Dropped in as it was far too cold outside to do anything else today!

quickly got to the pace I had when we were last here but with better tyre wear.

Quali:: looped it when i had track position coming out of the pits, smooooooth. Managed to get myself some space and hit a 26, which I then improved on slightly which was good enough for pole.

Race: got a poor start and Rob had the edge coming to T1 but I had the inside and managed to squeeze through. Rob then had the run down to the chicane and we went through that side by side! pretty epic. I came out ahead which was useful to me as I wouldn't be fighting Rob very hard due to his championship hopes. Settled in to a pace that wouldn't ruin the tyres which also was inching out the gap to Rob. Turned out he went for a 2 stop which gave me some breathing room and from then on it was keeping it steady and not doing anything silly when lapping traffic, who I must say all behaved rather well.

A fairly lonely one in the end for me! but it was my 50th event here and I sealed it with a win, which was nice!

Well that was a long haul! About twice the length I've ever done before.

Didn't do much practice as I'd had a race here elsewhere recently but using the soft tyres. Just did an hour or so to get to grips with the tyres and some quali runs.

Didn't hit a good quali lap at all. I think I would have caught traffic on my 2nd flying lap and backed out of it and from then on just failed to hook a lap up, almost half a second shy of what I knew I could do but good enough for front row still.

Race:
Got a good jump off the line and had the lead. I was just pacing myself and taking it quite easy with Pat in just behind. Had it under control until I misjudged how close he was coming on to the straight and it meant he had the tow for a run. Having never raced with him before when he showed his nose towards the inside I wasn't sure if he was going to try something or not and in making sure I left room I ran wide at the chase but managed to avoid most the gravel and got going again about 5 seconds shy. Started to up the pace slightly and was edging the gap back when we started catching traffic and although everyone was helpful I just seemed to catch people in the wrong places and all the time I'd gained was gone again. Settled in for the long haul, pitted a bit earlier and the gap was down to about 2 seconds after the first stops. Few mistakes later and catching backmarkers at tricky places and the gap was about 10 seconds. Then I'm not sure whether it was an accident or a Disconnect but Pat was gone and I was suddenly very lonely. Decided to make it more interesting by seeing how much fuel I could save, which was safer than trying to beat fastest lap...which I did..then settled in a spent most the remaining time cruising safely. Near the end this wasn't working for me as concentration started to go so after my last stop I decided to go back to normal pace and go for the fastest lap...made sure I still was safe through the race ending corners and pushed the rest of the lap and it was enough to sneak it by a tenth.
Not long after that I saw Ken in the gravel and spent the next few laps willing him on! good commitment there.

Think it would have been a very interesting race if Ross didn't get disconnected after Warm-up and Pat hadn't had issues. A rather lucky win!

Well done to all that conquered the mountain.