Race two. I finished, P13, a lap down. The lap time had nothing to do with where it ended up.
The track
Hot and greasy. 25.8°C surface against 19.8°C air, six degrees of solar load on the tarmac. The week's fast sessions ran 21 to 24°C. A hotter slick gives up grip, and the car moved in places it doesn't on a cool track. The slide was real, not nerves.
The pace
- Best lap: 1:36.61.
- Eleven clean laps: mean 1:37.14, spread 0.39s.
The tightest race stint I'd put together, eleven green laps inside four tenths on a surface losing grip. About two seconds off my best lap of the week (1:34.43), which is what a hot track, race fuel, and traffic cost. For scale, the race was won on a 1:36.6 average, per the results, and my best lap was 1:36.61. The pace was at the front. The result wasn't.
Where it went
Two cockpit mistakes, no lap time involved:
- I started the race on qualifying fuel. That forced a stop that was never
in the plan.
- I sped in the pit lane on the way in. Forty seconds, served.
That's the lap down. Not a corner, not a tire. A fuel screen and a pit limiter.
What I'm taking from it
The lap-one rule held. I cleared the opening lap, made the passes, and was still running. The new line on the checklist is the cockpit, not the corner: fuel set for the session before the green, and the limiter honored on entry. Both become jobs for the race engineer, a grid fuel check and a pit-speed warning. The pace was never the limiter that night. The checklist was.