2023/4 GTWS Exhibition Season 2 – Manufacturers’ Cup R1 – Nurburgring 24h
GT2 League - B / S Lobby – 123pts to winner
At the end of my write-up from the 3-lap GT2 round on this track in the previous Nations’ Cup season a few weeks ago, I wrote:
“I’d also like to add my voice to those earlier in the thread calling for a GTWS Endurance series where we could race a bit closer to the GT1 length and changing weather would have been an option. That sounds like a cracking idea.”
Well, it seems that someone somewhere in a position of influence had similar thoughts as this time we were on for 5 laps, and doing race-length runs in Free Practice showed that the rain stopped after about half a lap, with the track just about dry enough to go to RM slicks at 2 laps. Other observations from those trial runs:
- Pit for RM after 2 laps by any means but DO NOT TOUCH THE ACCELERATOR at pit exit until after T1. Otherwise it turns into: a) a spin, b) a crash, c) a 3-second time penalty, or most probably d) All of the above
- It goes dark before the end! Cool. Actually I quite liked it as you could really concentrate on the track as that’s pretty much all you can see in the headlights, it does require a base knowledge of what’s coming up next though.
- It’s wet for the first half a lap. Like, really wet. It’s a shame there isn’t a pit lane half way round (like at the Breitscheid exit or somewhere like that) as a W to IM stop there would be ideal.
- Dry times are slower compared to last season but I think that’s because of different dry tyres in the rules.
- The drying mechanism in Free Practice is a bit un-natural. Be interesting to see what happens in Qualifying when umpteen cars have been over it first (planning on doing my normal “last out of the pit lane” routine). It takes 10m to get round in 1st lap conditions for me, so I can wait for a bit before going out.
I went with my usual choice of Nissan – the GTR was very good in the wet in last season’s race here. Strange that I originally started using this marque so that I could drive the Silvia in Gr4 races but have stayed with it so I can use the GTR in Gr3…
And so to Qualifying. By the time I got real-life events out of the way it was the 3rd EMEA slot, so I was sure that most entrants would be on at least their 2nd go and when the clock started in the qual session it would be a 16-way Politeness Judo Battle Royale – “After You”, “No, I insist, after you” – but still at least 6 cars headed straight out as soon as the countdown began (good chaps, drying out the track for me😊). Another few left after the first minute, but when I touched the gas at 10m20 on the clock there was only me and a Lambo on RM tyres still in the pit lane – I assumed they weren’t going to bother setting a time, or they thought that qual would be dry like it was last season, but they followed me out onto the track and quickly fell back. I think the plan was to try and tiptoe round on the drying line and do their flying lap on RM, but you can’t do a lap of Nurburgring 24h on slicks in the wet in 12 minutes! They would start at the back with no time set, but would be one to watch.
Meanwhile I was finishing my out lap and revelling in the nice dry-ish line. The flying lap was a blast, like an extended version of the S-10 test but without the mega penalty for putting a single wheel outside the dry line. I finished up Q3, with only a Porsche being driven by the only driver in this lobby I had raced against before – they are very quick, like a B-lobby alien if such a thing is possible, and another GTR being driven by a compatriot of the Porsche driver in Q2, they’d followed in the wheel-tracks of the polesitter all the way round, ahead of me. Good – I’d equalled my door ranking at least.
The race started, and at least with qual being wet no-one would be starting on slicks this season. I shifted to 4th gear as soon as we were handed control of the cars, that gave me the traction to get away from the following cars enough to be careful in the early turns without being swamped at T1. No, instead I was swamped at T3 – I didn’t know if people had started on wets, or if the GTR was just not as good as I thought it would be in these conditions – but leaving the GP-circuit I was P7. Through patient driving and others’ errors I was P3 again by Ex-Muhle, but the first 2 laps were the most intense I’ve ever experienced in racing of any description – at one point I was P5 at Sabine-Schmitz-Kurve, P12 by Hocheichen, and P4 at Adenauer-Forst!
On Lap 2 I was repeatedly getting shoved wide by a 911 who was seemingly happy using me as a booster brake, every corner it was the familiar “boomph….eeerk” of being hit and skidding wide, eventually they got through only to try it on the next car up, who didn’t take too kindly to the Porsche’s antics and shoved them off at the hairpin just after Miss-Hit-Miss. One car in the barrier, another behind me with a 5s penalty. Coming out of Bergwerk on L2, I caught the GTR that had qualified 2nd, they were still in that position but having lost the Q1 car they were having to find their own way round and were slower and more timid as a result. Not wanting to be slowed up by them, but equally not wanting to move off the drier line to pass, I decided to gently bump-draft them up the hill so we could both get away from the pack. Yes, I bump-drafted on the Nordschleife in the wet and yes, it worked. However, they then slowed up so much for Mutkurve that our advantage was lost and it was back to place-swapping, things were so tight that we were 3 wide and 3 deep columns drafting down the Dottinger-Hohe.
I swept into the pits for my RM tyres after this, only one driver stayed out and the Lambo from earlier in this report was 0.1s behind me. I just hoped they knew to trundle out of the pit lane otherwise they’d be in the back of me. As I left the pits in P6 cars went everywhere – into the barriers on the left and the right, into the gravel of T1, everywhere – but I survived despite being hit from behind, I think the car behind spun before they touched me so it was just a glancing blow. P3. Nice – albeit 25s off the lead. Lap 3 was nice and quiet – good job as it got dark early, and now we
really had to concentrate on the dry line. I had 7s on the Lambo in 3rd, but then like a moron I tried to carry too much speed through Galgenkopf onto the long straight, put 2 wheels wide and was slow all the way to the GP-circuit – gap now 2.5s. Then I compounded that by similarly going wide on the hairpin at the far end of the GP-circuit on the 4th lap – at this point I had to stay wide, let them by and rejoin behind the Italian car. The speed with which they left me proved they would have got by anyway, so no great loss.
They set off after P2 who we were both catching – this was the car that had stayed out, it looked like they were going for a no-stop IM strategy but it wasn’t working out for them (it turned out in post-race chat that they hadn’t seen the leader pit and assumed their huge lead was down to no-stopping, so decided to follow that strategy.) I settled down in 4th, hoping for a nice points haul, but as I came towards the crest before Flugplatz the yellows were thrown – the Lambo and the no-stop IM car were both in the barrier on the outside having tangled, and with a “thanks, lads” I was into P2. The Lambo restarted 8s behind me. The last 2 laps I was in time trial mode – just take the fastest line, concentrate like mad on the track, don’t worry about the gap until you see lights behind you. I was surprised that the GTR seemed much more competitive in the dry than the wet – perhaps it doesn’t like IM tyres like it likes wet ones? – but I was catching the leader, however the gap was still 8 seconds at the chequered flag. The last-starting Lambo was 3 seconds behind me in 3rd and its driver congratulated me afterwards, very magnanimous considering they were behind me through an incident which may well not have been their fault. P2 from door 3 and 118 points – that’ll do me, particularly as the driver who pipped me to the County title last season is in a Lexus this time round and therefore can’t take credits off me😊.
So, having asked for longer races with changing weather (albeit here it was scripted rather than dynamic), what did I think of it? Well, it – was – EPIC. The best race I’ve been in from a design and driving point of view, and, shove-happy 911s aside, everyone was as clean as could be expected given that it was a very tight race on a wet, twisty and narrow track.
Watkins Glen next in the Gr4 cars, and having tested the cars available to me I shall be asking Silvia’s mother if she can come out to play on Wednesday. Looks like a no-stop sprint that’ll be over in 20 minutes or so instead of the 5-act drama we had here, but it’s none the worse for that, adds a bit of variety.
I have got an account up to A now, but stuck with GT2 since I didn’t fancy making my “heavy damage” debut on a wet Nordschleife – even if you keep it tidy someone else can hit you and sentence you to miles and miles of limping round, and at this stage my DR needs nursing, not destroying.
I also forgot to write a report for last season’s final Nations’ Cup race at Daytona, as real life got in the way. Er…
Qualified 3rd
Bump Draft
Bump Draft
Bump Draft
Bump Draft
Bump Draft
Finished 2nd
I also found somewhere you can have your car painted up to match your GT favourites, by the looks of it:
It’s in Bilston near Wolverhampton, in the UK, in case you were wondering.
