Maybe a bit late to the party, but in this context I just have to rave about the
Manufacturers Cup at the Nürburgring again! That was the best race I ever had in GT7! The intense race offered everything a racer's heart could desire: the technically demanding track, the changing weather with toe-tapping in the first laps on Inters and two subsequent sprint stints on soft tyres (4IM-3RS-3RS), other cars with different strategies, some duels and a very close finish with a gap of less than 1 second. I've never felt so exhausted after ~2 hours of racing.
The race was about who did the fewest mistakes as everyone landed in the barriers or spun at some point. I qualified P2 with a 8:07.458, 4.3s off pole position.
Everyone enjoyed a clean race start. The other Porsche in P3 must have had softer Inters because he managed to get in front and pulled off a ~25s gap within the first 3 laps
Although there wasn't much grip I felt comfortable and came into a flow with about 80% pace and 20% error margin. I got P2 after an error by the polesetter.
On lap 4 the ideal line started to get a little less wet so I tried pushing but was immediatly punished by meeting the gravel at the Müllenbachschleife and fell back to P5.
At the end of lap 4 back to P3 and into the pits with +14 to P1 (stayed out) and +6 to P2 (also pitting). Now on softs there began the most intense part of the race: staying on the dry line and DON'T EVEN LOOK on all the damp parts off it. Maybe it was because of hours of practice from License S-10 (Porsche 917 beast in Spa-Francorchamps track) but I felt really comfortable with such focus and managed to cut 10s off the leader. He must've felt the pressure and decided to rather cut the pit lane exit line, stay on the dry line and receiving that 3s penalty than touching the wet part. Maybe time-wise it was clever, yet I still managed to sqeeze through and into P1! What an adrenaline kick!
Now it was about going flat out and extend the gap before the polesetter in his yellow AMG would catch me as he was obviously the faster player. Yet the gap stayed between 4-8 seconds before coming in for the last pit stop on lap 7 and again 17s behind the Porsche whom at this point I expected to having to pit again. The gap was reduced to 3s after a mistake by the leader and now it was game on!
At the end of lap 8 I was directly behind him but went wide at the last chicane. When he didn't come in for a pit stop, it dawned on me that he was actually trying a one-stop strategy and therefore had to save a little fuel. It's still a mystery to me how that was possible with RS tyres, because for me the tyres only ever lasted 3 laps.
Now, from the ninth lap onwards, the most exciting part of my race started, but the worst in terms of performance. I still have a lot to learn about racecraft here. Much too impatiently, I tried to overtake the clearly slower Porsche on the Nordschleife and what happened was inevitable: I flew off.
The AMG driver was much cleverer and just overtook him on the >2km Döttinger Höhe. Come on, I can do better than that! And this was despite the fact that I had fresh track experience with my bicycle (Rad am Ring), apparently 0.2 kW of sweat is not directly transferable
Everything was set up for the Grande Finale: One lap to go, a slower but clean driver in front of me and still no damage yet. Let's go! I guess the thought made me too excited and impatient and once again what had to happen happened. Completely unnecessarily, I wanted to start an overtaking manoeuvre at the Schwedenkreuz and promptly flew into the barrier, this time with damage to the right front.
Now with a lot of anger at myself in my stomach, I did everything I could to catch up with him by 1.5 seconds and snatch P2, knowing that our pace would be even thanks to his fuel saving mode and probably used up tyres and my damage. Sure enough, within 2 minutes I was back on his rear bumper when this time he braked too late at Bergwerk and I was able to slip through.
Up to Döttinger Höhe I was able to pull out just under 2 seconds, but with the damage I was a sitting duck and he overtook me in the left-hand bend. In the last chicane, I wanted to try one last time with all desperation, but had to realise that I had to admit defeat after the last contact; so much sportsmanship has to be there.
In the end P3 after 90 thrilling minutes. Please PD give us more of that! After one week I still have more vivid memories of the Nübrurgring than yesterday's meh Nations Cup at dry Le Mans.
in front of 6th.
