AL2 From the Cockpit: Brazil....The Grand Finale

Here it is, the much anticipated account of the final act of the 2013/14 W2WR AL2 season. The battle for both championships came down to this one race, with 10 points separating myself and Con in the Drivers', and 15 between Toro Rosso and Red Bull in the Constructors'. Nobody knew what to expect at the legendary Interlagos Circuit.

For this grand prix, for only the third time this season, I was at home and using my home Wi-Fi, the same one that lagged and disconnected in China. Immediately this looked like an error of judgement, as 30 seconds into qualifying I disconnected. The restarted qualifying was held in the pouring rain, causing Barwell to jump for joy as he'd been asking for rain all week long. As has been the case in many a session though, it was a three-way duel for pole between the aforementioned Barwell, Con and myself. All of us set our best times in the dying seconds, with Barwell on Pole, Con second and me 3rd, contemplating what might have been had I not run out of fuel as I passed the pit entry.

In contrast to qualifying, the race was bone dry as Con had a poor start which allowed me to jump him into turn 1 and I quickly got ahead of Barwell into the lead. Con was chasing behind eagerly and the three of us started to pull out a gap.

A few laps in, there was the sound of some kafuffle. CHM claimed that Will had driven into him, as the latter dropped out of contention. As I have not seen footage, I can only guess that Will was distracted while reading the latest issue of 'Cosmopolitan' magazine and simply didn't know that the innocent victim CHM was there. The steward must have been equally distracted, possibly by his recent discovery of his right leg, as the incident was not reviewed.

Up front the battle raged on, with positions chopping and changing as we all tried different strategies and held the lead at various points, with nobody making a clear break for victory. The crucial moment came just after I made my final stop of the race. Con used the undercut to get past me, and it looked like a 2-way battle to the flag with barwell a short way behind on older tyres. A twist was added however, when we came up to lap Brit_Force. For some reason he was very slow through the long right-hander at Ferradura and Con ran into the back of him, spinning out of contention. I slowed down with the intention of letting him though, but he had been passed by Barwell. This put me on course to win the championship on races won. I pulled out a lead as Con desperately tried to regain 2nd place. For lap after lap he tried, but couldn't make the move stick. On lap 67 though, he finally broke the tenacious defence of Barwell and was though into 2nd place, and that's how it stayed to the flag, with me taking my 8th win of the season but Con taking the title by 3 points. Toro Rosso took the Constructors' crown with a 3rd and 4th placed finish for Barwell and S007PS, helped out by Will-I-Am_3001 being poor.

Awards:

DOTD: ConnorH1996
Narain Karthikeyan Cucumber of the Day: Brit_Force
Manchester United Leaky defence of the day: barwell74
Greece award for being Poor: Flying_Brit
Oscar Pistorious Award for being innocent until proven guilty: CHM1945