After a couple of months away from the championship side of things, my 2022 Manufacturers campaign is go! Kept true to my words from the first test season and stuck with Genesis, whose Gr.3 offering seems to feel more confident and planted now. Testing was more of an exercise to work out what the X's limits were on the Nordschleife, culminating in a best of 8:11.528 in Free Practice under gloomy conditions. Still short on my best in GT Sport with the WRX last year, but not too bad considering the 48-hour notice we were all given.
19:00 Manufacturers (GT1, EMEA)
Was the only Genesis representative in a 16-car grid, which also included four GR Supras, three AMG GTs, two Corvettes and a Viper who I will get to later. The start of the out lap I found amusing as the yellow Corvette immediately gets penalised for crossing the pit exit line, after which was a case of simply staying out of others' way while looking after the rear tyres. One thing about the Genesis X is that it still has sketchy moments whenever I understeer or apply a big dollop of power in lower gears, both of which I experienced during my actual qualifying lap. I suspect it's more vulnerable under colder track temperatures, but I can't know for sure without a HUD display telling me so.
Low lighting made the process of safely navigating around the Nordschleife especially tricky; it didn't help when towards the end, two other cars (a Supra and an AMG) went off in separate incidents between the Stefan Bellof S and Schwalbenschwanz. Fortunately, we sailed past these without incident and began to receive the first times from other competitors. An 8:13, followed by an 8:09. 8:07... 8:11... 8:12. Anywhere in between those seemed like a genuine possibility after FP, and after another floaty exit from the final complex, we do it. Crossing the line in a time of
8:10.496 - just over a second up on FP and even faster than last year's time in the Scooby! Where do we line up?
4th! Not only my best qualifying for the Gr.3 car, but my personal best for the
Genesis brand so far. Only problem was that the game didn't process the last car crossing the line, so it took around five for minutes for us to get back into the lobby.
After a glitchy new introduction sequence - and a couple of scares where I thought the screen had gone permanently black during grid formation - we get underway and come close to getting wiped out by an out-of-control Jaguar going into the first complex. The leading Supra, Mercedes and BMW M6 also go very wide, allowing me a brief chance to draw level with the latter. Grip was limited in certain sections which resulted in me understeering as well at the fifth corner, but very soon the Genesis' strength on the Nordschleife began to show as it drew a healthy 1.3-second gap over the Dutch Supra driver behind. That gap faded when the Supra was given more room to stretch its legs, and upon exiting Bergwerk for the first time the straight-line differential was so great that I thought it was best to settle behind him and maintain a buffer of some sort over the Viper in 6th. That lasted exactly until the exit of Karussel, where the Supra loses grip and exits stage left.
Though we began chipping away at the BMW's advantage through the tight and twisty bits after, the gap between ourselves and the Viper also shrunk in the gloom. By the start of Lap 2, it was a little under three-tenths, and I was convinced that the Viper would send it under braking for the first hairpin. So, I stuck to the left and turned in late, though in reality he was still further back than I thought he was. A Corvette - different to the one who crossed the pit lane exit in qualifying - was also following through, which forced me to take the tightest line possible for the second corner while slotting in directly behind the Viper. Myself and the Corvette went side-by-side for the first series of GP turns, but eventually I pulled ahead with the traction advantage I found by negotiating Turn 5/7 in second gear.
Light began to fall. Still enjoyed a fairly healthy cushion over the Corvette, though a few sketchy and understeery moments meant that the Viper was continuing to pull further and further away. Or was it? I somehow managed to gain a couple of tenths on the run through Kesselchen, and by Steilstrecke, the deficit had cut to around 7-8 tenths. Was the Viper beginning to struggle? It didn't change the fact that the Corvette was still breathing down my neck, but even so the Genesis still worked its magic on the slalom run to Döttinger Höhe while I occasionally switched between my regular radars and the Weather Radar. I heard from others before entering this lobby that there was a chance we could hit rain at some point, and sure thing, a thin blue line hovered over the right-hand side of the Radar display. It was there in qualifying, and it was here to haunt us again as the race was approaching the half-way point.
Covered the inside of Turns 1-2 to keep the Corvette at bay, and repeated the same process as before. Tyre wear for the Genesis was looking good - better than I remembered from the test lobby - but the Viper, again, was struggling. By the time we reached the Flugplatz, the line had crept further towards the centre; by the exit of Kellenhard, I could see that the first drops were starting to fall. Rain... near-total darkness... two things I generally had problems against in GT Sport had come together at once! The surface was wet, but thankfully not too wet to stop us from shadowing the Viper. Our tactic to use higher gears worked as we pulled out a gap of up to around 2.3 seconds over the Corvette. Better still, the gap between ourselves and the Viper going into Döttinger Höhe was small enough for us to slingshot past him down the dip. Overcooked the entry into the penultimate turn, however, and once again the Viper got back in front as he again had the inside for Turn 1.
This gave me an idea... if I kept following the Viper's slipstream throughout the final lap, maybe I could use his tow to get away from the Corvette? At first, it seemed to work, and with the Genesis' front tyres still in good shape, this also presented an opportunity to add further pressure on the Viper and force him into a mistake. At Bergwerk, he did just that, missing the apex and allowing me to run side-by-side with him on the run to Kesselchen. As soon as I did, however, I realised that I would lose half of the light that the Viper gave me, so decided that continuing the fight wasn't a risk I was willing to take. Released the throttle and slotted in behind once again. Though the track dried and the Corvette was still fairly far behind, the gap between the Viper and myself grew sufficiently enough that another slipstream pass down Döttinger Höhe wasn't possible. Followed him home in 5th for 227 points in a 273-point lobby.
Hats off to both the Viper and Corvette drivers for making this race a close, memorable and ultimately fair one. Honestly, this surpassed all my expectations for the Genesis X considering the way it handled before the recent slew of updates. It may not quite have the top-end thrust of something like the M6, GR Supra or Viper, or the crazy aero that made me enjoy driving the WRX so much in GT Sport, but it has just about enough of everything under the new BoP to make it ideal for something like the 24h course. Probably helps that I once tried it for the single-player World GT Series Championship, but I don't remember that final race involving a sudden rain shower three-quarters of the way through. The shower didn't develop in the same way that
@Hasnain282 and
@timekiller001 experienced for themselves during their slot, but it still added another layer of challenge and unpredictability which made the season opener all the more tense for me.
A great start for Genesis in the main Manufacturers Cup, and another great Nordschleife/24h race to go with my best results from those courses in GT Sport. Dare I say that was an even better one than the last FIA Gr.3 combo I ran here?
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