Around a month after a solid recovery and ending at round 1 of the IVRA Endurance Spring Season at Watkins Glen, it was time to get on with round 2. After a selection process, and then a swap due to a positive covid test, we'd picked Jason Dilworth and Tony Baird to drive the Lambourghini Hurácan in the Pro/Am class.
With the bulk of practise done with a couple of weeks to go, we were hit by the massive iRacing changes to the GT3 class. A setup we'd worked hard on and were happy with was thrown out of the window with a few days to go and we started from scratch. It was the same for everyone driving a GT3, but it definitely didn't make it easy to feel as prepared as we'd have liked to have been!
On race day we headed into the warm-up and were happy to see we weren't a million miles off of the pace on longer runs or a couple of qualifying practises, so it was time to try to settle into the rest of the build-up – including the usual driver briefing to clarify a couple of points for all drivers involved. It was also during this time that we finalised some thoughts between the drivers and engineer Xavier Brien to work out what the plan was strategy wise and how safety cars could affect things at given times. We also thought through how to get qualifying done in the best fashion, and decided to fuel for the entire 15 minute slot with alternating push and cool down laps.
With that admin done, it was onto qualifying. The Pro/Am class go first, and an Am designated driver has to do it, so that left it down to Jason. Unfortunately it seemed that our decision for qualifying was probably the safest but not fastest option, with lighter cars filling the 2 positions ahead of our start position of 3rd. Still, a decent qualifying position to start from in a race which we'd expect a lot of safety car intervention...
Our initial laps went well, with 2nd place gifted to us by a penalty for the #378 T3 Motorsport by Maniti car for an incident during warmup. The early pace showed by the #301 Archer Brothers car was insane, and it was clear that our best bet was to just settle into the race and try to pull a gap on the cars behind us – there was little to no point in trying to push to the same pace the #301 was showing.
This plan worked for the first 15 laps, with a decent gap to third opening up, until a mistake in turn 1 of lap 16 led to taking too much curb in turn 2 and a quick trip to the barrier on the outside of turn 3. Fortunately the car ended up facing the right way and we continued on to assess the damage, albeit a couple of places down.
It was clear very soon that we were at least a couple of tenths a lap down on pace, with most of that being on top speed. After some debate between the three of us, we decided to keep going until the end of the 40-something lap stint and see how long the repairs were likely to take – thinking that anything around the 20 second mark would be worth taking.
We weren't expecting that to be over 4 minutes...
Once that first stint was over and we knew we couldn't commit to any repairs without also committing to being a number of laps down, it was time to get our heads down and salvage whatever result we could. That job was made more difficult by being a sitting duck on the long 'straight' at Interlagos, which also meant we struggled to get past any car we caught at the best overtaking spot on the track.
After a double stint on tyres and some fuel saving, somehow we managed to pit from 1st place in class on lap 81. With some cars opting not to take tyres at that point, Tony got into the car to start his stint in 4th. The damage to the car made things very difficult for a driver to get into, but after a bit of experimentation Tony found his groove and started to move back up the order – back up to 2nd by the time he pitted in the middle of his double stint.
Some quality laps and minimal drama through the second half meant that we were still in a solid 3rd by the time we handed back over to Jason – still with the promised multitude of safety cars nowhere to be seen! At this point we were fairly convinced that a safety car might actually be detrimental to our race. Although it would get us closer to the cars in front, we'd be so vulnerable to cars behind that it might be best to just stick with what we had and take whatever points we could.
As Jason got back in the car the agreement was to just push as hard as we could for the last couple of stints and see what we could do, starting from 4th by the time the pit sequence had shaken out.
Not long into those stints we worked out that our best possible result was 3rd, and to get that we were going to have to catch and pass the fast moving #358 Torque Freak Racing car then driven by Neil Middleton. We pushed on as hard as we could and, exactly as predicted by Xavier, came out 8 seconds behind the #358 with 25 laps to go. From there the gap was chipped away at lap by lap, with 6 new fastest laps for our car during those 25 laps. Unfortunately, with 9 laps to go and with the gap down to 2.5 seconds we got tagged by an over-eager Pro car into turn 4, losing a valuable couple of seconds. We could only keep going and hope that luck swung back our way somewhere towards the end, but it wasn't to be. We crossed the line less than a second behind a speedily finishing Neil in 4th position.
If you'd have offered us P4 before the race started, we'd probably have turned you down to push for the podium, and that's exactly what we tried to achieve. Missing out on that by a tiny margin was a bit gutting, but ultimately this was a strong result again. The pace is there, and the team are working well together. The results will come if we keep plugging away at this incredibly competitive league.
Many thanks as ever to the whole team of organisers at IVRA, as well as GSI for their sponsorship and RaceSpotTV and VCO for their coverage.
Check out the entire race broadcast replay below: