DGFX Clubsport series Race 1 - The miracle at Okayama
Another league has now had its first race of the season, the DGFX Clubsport series. It is a multi-class league featuring the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car, the new-to-iRacing Audi RS3 LMS TCR car and the Mazda MX-5 Cup. It’s an endurance league with races ranging from 2.4 hours to 4 hours of length. Hellracers are competing with a 911 GT3 Cup car, to get some variation from our GTE and LMP1 races.
This first race took place at Okayama, one of the tracks that are included for free in the iRacing subscription. It’s a track that includes most of what you want in a track, some sweeping corners that you can take in higher speeds, a back-straight followed by a hair-pin inviting to overtakes, a technical section with low speed corners and some elevation changes to mix it up.
Hampus Baaz and Marcus Simonsson put on their Hellracers racing suits for the race, but had a rough start where they had issues during the qualification and had to start second to last (20th position in the GT3 Cup field). Their tempo deserved a better spot in the field, but sometimes things go wrong and you have to put your head down and make the best of it.
Not even three laps later, the Hellracers car was up to 11th place and the hunt for the top 10 had begun. Or top 5? Or what pace did they have? As this was the first race of the season, it was hard to get a feeling for how far this could go.
It should be said that some passes were done due to others making a mistake, the GT3 Cup is a brutal mistress which can and will bite you if you don’t treat it right. But once the field settled in, it was down to pure racing and planned overtakes in order to climb the ladder. Due to slightly different fuel strategies, Hampus had a few laps in the lead before handing over the car to Marcus. But after the dust settled in the pit stalls, Marcus was still in a top 10 position with about half of the race still left.
It was after the last pit stop that things got really interesting. Hellracers chose to not take new tires in the last pit stop while several other teams had to replace the tires since they ran on really old tires. This changed things up and Hellracers were suddenly in P3, with a real chance to finish on the podium. Marcus continued to push and kept things clean, which the second place didn’t manage causing them to spin out. P2! A few laps later, Marcus had caught up to the Helimedia Porsche and overtook them for the race lead, according to himself with a beautiful overtake. We choose to believe him.
Looking back in the field, the Gold Racing Team Porsche looked strong and had a good tempo and fresh tires. However, once their tires wore off the gap was pretty much constant and even though I think Marcus felt a tiny drop of sweat, he kept his cool and took the car over the finish line in first place! A remarkable performance by Marcus and Hampus to after a mishap in the qualification take the car from P20 to P1 over these 2.4 hours! Impressive!
Congratulations to the Gold Racing Team for a well fought race and a second place and to the Racekraft E-sports Slide car for their third place in the GT3 Cup field! Congratulations also to the Mivano Simracing Team for an impressive P1-P2 in the MX-5 class and to Alpinestars Geodesic Racing for the win in the very tight and competitive TCR class! See you all at Brands Hatch in December!
If you want to see the racing action yourself, take a look at the broadcast from iRacing eSports Network at this link.