24H SERIES ESPORTS - MAHLE 6H SEBRING
Second race in the 24H SERIES ESPORTS league took place at Sebring, the track at least partially known for how uneven the race surface is. It tends to be a real test for your sim racing equipment and even though we are racing at home it might be a small workout to do endurance racing here. The Swedish national championship is still running, so in the days leading up to the event our focus was a bit split. Normally, we would spend a number of days with practice and get really used to the track and car combination, especially for this series since we don’t drive the GT4 so much in other series. However, this time around we simply didn’t have enough time to put in the practice that we really wanted, making us a bit nervous about the whole thing.
Qualifying put us in P8 on the starting grid but a badly timed start quickly dropped us to P9 even before T1. What we learned last time in this league is that it mostly comes down to not be involved in incidents and keep the car clean, and so that was what we focused on. Our lack of practice showed, especially in the first half of the race where we simply didn’t have the same pace as our competitors. But with some of them making mistakes or being involved in incidents, we soon figured that we could at least start to aim for a top five finish.
With the race coming to its last hour, we ran in P7 with P6 within reach and P8 hunting us from behind. However, once again our lack of preparation became apparent. In the first race the fuel strategy was pretty much non-existent due to the tank size and fuel mileage of our Cayman GT4 and based on our first calculations that would be the case also in this race. However, slightly different weather conditions led to a higher fuel mileage which became apparent in our last fuel stint. That on top of the sun setting making the track pitch black, except for the reflexes that mark the track on Sebring at night, made for a quite interesting last hour of the race.
In the end, we had to pay at least one position for our bad preparations, instead of hunting down P6 and trying to overtake them we had to run into the pits with just minutes to go for a quick refill, losing out to the car chasing us. We ended up in P8 which was a bitter disappointment in the end, since we had it in our own hands to finish in a better position. However, based on the preparations it was probably not a huge surprise. This league does not give you anything for free and not preparing enough will lose you positions, it’s as simple as that. For the next race at Silverstone, we will for sure have done our homework!