Name: Elliot Simpson
Car: #64 Audi R8 LMS, Simrace247 – B team
Started: P32
Finished: P18
This was the first time I had ever been involved in any sort of team or endurance event. It was hands down one of the most enjoyable sim-racing experiences I’ve had to date. Talk about the deep end, being the one to qualify the car and start the race was both extremely exciting and fantastically scary (on the Nordschliefe of all places)! I didn’t want to let the team down, be it by being slow, crashing or any other sort of mishap.
The start was intense, Vlad was an excellent spotter, keeping me out of trouble in turn one and two by a hairs breadth. Following that, I found myself in a bit of space placed around P22, ten positions gained already! The rest of the lap I cautiously got myself to grips with how the car felt with race fuel. We gained momentum from then onwards, and with Vlad and Sam guiding me I managed to make it up to P17 by the end of the stint.
My own personal highlights from the race have to be the number of dodges and near misses I managed to perform amongst the carnage of the first three laps in order to keep the car in one piece. Second to that has to be my on-track overtake for P18 in the closing laps of the race. Bringing the car home in 18th to the whoops of the team on discord was such a good feeling.
From a team perspective, the positivity, friendliness and overall atmosphere within the discord was amazing. I felt so much support whilst driving and enjoyed supporting my fellow teammates during their stints. Crashes didn’t seem to dampen anyone’s spirits and we pulled through with a fantastic result, finishing 18th of 55 GT3 cars.
Lowlights were of course the crashes, I was pleased not to have any of my own, but its a team event after all. Everyone was incredibly supportive when things did go wrong and we all stayed very level headed. The whole event was a very steep learning curve for us and we’d have been kidding ourselves if we thought crashes weren’t going to happen. We did however keep mistakes to a minimum and I was impressed by everyone’s consistency and pace.
My suggestion for the team in future endurance events would be to perhaps reduce team size down to around 4 or 5 drivers and run two B team cars or a B and a C team. I think this would mean that everyone who wanted to be involved could be without worrying about pace as the two B teams could be split by ability or how competitive one felt.
Meeting so many like minded people from across the globe has been a fantastic experience and I look forward to driving with them again soon in more endurance based adventures as well as any other events that come our way.
