We’re back where it all began. Back in 2019, I made my automobile racing debut at this very circuit, Estoril. The flight into Lisboa, the drive to the circuit, and walking through the paddock with a lanyard labeled “DRIVER” was a very proud moment for me. And to close off my first race with a podium finish made it a weekend that I’ll never forget. And here we are again, two years later, walking through the same paddock, in the lead of the championship heading into the final round.
We had a comfortable lead heading into this round, and the whole team was feeling very confident. Estoril is Miguel’s home track, Mathis has no trouble getting up to speed, and I had already driven this track in the past. All we had to do was finish the weekend with all four wheels on the car and we’d be champions.
Friday afternoon, finally time to get back behind the wheel. On my first few laps in free practice, I felt very comfortable and familiar with the circuit. I quickly found a rhythm and settled into it, which I shouldn’t have done. I went out with the idea that we just had to finish the weekend, instead of pushing harder and finding the limits of the car and the circuit. I got out of the car knowing that I could have and should have gone quicker.
I shifted my mindset for the night session. But before we even got to put a wheel on track, the circuit was closed for barrier repairs after a big accident earlier that afternoon. That meant that there was only going to be a single session left before qualifying. We were in a tricky place since we were struggling with rear-end instability on the exit of low-speed corners, and it was costing us performance. We didn’t have much time to figure out a solution before heading into qualifying.
Saturday, qualifying. From the start of the session, I felt much more confident with the balance of the car, especially on fresh tires. The car made me feel like I could brake later and carry more entry speed without feeling like the car would over-rotate. It even made me get a bit too greedy in sector 1. In the end, I was able to get everything together and set the fastest lap of my session. Mathis and Miguel did their part as well, putting us on pole position for Sunday’s race.
Sunday, race day. Miguel just took off and kept on gapping the rest of the field, until he built up a lead of over 10 seconds. But then, one of the CN prototypes lost control going into turn 1 and smashed into the barrier on the inside of the corner, bringing out the safety car. We jumped on the opportunity to serve as many of the 3 mandatory pit stops as we could since we wouldn’t lose as much time as if we were under green flag racing.
Race control closed the main straight and made all cars pass through the pitlane to bypass turn one, to speed up the recovery of the stricken prototype and allow the marshalls to clean up all of the debris that was scattered across the track. But unfortunately, Miguel missed the pit entry and had to drive down the straight. And the message you never want to see displayed on the timing screens appeared:
“Car number 88 under investigation.”
Meanwhile, I was sitting in the pitlane with all my gear on, zoned out and ready to go, completely unaware of what had just happened. Miguel came into the box and handed the car over to me. I went straight to the refueling zone and then joined the track. But as soon as I reached sector 2, I got a message on the radio telling me to box (“BOX” is radio language for “come into the pits”). As soon as I stopped the car in front of our garage, I opened the radio and asked why. Jordi, my race engineer, replied that we had to serve a 10-minute stop-and-go penalty for the safety car infringement. I couldn’t believe it. We did everything we needed strategically to stay in the lead of the race. And now our chance was blown. We could have made it five wins out of five this season. And now it was over. Now I’d have to sit here and wait for 10 minutes. I was yelling and smashing the wheel with my fists. I can’t put into words what I was feeling at that moment. I was furious, disgusted. I couldn’t help but scream and smash the wheel with my fists. After sitting there for a while, I realized that staying angry wasn’t going to change the outcome of the race. It could only make it worse.
I looked to my right, and saw Julien, our Team Manager, holding up a stopwatch with the time left on it. Six minutes. That’s enough to challenge him to a game of rock-paper-scissors, I thought. I gestured rock-paper-scissors at him, and he just looked at me and shook his head. I gestured again. He stared blankly at me and then shrugged his shoulders; game on. I lost 2-1. Anyway, after a few more rounds and some banter over the radio, it was time to get going again.
I knew that we wouldn’t be able to make up the time we lost, but I felt like we could still prove that we had the fastest car out there. I started off slow, easily building up the pace. Lap after lap I was braking later and later, forcing the car to rotate earlier and earlier getting on the power sooner and harder. The laps just kept on coming and going. The car was a bit less aggressive than in qualifying, so I was comfortable all the way through. I found my rhythm and was able to maintain it all the way to the end of my stint. Mathis jumped in after me. As soon as I climbed out of the car and saw the timing screens again, I remembered that we were a far way down. But the disappointment was being replaced with excitement. Every lap we were getting one lap closer to clinching our second overall UCS championship win. Every minute seemed to be getting longer and longer the closer we came to the end of the race. And then finally, Mathis crossed the line in P3, clinching the title and closing our 2021 season.
2x Ultimate Cup Series Champions. I like the sound of that.
This season has been absolutely amazing. I’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time behind the scenes with the Team, and the amount of effort that they’ve been putting into this season has been immense. I can’t thank them enough, every single guy and gal over at Team Virage, without you it would never have been possible. Love you <3
2022, here we come.
