DGFX Race 5 - 4 hours of Silverstone
In hunt of getting a good chance of the championship title, both cars took place at the starting line of this four hour endurance race on the Silverstone track, newly updated in iRacing to reflect the latest rendition of the track. The second to last race of the season and both cars in second place in the league table meant that all points were really valuable. Well, they always are, but in order to have a good chance on the title it meant that we needed to take points on the overall leaders.
The qualification round went fairly well, and the LMP1 car started in third place with Magnus Vallström behind the wheel. The GTE car, driven by Wilhelm Wiberg, started in second place in class. The first stints were rather uneventful, some collisions are always bound to happen with this many cars divided in four different classes, and a pace car went out on track after just 10 minutes of racing. However, this turned out to be the only pace car during the race, leading to all pit stops for fuel and tires being done during green flag.
Magnus and Wilhelm handed over the cars without too many scratches about halfway through the race, and Andreas Olsson (LMP1) and Jonas Bodin (GTE) took over the wheels. The GTE car was in the lead, but the different teams ran with slightly different fuel strategies so it wasn’t obvious by how much. The LMP1 car once again found itself chasing the PCDC Motorsports Argon entry, which is currently leading the championship.
With about half an hour to go, the LMP1 car was fairly comfortable in second position with not much chance of either losing to third place or gaining the first position, and they cruised home another second place. The GTE car, with a strategy including running the last set of tires for a bit longer than is typically recommended, unfortunately ended up spinning out and the battle for first place became a last lap fight for tenths of a second, even though the race went on for four hours. The Heusinkveld car with its newer tires drew the longest straw and our GTE car had to see itself losing the fight.
Unfortunately, even though both cars took a commendable second place, they both lost again to the leaders in each class. This means that the last race, 10 hours of Catalunya on the 1st of February, with its double points will be deciding for the championship, but it will also require an extraordinary effort from both cars - and some luck. Write down the date in your calendars already now, you don’t want to miss it!