IDM 7 Red Bull Ring

Back to Austria was the order of the day for race number 7 in the IDM series.

Red Bull ring (formerly known as A1 ring) is an old track located in Spielberg Austria and has a very long history, specially in car racing.
It was sold to Red Bull in 2004 and after that there was a long political and financial fight which even the goverment was involved, but now
it`s back on the road of being a world class motorsport arena once again.
Our racing weekend got on the way in typical form, meaning first set of free practise was to happen in friday afternoon and second session few hours later.
Track was new to most  cup riders so everyone had to get grips with the new circuit.
My sessions went pretty well and got up to speed pretty well, so there was nothing much to do, but to get ready for saturday morning qualifying.
First QP session went nicely, but after fighting with top-10 place I lost that on the dying moments and had to settle for 11th place.
For second session we again changed the rear tire during pit-stop and managed to better my first qualifying time quite a bit, but still had to settle for 12th starting place.
I was not too upset with that, since the time differences were again very, very small.
For Sundays race I had a plan to use different gear for corner number two, since at the very end of qualifying I suddenly started to think about my gear selection through there and after a coversation with Tatu Lauslehto my idea was confirmed to be right one.
I was bit annoyed with myself, since I realized after that, a better lap time would have been on my grasp had I undestood the gear thing earlier.
Sunday morning race got underway in brilliant sunshine (that actually had lasted through whole weekend) and I got a pretty decent start and that crusial first corner.
However the story of the day soon was revealled to me in brutal way, on the first long straight (this particular track has tree long straights)
as the smaller sized riders who qualifyind behind me, came flying past!
I was powerless to make up the speed difference and really had to push pretty hard on the brakes to keep up with them.
I did some good laptimes during the process, but knew that this was going to be a struggle, because the corner`s leading to long straights are so tight
one can`t really make up time in them to help with acceleration.
Around lap 9 I did however catch one lighter rider (Manou Antweiller) and just as I was thinking the plan to pass him, I saw on the corner of my eye
that someone had ridden of the track and now was in a big hurry to make it back in front of us.
This hurry led him to gas the yamaha too hard while he was still on the slippery green stuff that circules the edge of the track and he highsided just in front of us.
This naturally led me and Manou in serious situation trying to avoid crashed rider and his bike.
We both somehow managed to do this, but I had a real close shave and now was heading towards the fence myself!
Luckily for us the off-track area was also asfalt, so I managed to slow down enough and head back to track, only to discover that Manou got of easier and that riders behind us took advantage of the situation.
After that I got real going on, trying to catch them again and over cooked second to last corner and lost another place.
This however spurred me on again and I actually managed to pass few riders during those last 3 laps, but then run out of time. So after action packed race I was 14th.   
Overall, the weekend was good and most positive thing was getting closer to the front, lap time vise.

Results at:http://yamaha-cup.de/index.cgi?x=X&y=X&z=20110825-7381286-2125442179&a=fahrer&b=start&h=menuTop