As you may have understood through my live streams, I will switch from GTE to GT3. The reason is simple. The next iRacing Special Events will not have GTE on the grid (24h of Nurburgring, 24h of Spa etc.). Up until now, I was happy with not participating to these great events. But, as for the 12h of Bathurst, these are Endurance races not to miss. And, very sadly, I think the GTE class is meant to disappear. What annoys me, is that I've never been good in a GT3. Certainly something to do with the braking techniques, and the ability to find the optimum braking force. The main issue with the GT3 is the ABS, that the GTE don't have. This is paradoxical, as to be fast, it is harder to find out the grip limits while braking on a GT3, than on a GTE. This last class is very "readable" in the braking zons. Especially the Porsche 911 RSR, with helping leds showing a blocking "rate" for the front and the rear, independently. When we go over the limits, the laptime penalty is immediatly visible and obvious. On the GT3 cars, this is totally different. We can do a pretty decent laptime while going way over the limits in the braking zones. The ABS is here to help. But the ABS is preventing us from catching the remaining hundreds in each turn. We must avoid using it too much. And finding out the ABS limit is very hard. So this week, I drove quite a lot in Hockenheim with the Audi R8 LMS, trying to understand this car, with my teammate Florian Denard. Thanks to a setup done and shared by my other teammates Luke McKeown and Michael Neumeier, we could progressively get to a 1'38.6, in the VRS GT Sprint Series conditions that were already available on the VRS website. We were not unhappy with our job until then.
Today the VRS datas have been released for the VRS GT Sprint Series, and I immediatly saw that Josh Rogers signed a 1'38.290. As always, Josh hammer blows are hurting. So I decided to make a new attempt, with the VRS set this time. First, I didn't really improved, stuck in the 38.6s at best. The issue was not the set, it was my driving. I decided to look at Josh telemetry data. At every braking, every turn, every exit, I have thouroughly compared our driving styles, and our race lines. After having applied what I had learnt, I progressively improved. First a 38.5, then a 38.4, and finally a 38.360. What amazed me is how I felt relaxed when I made these laptimes, meanwhile I was sweating as hell before. Sometimes you just need to settle down a bit, and calmly take time to understand where to close the gaps. Nothing is magic. I didn't match Josh laptime exactly. But hey, it's Rogers... If we want to achieve good results, it is vital to work on what is the very essence of every driver : raw speed. We must face the facts, all aid is precious. Sometimes we just have to throw away our ego, and make our pilgrimage to performance again. It is not the first time the Virtual Racing School tools help me to improve significantly my raw speed. Virtual Racing School website : https://virtualracingschool.appspot.com/#/Home If you want to have a look to my lap in 1'38.360 (no offtrack), go to my Discord : http://discord.gg/DCf6XGyW2W