Qualifying
Improved on each of my hot laps in qualifying, which wasn't that hard since my first one was so bad. My third and final was actually the messiest of all, yet it ended up being the fastest. Had another half second in me, but that would have only been 1 place further up, so it was acceptable. 8th on the grid & starting on Super Soft.
Race
I thought I had a fairly good start off the line, but it seems everyone around me did too. Then while I thought I was making up places thanks to some turn 1 and 2 chaos which included some quick reactions to avoid contact, and a little brush with a Ferrari, when the dust settled, I saw I was still in 8th!
Toward the end of the opening lap, there was another incident heading into the last chicane involving Plasma, so I took 7th from him, but not without cost. I think the brake marker had been taken out, and I don't know if I missed my braking point, or if something happened to crizano ahead, but I hit the back of him and damaged my front wing.
Not having any clue as to optimal strategies or tire wear here, I decided to keep going to see how it felt, and perhaps to stick to my original plan of a one stop where I'd switch to the Medium compound. Plasma retook the position from me during this stint, but I otherwise held stationary.
For sure, the oversteer was bad, and it was costing me a lot of time, but it wasn't undrivable, so I decided to stick it out, and maybe just come in slightly earlier than the others. Strangely though, as my tires started to wear, the drivability never felt any worse - maybe the understeer from the front wing was masking the tire wear - so I just kept going and going, way after the other drivers who had started on Super Soft had pitted.
By now, I had it in my mind, that I could just go a bit further and fit the Soft tire instead of the Medium. I felt like this was my reward for having had to deal with the front wing damage up to this point! By lap 12, the tires actually still felt fine, but I decided this was probably optimal, and if I took the Super Soft 12 laps, I could take the Soft 15 laps to finish out the race.
After getting the new front wing and tires, I came out in 9th, just barely in front of Falco & Sucuri, and with Tron ahead. With 10 laps to go Tron pitted for Super Soft, and came out behind me. He also had a 3 second penalty. Doubted that I could keep him behind me, but if I could make that hard, and then finish within those 3 seconds, I'd be happy.
Moved up to 7th when crizano pitted, and then to 6th when my teammate had a spin. For me, this was helpful because iceman delayed Tron for a while. Found myself in 5th after Bobino pitted on lap 20. This was all unexpected as I thought everyone had finished their pit stops already.
By lap 22, Tron had finally found a way past iceman, and he was just a couple of seconds behind me. He was soon on my gearbox, but I kept him there for a couple of laps. On lap 24, I thought he had the inside line for 130R, so I tried to go extra wide to leave him space, but in doing so I ran off track, and started to feel the back end kick out. As soon as I had started to change my line for him, I realized he wasn't going for it after all, but too late by then. I corrected, came back across the track, and just barely avoided contact with the barrier, and amazingly, didn't lose much momentum. More amazingly, and thankfully, I didn't make contact with Tron, but I had lost the place and fallen back to 6th.
By this point, I had picked up a 3 second penalty myself, but Tron was up to 6 seconds of penalties. Unfortunately, I had iceman right behind me, so I lost all focus on the gap to Tron and just tried to ensure I could maintain 6th, which after an intense few laps to end the race, I did.
Summary
I was surprisingly happy with my pace here, and actually think I went for the right strategy too. Unfortunately, the lap 1 front wing damage and the mistake vs Tron are what defined my race. Not the end of the world if it only cost me one place, and it was still a super fun race once I got my front wing replaced. Was burned out with Suzuka for a while, but it feels great in F1 2018 with the setup I used.
See you in two weeks for CotA!