Congrats Justin on the big win! Great run.

All week long on I had no problem at all running softs for 14 laps and every lap would be a mid to very low 31's. It was easy actually. I even pushed very hard on my first lap of a handful of stints in practice last night and came within a few thousands of a 30 each time.

What was so strange about today's race was that I thought I would run a few 32's (instead of trying for a 30!) to start the race (which would match Justin's early stint practice pace from last night) and that would ensure the tires would be great for the remainder of my first stint. Instead, the car felt sluggish and I didn't even get in the 31's (31.8) until lap 9. Around the start of lap 12 my tires started to die. They almost popped on lap 13, and I ran a 42 trying to get to the pits. Very bizarre, because they should of easily lasted 15.

After the race I said that I thought the reason the tires went bad was because Justin was fairly close behind me for most of the first stint, and there was more aero loss and more tire scrub than I was aware of. Looking at the replay though, he wasn't under my wing at all really, and was far enough back that it shouldn't have had hurt my tires. If anything, I'd expect him to understeer and suffer wiith tire wear while trailing me.

So anyway, I had to add another stop and serve a drive through (12 extra seconds) for speeding on pit lane (again!). Along with the 10 seconds lost on my in lap, I had no shot at all to catch Tim or Justin even though it was stil early. Even though I ran very hard and kind of ragged in each of the remaining stints, tire wear wasn't an issue, so I am really, really baffled by what happened today. Never experienced this before in all the races I've run.

Another really bad start to another season. 6 pointd in two races despite my pace in both.