USA G3: Birmingham

I was not expecting this. I was a bit off in practice, but I still managed to take the pole for the race. The race was great. The gap between Bekas and I was like an accordion. Got me worried from time to time and making stupid little mistakes. When we started to hit the lappers, I just got them in the best spots almost every time. Then I saw that Bekas was black flag because of a lap 1 incident. After that I had a nice lead after passing more cars. I was happy to see the tires didn't go away.

That was more fun than it had a right to be!

First time I've tried the Z3, and wasn't looking forward to it as bad as I am in the M3 in G2. But it was actually a nice car; super stable and forgiving. Very easy to drive, if not terribly fast. Tristan sure could get it around in a hurry though! ;-)

After qualifying way back I was expecting a slog, but made some changes to the car during the warmup session and they helped. First lap was carnage-filled, with a lot of the front running Vipers going off or out on their roofs. All the mayhem had me finishing the opening lap up five spots in 11th.

Made up ground from there until I caught up to Heinz and George who were dicing in 7th & 8th. Heinz made a few small mistakes that put me in position to try outbraking him into the hairpin, but I made a mess of it by not getting far enough over to the inside. Even though I braked a bit before he did, he hit the binders harder and my right front caught him in the left rear. End result was me drop kicking him (and me too) into the kitty litter. Sorry Heinz, entirely my fault!

Nothing to do but wait for him to get going, and as it was we only lost a couple of spots and about ten seconds of laptime. Plus some shiny BMW sheetmetal got un-shiny.

We got going again, and soon enough ended up in the same spot doing the same thing again. But this time it went as intended and only resulted in a pass, not a crash. Practice makes perfect...

Made up a bit more ground and was in 7th, then saw my teammate George go off from 6th after just rejoining from an off. Hated to see that, but figured he had damage or his tires were just steaming hot and gripless from the first off.

Quickly became obvious that I wasn't going any further up the order unless someone ahead came to grief, so I settled into protect mode and rode it out. Even though it lost some grip, the car held its balance all the way through on soft/med. A nice car to drive; too bad it sounds like cows farting! ;-)

Apologies again to Heinz for the blunder; hope your car wasn't too damaged from that off.

Well I have to say this race was pretty boring. I had a good start from 5th, but no better that anyone else's. Someone went off in T1 and I was in 4th until Tristan made a Hail Mary pass around the outside coming down into the "corkscrew". I was nice to him and gave it too him without too much fuss. He drove off and put it out about 2.5 seconds and I went into cruise mode to make sure I didn't spin this nutty car. It was getting about that time to go as fast as I could, when I came up on a lapped car that put me into a very weird spot on the track and I spun. Damn. Oh well, get back on and go for it. I was just catching Les when the race ended. Top 5 is OK and I'm not too depressed because that just means I might not be in the top 5 for the next race :P No more Bimmer!

No worries Steve, i think i lost just 1 place i should have had in the end , ryan robbins, i just couldnt catch up to him again!.. sufferring a bit of whiplash from that though :P glad you did a better job of it second time round..

Yeah, i hate this z3m, its unpredictable, slow, and i hate guessing with cars...

I had some nice racing with George in the early part, and upset steve was allowed the chance to catch up to me while i was battling..

congrats anyway to podium