This was pretty close to a perfect race for me. I was happy with my qualifying time and to start from pole position. I also had a very good first lap, which gave me close to a two-second gap to the pair of ineX cars, but then it took many laps before I finally managed to shake them from my slipstream. After a while Laurent started dropping back a bit, and was passed by his team-mate. Dave proved very strong and consistent as always, and the gap remained at no more than three or four seconds for several laps.
I finally got my head down and drove a few seriousely fast laps and opened up the gap to over five seconds, which I felt was exactly what was needed to be sure to stay ahead through the pit-stop phase. However, around lap 30 something strange happened to my steering wheel, as the force feedback suddenly went very loose, and it took me a few laps to recover. At the same time I also got stuck for a lap behind a lapped car, which cost me a lot of time and cut the gap to Dave back down to around three seconds.
I pitted at the end of lap 33, which was one lap earlier than planned, because I was catching up to traffic. This didn't quite work out, as I exited the pits right behind another lapped car, who promptly spun in front of me in the slowest section of the track. I had to come to a complete standstill to avoid him, and lost at least two seconds. I was worried that this could lose me the lead, but as it turned out Dave had some problems of his own, so after everyone had stopped I was back in the lead with a five-second gap to Laurent, with Dave again trailing his team-mate. I had no trouble managing this gap to the finish, and felt confident enough to set my fastest lap of the race on the final lap.
I am happy and proud of this win, and the fact that I had zero incident points after 51 laps of the most difficult track in iRacing. I'm also very happy for my team-mate Fredrik Tackman to finish in the top five, which brings DMSv up into second place in the standings.
Congratulations to ineX for another fantastic team result with both cars on the podium!