this wasn't too much bother! Came out in 4th...just behind Ryan again, d'oh!
A lap later I was on his gearbox again! Not long after I had a surprise when we passed a beached Tristan! At this point a podium became a real possibility but with Tim behind I knew I needed to get ahead of Ryan again and stretch my legs, also to try and get the gap down to Darren. Managed to make what felt like a really nice move stick up the inside in to T3 and hold off Ryan attempting to fight back 2 corners later. I then settled in to my pace and took a few tenths out of Darren in the next few sectors..next thing I know there's a yellow flag and Steve comes over the radio again with news Darren has spun!..and is also stuck. So I inherited the lead...now I knew I didn't have to stop again and in all likelihood everyone behind me did and had to make sure no "YOU CAN WIN THIS ARRRRGH" thoughts distracted me to I settled in to a calm pace I could run without making any mistakes..this was enough to slightly gap Ryan and maintain the gap between 2-3 seconds before he charged hard as he was about to pit.
Once he pitted I knew he needed more than a second a lap on me and that I could run harder if need be, his first lap out he took 1.5 seconds so I upped the pace just a tad and from then on it was just under a second until I monitored the gap down to him needed over 2 seconds a lap where I really backed it down and avoided the evil curbs to bring her home.
Delighted didn't even come close to how I felt when I crossed the line...the only problem is it proves that amount of practice paid off and now I'm going to have to match it every time!

Extremely unlucky for Darren and Tristan getting stuck in the sand as I think I'd lost too much time in traffic to challenge them on my strategy but I'll gladly take my win!

Thanks a lot to Steve for all the practice work he put in with me..he even backed up the win by winning his race on Sunday to make it 2 Arunam wins in the weekend!