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Race Report - Part One

28 racers assembled at the Barn on a beautiful spring evening for round one of our 2024 WHO/digital GT Championship. This would be a two-ish hour team endurance race on Simon's Silverstone-influenced layout that was first used at the Birkett Relay Saturday last October and returned in a slightly revised format this time...

   

Like the real thing, it's a big track and fills most of the Barn. We certainly gave ourselves a challenge setting it up for a Wednesday night - a couple of issues would come back to bite us in the early stages of the race. However, it is a glorious digital racing track - taking the fast-flowing nature of the 'old' Silverstone and using the modern tweaks to give some handy overtaking areas. Both lanes are very useable to encourage the very best digital driving skills...

   

As Simon and Mike were fixing pit lane entry issues, Andy and Ash were sorting the 28 racers into six teams. It was by far our largest attendance for a GT championship event. Each team already had its nucleus and it was a case of allocating one of the six rookies on the grid, seed those left over and come up with four teams of five and two of four. Each Pro-Am team would need to run Bronze drivers for at least half of the six scheduled stints. This was the official line-up going into qualifying and the race...

   

There were a couple of car changes - Astone Mosdell's new McLaren not firing up, so Alex and Dean reverted to last year's Mercedes; and Sidewinder started the championship with Mike's big green Bentley. That gave us three Mercs, two Bentleys and an Aston Martin Vantage - the three sidewinders operating with vac-formed interiors for our 2024 BoP regulations.

Driver-wise, Gearzilla Racing nabbed the returning Scott and so had two newbies on their team, with Ethan racing at only his second digital event. Stuart only practiced last time out, but was given a discretionary pass to race with Écurie Escargot. Father-and-son Rob and Ollie were back as Mike's core team at Sidewinder, with John and Alex playing a leading role at Escargot as Andy had his hands full on race control. New Gold driver Jeremy led one of the teams of four at WHAM! Racing - Astone Mosdell were the other - both would have a little more flexibility in their driving schedule.

As for the weather, our new algorithm gives us a 33% chance of a fully-dry race - and that's what the dice roll gave us this time. Strategy would be all about the basics - minimising pit stop time and getting the most out of your driver line-up.

After a final practice session we went into the 2-minute Super-Pole shootout. The six drivers competing for pole position (and an extra championship point) would then start the race. Last year, Super-Pole was usually a showdown between Ryan and Ollie. This time, Ryan's Mercedes seemed a little off-form and Super-Pole ended up a three-way fight between Dean, Ollie and Oliver - they all set sub 12-second laps...

   

Congrats to Oliver for his pole position run. That would put the Gearzilla Racing Mercedes on pole...

   

Not that the starting order ever has a huge impact on a 2-hour digital slot car race.