 Hey everyone! Today I want to talk in the car and most particularly the third race of the season in Long Beach, California. What a place to race! I mean you've got the sun, you've got your own California, you've got the sea, you've got the waves, you've got the beach and you've got an amazing racetrack that Long Beach is south of LA so I mean you know just LA sounds great but racing in LA is even better. So what a third round of the season. I just want to go through my weekend, obviously P2 at the end, that close from the win but yeah it didn't start in on the best from the best way so you know let's go and talk about it. Right so Friday afternoon, free practice won 45 minutes, beginning felt okay but then we started having an issue on the car. We had a set of brakes that didn't work and I kept pushing the brake balance rearwards meaning a lot of brake and the rear axle are not so much on the front but still wouldn't get any real locking so there were no deceleration so we did try to set up the car and get a few dampers test but really we weren't able to read much into it because the car wouldn't slow down properly on the corner. One year on the street course obviously that doesn't bring the confidence up so finished only 20 seconds but I knew I had some pace but my engineer told me I wasn't worried. I was a little bit more worried after the free practice one. We changed everything. We put what we thought was the best setup together for our free practice two. That was on Saturday morning, early Saturday morning so still a fairly cold track temperature Saturday morning which was not going to be the case for qualifying so we just had to make sure that we wound up with that but that went up. That was a much better session. Went on black, was competitive, you know, found a few bits and pieces on the car, got it to a decent place and then you have to know that in Indica you only have one set of red tyres, the red tyres are soft tyres. In free practice and you're gonna put that one at the end of the free practice two because whoever sets the fastest lap in the second practice session in Indica decides which group is gonna start in qualifying so group one would be odd number most of the time and group two would be the even number so I finished first of the free practice two full of Coltonetta. I decided to go group two in qualifying the track is always better group two and in my group would be obviously me and then the third, the fifth, the seventh, the ninth, the eleventh and so on and so on of the free practice two and then in group one Coltonetta would be there as it was second and then the fourth, the sixth, the eighth, the tenth and so on and so on so that's how the groups are decided for qualifying. Pretty much 13 cars in each group. That's a 10 minute session. There is no green flag, green time guarantee. From the time you leave your pit box to your first time lap you have to push like hell because maybe the first lap you do out there in qualifying is the only lap you're gonna get. You know, if anyone has a crash and there's a red flag and a red flag lasts more than eight or nine minutes, the only lap that you would have on the board is the first one you went and you made so really important qualifying in Indica to push flat out from the beginning. So out of the two group, the six fastest lap time move on to what's called the fast 12 and then same thing. It's a 10 minute session. There is no green time guarantee you have to push like crazy, crazy, crazy to be part of the fastest, six fastest of that session and then those facelift fastest go into the last part, the Q3 if you want, and that's called the fast six. The particularity of the fast six is that you don't have any more new tyres. You have only two sets of new reds for the qualifying so you normally put one set of new reds in Q1, one set of new reds in Q2 and then in Q3 you have to use a set of tyres that's been worn before. So it's quite a tactical game to make sure that you don't put too much laps on the tyres early on in this session so you get the best tyre for Q3. So we went out on Q3, felt good the first lap you know, one that crossed the line in 65.5. I thought it was good enough for Paul but my strategist told me on the radio that's P2. I'm like okay P2 so I decided to send it. Basically the second push lap I was absolutely flat out, I was on for 65.0, absolutely stunning lap around Long Beach but out of turn four I brushed the wall and that broke one of the rear toe link, the outside of the left rear wheel went like this or like that. Whatever, one direction not the right one and when I touched the brake for turn five obviously the rear wheel wasn't straight so it sent me into the wall. I mean I picked up my wall it was the DHL wall so you know cooperate until the end but that was an ideal end so there's another rule in Indica which is very hard but fair fun. If you create a red flag in qualifying they would remove your two fastest time so they took away my 65.5 and that was my only lap so I ended up six in the fast six because I didn't have a lap time on the ball anymore if not it would have been definitely would have been P2 on the grid but anyway I started the race six I don't know case start but got past my Marcus Ericsson that had a late break to turn one he did a good job there really he did a good job you know rolling starter very easy when you're at the front where you're in pole position so going to 30 it's very easy further you go back at rolling starts gets really tricky because everyone goes a little bit on throttle the brakes like the speed goes like that and then you know you just want to be in the right momentum for when it goes I could have done a better job there. Marcus passed me and then you know we are strategy in mind it was always going to be use reds or starting on use reds new blacks new reds for the end of a race that's why we decided to go you know in Indica it's very hard to make a strategy basically before you go in the race you've done four laps on the red tires so you've got no idea what's the life of them how long they're gonna go for what's the degradation gonna be are they gonna eat a cliff or not so there's days are really a lot of unknown doing strategy before the race and I kind of like it then the race honestly the race was quite straightforward looking after the tires until we got close to the end and that's where everyone got starred you know I think Long Beach at the high level of grip a huge amount of grip on track and it was hard to turn the wheel and also there was only one racing line as soon as you would be outside the racing line it would be like so slippery so you had to race there so we had a few yellow flag the first one allows me to catch back and then Marcus Ericsson hit the wall and turn forward to jump on the brake and turn to avoid him that cost me a little bit of time if not I think I could have had Palu at the first restart and then New Garden when I still had a bit of push to pass but I had to use a couple of laps of push to pass to get past Palu meaning I ran out of push to pass towards New Garden and then we had the G.B. Johnson and Malukas incident another question I had a brilliant restart honestly at the moment to my carry out of the chicke the the airplane going onto Joseph New Garden I thought I had him I thought I had him but it was too fast on the straight they were on more downforce more drag than we did and it was just too fast on the straight so couldn't quite pass him and then I had kind of back off for the last two laps to give it all in the last lap saving the task but I think Taku Masaru put in the wall and we had a with a yellow there the race finished on the yellow but it was a good race I didn't really add any moment where I thought you know I wasn't in control of the car I kind of played a little bit safe I'd back on my mind at 2021 Long Beach where I hit the wall in turn 8 and I had to retard the car I did not want to do that I really wanted to finish the race pretty convinced I was going to win when the caution came but as I said I just ran out of push to pass I wish I had like an extra 10 seconds of push to pass and that would have been good enough but didn't have it so you know p2 is still really good puts me six in the championship next race is barba gonna be exciting it's a track was started I made my debut in indica last year and then we go to nggp well I finished twice second last year and then we go to the big indy 500 that's gonna be a huge month in indiana police we're going into a long stretch barba in the GP in the 500 Detroit road america toronto and so on and so on so we go racing a lot but I'm excited about it feel good in the team I think we we've got everything we need to be able to fight for the championship