2023/4 GTWS Exhibition Season 1 – Nations’ Cup R1 – Deep Forest
GT2 League - Mid-B / S Lobby – 104pts to winner
Reasons too dull to go into mean that I’m only free to race every other Saturday at the moment so this race was my first of this Exhibition season. I’d done plenty of laps solo in Free Practice mode but hadn’t been able to find any mock races in Multiplayer, and setting up a custom race with my own Ford GT (yes, I’m a sucker for meta cars, I tend to work on the “they can’t all be wrong” system) just felt odd as my own GT seemed to be very different to the one they give you in the race’s Free Practice mode. Of course it was – I hadn’t realised that the specified car was in a particular state of tune that felt very different from the garage car despite being the same PP.
In the end I just decided to get my lines and braking as consistently good in practice as I could and go into the first slot I could on Saturday, thus leaving me with spare slots in case it all went wrong.
I had calculated that the only way I was going to get 3 flying laps in qualifying was to leave the pit lane as soon as the session opened, I was sure that everyone else would do the same thing so decided to hold on for a bit, I’d only get 2 flying laps but they’d be in clean space, losing me a potential “tow” in qualifying (was slipstreaming turned on in Q?) but gaining me the track to myself. I did a 1:36.7 something and ended up Q9 (I was board #10 in this lobby so at least I beat my ranking), which was not the best place to be as I would have to worry about both avoiding cars ahead and being attacked from behind.
This was an all-Ford affair apart from one driver in an AMG a couple of slots ahead and a Porsche driver at the back who hadn’t set a qualifying time. Everyone was sensible around T1, I made up one place around the infield but this short squabble caused me to lose touch with the top 7 or so cars ahead on the back straight – I didn’t get a tow off them – but this was all to the good as some of them misjudged the braking for the hairpin (as a result of the strong slipstream meaning they arrived at their braking point much faster than in practice), meaning I took on p% without being in danger myself.
I then got in one of the best battles of my time driving GT with 4th place, we’d change positions twice a lap – sometimes more – and got to the stage we were indicating to each other when we would stay on one side of the track or the other approaching the braking zones and thanking each other with the hazard lights after the corner. I eventually made 4th my own after a few laps and set off after the 2nd / 3rd battle, who were holding each other up and allowing 1st to get away. They got together at the corner leading on to the back stretch and one of them got sideways, they didn’t spin but were slowed up, I was able to get them under braking into the hairpin, putting me into p3. A couple of laps later I was chasing p2 out of the infield and onto the back straight when the yellow flag was thrown, turns out the leader had put themselves into the barrier and their 8-second advantage was gone. In the confusion I got past p2 (not under yellows) and lined up the leader on the front straight but decided I wasn’t close enough for a pass. This didn’t determine P3 though, who used the double tow to get past me and knock the leader wide (I must report no penalty was given, but I’d seen other similar incidents given 3s penalty), leaving them in p1, me in p2 and the previous leader down in p5 or thereabouts.
I got past p2 and briefly led after that, but I was slipstreamed past in short order and settled back into p2. By the penultimate lap the previous leader was behind me and made a robust pass in the infield between the first 2 tunnels – they set off after p1 (who’d hit them earlier on remember) and on the final lap I could see the puffs of smoke as the cars got together time and time again. My thoughts were “hold station, you could easily inherit one or both places here” and it came to pass on the back straight under braking for the hairpin, with the original leader against the inner barrier facing the wrong way as I retook p2, and that’s where I finished – 100pts, my first triple digit score in a GTWS race.
The original leader wasn’t happy in post-race chat, and quite frankly I don’t blame them.
So to summarise, a decent result but it felt strangely unsatisfying. I normally like to prepare for a GTWS race by first doing some laps in free practice, then setting up a custom race with all the full race parameters and racing against the AI for a few race-length practice runs to determine which strategy I like best regarding pitting, fuel map etc (OK that wouldn’t have been relevant here but I still like the race-length practises against other cars) and then move on to mock races in Multiplayer including a qualifying session and a full length race (I’ll even race the GT1 length if that’s all that’s available, or I’ll set up my own room to GT2/3 rules).
That wasn’t really possible here – the car being in a particular state of tune that didn’t resemble the standard garage car meant that it was difficult to get a replica, and that made it difficult to set up a custom race, and no-one seemed interested in mock races in Multiplayer, which meant I felt underprepared coming into the race – and I was right to feel that way, no-one had any experience of racing in these cars under the super strong slipstream, and with these tyres in close contact to other drivers – I got the feeling many people started with the braking points they’d used in the Gr.3 daily here a few weeks earlier (where the Ford GT was also the meta car), but that was a racer on Racing Soft tyres so it didn’t end well…
Having said that, I’d happily settle for a similar result at the next Nations’ round in 2 weeks’ time. It probably won’t happen though, as the X2019 is far too quick for an old geezer like me so I’ll see how I take to it in practise before I even decide whether or not to enter.
.
