OOR | Duo Series S1 | Round 01 - Watkins Glen
Last weekend was a proper cracker!
Scarnie and I entered the GT-R in Octane Online Racings new "Duo Series" - a new set of events focused on shorter endurance races. This first season is a short tour of the Americas, starting at the famous Watkins Glen circuit in New York.
This has always been a track that can be a mixed bag for the GT-R - it absolutely loves that first sector, building speed like no other car up the hill and across the straight - but it really struggles to keep up with the more modern machines like the Ferrari around the final few sectors.
Still, lap times in practice were particularly strong - especially for Scarnie, so we were both quite confident going into the event. Unfortunately, I came down with a reasonably bad cold in the days before the event and was still recovering on race day, so along with missing a lot of practice, I also felt I wasn't quite up to my best on race day. Regardless, we pressed on with the event - aiming to at worst, have a bit of fun in our chosen machinery.
Scarnie kicked things off well, smashing a great time in qualifying (01:43.855) - putting us in P11 and just over a tenth from making it into the top ten. This ended up being a fantastic place to start, chaos on the opening laps really hurt most of the field behind us - avoiding that kind of damage straight away does wonders for a long endurance race.
Scarnie started us off well, pushing hard and fighting hard with everyone around us - getting up to P9 before the first round of pit stops. We'd decided on a 3-stop strategy - despite a 2 stop being 'theoretically' possible, it was a bit too high of a risk for us so we opted to play it safe.
I had the job of driving the car for the entire middle stint, doing two 40-minute runs back to back. It was certainly tough; I definitely wasn't at 100% and did struggle to maintain the pace I feel I was capable of. Regardless, I had some good little battles on track and despite not quite reaching my peak, I was able to avoid any major incidents and stayed out of trouble.
We always knew that we'd drop back a bit once I got in the car, even at my best I'm still half-a-second or more from Scarnie on average. I gave the car back on lap 70 in 16th position, with most of our main competitors still in striking distance. Scarnie would then take the reins for the final stint, putting in his trademark relentless consistency to allow us to climb slowly back up the field.
In the end we crawled all the way back up to P12 - a mere 5 seconds from the Pro-Am class leaders, giving us P2 in class!
This was about the best we could have hoped for given all the circumstances, and proof that a clean race is often the best recipe for success. Had my pace been just a little better, we'd probably have been knocking on the door of the top 10! - a Goal for next time.
Round 02 is at Indianapolis, a bit of an unknown for most of us, it's a reasonably unpopular track and not many of us have spent a great deal of time at. We're not exactly sure how the GT-R will fare there, but hopefully we can keep this great momentum going.
Regardless, this was a fantastic start for us - and we can't wait for more!
