S57 - GTO Classics, a mid-season update
raceroom
It’s Season 57 at RRLeagues which sees the drivers tackle to GTO Classic cars from the 1980s - The Nissan 300ZX, Audi 90 Quattro and Ford Mustang, all in full race trim with the Audis and Nissans with (respectively very and extremely) powerful turbos
In this blog, already a third of the way through the season, we look assess the action from the first two rounds.
From Daytona to Brno, one high speed track and one ‘point and squirt’ circuit, some things were very different, and some things remained very much the same.
Practice at the historic Florida track saw the very powerful Nissans pushing the envelope of acceleration and top speed, ahead of the Audis and the struggling Fords. Already apparent, even at this early stage of the season, was the Mustang’s pace, or lack thereof. Some of the quickest drivers, including Jim Britton, Simon Fillingham, Nemanja Monojlovic, and Season 51 winner Clive Brittain, were all floundering near the bottom of the timesheets as the big-block V8s didn’t seem to be able to cope with the turbos from the Japanese and European manufacturers. Added to that, the fact that those turbos could be mapped extremely high to provide even more pace in qualifying trim didn’t bode well for the Ford, with the high-speed, banked turns of Daytona.
Qualifying went the same way with a dominant performance from Max Haas to take pole in the 300ZX. Just to his right was eight-time champion Ralf Arella with the quickest of the Audis, Andre Bergsma, right behind in third. Indeed the top eleven grid slots were filled by the turbo cars, the likes of Camoletto, Dhoore, Schneider and Zapp all potential contenders. The highest place Mustang, that of Manojlovic, sat a lowly twelfth, with Fillingham and Britton just behind in what would turn out to be ‘Class B’.
Getting off the banked grid caused its own issues, and the four-wheel drive Audis took full advantage as Bergsma and Schneider went through the turn1/2/3 complex in the lead as Haas and Camoletto tried their best to get the powerful Nissans away in a straight line, but looked more like they were wrestling an anaconda. Things were not much easier for the Mustang drivers with Fillingham getting it all wrong and Ric Binnersley having to take severe avoiding action to miss the gyrating Ford. The irony that it was Fillingham who had been most vocal about drivers taking extra care off the grid in the driver’s briefing prior to the race was not lost on the other competitors!
Already, by the end of lap one, the Nissan of Haas had blasted past Bergsma and Schneider on the banking to take the lead, with Arella hot on his heels. Apart from Fillingham, early casualties included Binnersley who failed to get his mustang slowed in time for the bus-stop chicane and went straight through the run-off area to earn himself a drive-thru penalty, Hughes who had jammed his engine map into qualifying mode and found the full tank of fuel acting as a counterweight as the car over-rotated first at T1 on lap 2, then at the bus-stop later in the lap in a more extreme fashion, effectively destroying the engine. Unfortunately, the front-running Schneider would suffer from the same problem, and result, a few laps later. Other DNFs would include Camoletto, also at the bus-stop, front-running Mustang driver Manojlovic, Clive Brittain, Rich Jones, Ric Binnersley and Ricard Gomicia.
As the race progressed, the Nissans pulled further and further away - no-one able to live with their pace. Moving almost as fast as them, however, was their fuel gauge, and as the gap between Haas and Arella increased at the pit stop, it became apparent that Haas had gambled on finishing the race on his original tyres whilst Arella threw on a new set of softs hoping that the valuable time lost in the pits could be recouped. As the laps counted down Ralf closed in and it looked like he would catch Max, but the clock ticked over just in time for Haas and he took the first win of Season 57, ahead of his fellow German. Andre Bergsma would come home for the third place on the podium in his Audi, showing great pace but no match for the seemingky overpowered Nissans. A decent performance from Dusan Magyar saw him finish the race in fourth in his 300ZX, followed by Jim Britton with a spirited drive in the top finishing Mustang in 5th.
Following the race there was some discontent from the Ford drivers with Britton surprised that he was actually lapped, despite a great drive from his point of view. “It's a bit disappointing that the turbo cars were that much faster compared to the Ford and it was never an advantage that we could go to the end without a stop” commented Fillingham, alluding to the fact that both the Nissans and Audis managed to complete the race with the qualifying engine map, despite the assumption that engine failure would be imminent on that strategy.
Meanwhile Max Haas was celebrating his win while the Ford drivers were left shaking their heads. He did have a word of warning for the season though, stating “the cars should be a lot closer in the next round”.
Max Haas, on his way to a hard-earned victory over Ralf Arella at Daytona Motorspeedway
Round two took us to the Czech Republic and to Automotodrom Brno, around 100 miles north of Vienna. A completely different proposition to Daytona, with a number of point and squirt corners that, the Mustang drivers hoped, would give them some form of competitiveness over their turbo-powered brethren. However, it soon became apparent that all that had changed was the pecking order up front, with the Audi’s able to apply their agility over the powerful Nissans, the Mustangs still multiple seconds off the pace, even in the best of hands.
Unfortunately, Schneider was not present on race day. Qualifying saw the Audis of Andre Bergsma, David Dhoore and Alex Zapp in the top three spots respectively, with Nissan ace Arella in fourth. Dusan Magyar’s Nissan started 5th, some two seconds off Bergsma’s pace. The top Mustang, that of Nemanja Manojlovic, started twelfth, some 3.7 seconds from pole.
The start was clean with the three Audis utilising their four-wheel drive system to get particularly good starts (especially Zapp) and, after just a couple of laps, the picture of the race started to become clear. The front three Audis were pursued by Arella and Haas, who’d made a good start from seventh on the grid, with Hughes trying to hang on to their coattails in sixth. Magyar had fallen back to ninth, passed by fellow Nissan drivers Jak Camoletto and Radek Pawlaczek, already two seconds behind Hughes. A mistake from Dhoore dropped him down to sixth whilst, soon after, Hughes handed him a place back with an error of his own. The Nissans of Camoletto, Pawlaczek and Magyar suffered the same fate but with more serious consequences pushing them down the field into the raging Mustangs, desperate to race something other than a Ford. This saw Marcel Locken up to seventh with Manojlovic dragging his Mustang up to eighth but already twenty-seven seconds off the lead after just fifteen minutes.
Tyre and fuel usage from the turbocharged cars was high, and it became obvious that the only chance the Ford drivers had to salvage something from the race was to go as long as possible, maybe the entire race, without stopping, whilst the others pitted for fuel and fresh rubber. As it turned out, nothing would be able to stop the Audi of superb Andre Bergsma, and he came home to finish some fourteen seconds ahead of the Nissan of the ever-consistent Arella. David Dhoore came home in third, followed closely by Alex Zapp in fourth. The race for fifth though, left everyone on the edge of their seats until the final lap of the race. The Mustangs of Jim Britton and Manojlovic had been driven strategically to get to the end of the race without stopping, and it would have almost worked if it wasn’t for those pesky kids of Hughes and Locken, who passed Britton and Manojlovic respectively. After the race, Britton was quoted saying “If this was a multiclass I'd be congratulating myself on a win, but getting lapped stings too much” confirming the frustration of the Mustang drivers. Andre Bergsma added fuel to fire following his win, commenting “big shame the BOP is so crazy on this championship, makes the differences quite big”. On his performance he stated “I was really scared in the beginning, because the Audi has a tendency to spin out of control and it's totally impossible to save it on a full tank, so really had to take it easy the first couple of laps”
The next race at Slovakiaring looks to be an interesting point in the season, with the manufacturers looking to tweak the cars to give the Fords more competitiveness, although it’s likely this will come from subduing the turbo-powered cars.
