Got what I hoped for result wise, but it seemed a million miles away after the first lap.
Qualy: 19th - Chose to start at the back as I wasn't to confident at this track.
Race: 7th - Had a ok start but unfortunately just before turn 2 the right side of my front wing got badly damaged through no fault of my own, I was making my way around the spun out
@blake300892 when
@pete day also taking avoiding action of blake, either spun or made contact with someone else which sent him sideways into me, it looked like from my view he T-boned me into my sidepod, but the game decided he had hit my front wing
, I suppose I'm lucky in a way that I didn't lose a wheel instead but it really affected my race. I tried for half a lap to race close to normal speeds but it was impossible so I had to pit at the end of lap 1, the thing is though at the time I wasn't angry or annoyed at what happened, I don't blame anyone it was just one of those deals I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Anyway after I exited the pits I was down in 18th and had a big gap to the cars in front, I now thought of the race as a TT and would see if I could salvage anything from it, so I had a pretty lonely race in general.
After many laps just setting decent laps I kept passing people who were in the pit lane, it got to lap 9 when I caught
@Kris Banucha for my first actual battle for position he managed to hold me off at first but a lap later I got a good run on him down the hangar straight and with the aid of DRS I completed the pass.
After that I pulled a bit of a gap to him and by lap 12 I had but got up to 8th due to more pitting but my mediums were getting quite worn so I pitted and put Hards on to get to the end.
I came out in 15th just behind
@Ben hughes and had my only other battle for position with him however I passed him on the same lap and same place as I passed Kris.
I then went back into TT mode and started keeping an eye on the track map, after several laps a few people in front had pitted and I was promoted to 11th, I started to think that I could maybe get points now but I had a bit of a gap to 10th, however out of the blue it came up that
@Wimstradamus had been dq'ed (sadly for him) so his misfortune moved me into 10th then
@Defiant195 pitted at lap 19 (I think) and I jumped him as well.
I thought more in front might pit but after when it got to the end of lap 21 I realised that everyone in front of me had made there stops so I turned my attention on 8th and
@syluntbob68 who was around 10 seconds clear, I knew realistically there was no way I could catch him but as I had no time penalties I took a leaf out of what I did at Russia and gave myself the target of getting to within 3 seconds at the end incase he had time penalties.
Lap 22 & 23 I took a bit of time out of him but I made proper inroads the last 3 laps, 7 seconds down to 5.6 then down to 4.6 and with a great last lap I finished within 3 seconds. However it turned out he had 9 seconds of pens but what was even more surprising I jumped
@Philip_66 as well so I ended up a net 7th.
Looking back to end up getting solid points after the dire situation I found myself in after lap 1 is very satisfying, though because of that extra stop I lost around 35-40 seconds but after looking at the results even if I had a clean race I would be finishing only 5th at best (top 4 covered by 13 seconds) so I haven't really lost out to much all things considered. So a good way to end the year and I achieved what I had hoped for before the race.
Anyway huge congrats to
@dFlashAshb on a good win you were owed a good result after Austria and you got it, big well done to the podium finishers and
@chris130256 who finished 4th all good drives, well done to the other point scorers and finishers.
Lastly special mention for
@Kris Banucha congrats on breaking your points scoring duck hopefully first of many.
Oh yeah
@YabbaTheHutt its not important right now, but the constructors table might be wrong?
Don't know if your counting points from previous drivers, if you ain't Haas and Manor shouldn't have over 100 points, my team Toro Rosso should have a few points less as well.
