Round 7 - XXIX Gran Premio d'Italia [Jul 24th]

Well, that was quite surprising. I had no idea that a one-off car may be this competetive. I was ignorant enough to think that "picollo" = small = some kind of downsized engine or whatever  I came back from vacation in the late afternoon, put my 15 inch wooden wheel on, switched the shifter from sequential to gated mode and went straight to qualifying. P5 was nice, but I still didn't see the potential of this little rocket. I had a decent start and moved up to P3, right behind two Ferraris. Suddenly, there were only the three of us battling at the front and the rest of the pack disappeared. That's when I realized that I might fight for a victory. Soon I passed both Ferraris and started to pull away, tenth by tenth. I was focusing on one thing - don't overdrive it. Don't shift too late, don't powerslide and burn the tyres. Easier said than done, when the car begs you to do every single corner with an opposite lock. It's so much fun! My Maserati was becoming more and more tail-happy towards the end, but it was always predictable. I didn't want to be the second driver to crash out from the lead that day (actually, I'd be the third one as Josef Newgarden had a hard hit later that night at Iowa). I expected those Ferraris to close the gap, but it never happened and I cruised to my first ever ISO victory.

As the british invasion failed: congrats to Petr for crashing the donkey beater's party!