Q: P8
Never had decent qualifying pace in this game so I wasn't expecting a whole lot differently from this week. Got my time up to fourth for a little bit but got dropped from there.
R: P3
The lights went out and I "stalled" the car because I let off the clutch just a bit too early without enough throttle, and that didn't drop me back too badly. After just narrowly avoiding a few incidents into turns 3 and 4, I found myself at the very back of the point scoring positions. My race engineer suggested that I go from softs to mediums to hards, so I went with it since I'm sure he knew better than I did. After my good, productive stint on the mediums, I went in for the hards a couple laps after the game suggested, and it paid off. As I pulled into my pit box, the safety car came out. I thought to myself, "This is finally my big break." After catching up to the queue, which was chaos, I made it up to fourth. Once the safety car went in, I drove on rails to avoid getting damage from passing the cars who were positionally behind me, but literally in front of me. I passed Brian on the green flag for third, and matched Alonso's pace, both of us on hards, until the second safety car. He dove in for softs, which was questionable at the time, but that put me in second right behind Mebbe. I was pretty excited for my first podium finish since, coincidentally, Spain of last season. When the green flag flew again, I knew Mebbe was going to pull away, but also I knew that the hard charging Dubzzy was behind me on mediums. Made me nervous considering I was still on hards, but I wasn't worried. I reminded myself that I created a gap between him and I during the stint before the second safety car, so I knew I'd be okay. Going into the first corner, he dive bombs me from out of nowhere. We touch, but I maintain the position. From there it was just trying to maintain the gap between him and I as Mebbe was in a league of his own. To summarize the rest, Alonso pulled off his final stint to take second place from me going into turn 1 on the final lap. I was more than happy with third.