Das Race: My '97 M3/4/5

[Jake]

Probably a dumb question because part of racing is being on the track with tons of other cars, but do other cars generally slow you down a lot? How much faster could you be around a track if you had the track to yourself and didn't have to worry about other vehicles? Do you ever get a chance to have a track to yourself like for time qualifying or something?

You can definitely be a bit faster around the track without traffic ahead of you. Time Trial attempts to get this right, and usually does. Cars get gridded from theoretical fastest to theoretical slowest (and then actual fast --> slow based on first session lap times) so in theory, you should never pass anyone and have clean track. In practice, you'll get someone who goes a lot faster after their first session or two, so you do end up with a few passes. But, largely, it works.

W2W race groups all have qualifying, which should be like a Time Trial session. It's exactly the same approach. It also mostly works out.

Once you get into the actual race, though, it can be anyone's game. GTS2 got lucky at Hyperfest, and we were the first wave within our race (NASA runs multiple waves of cars - different groups - within each race) so we had clear track ahead of us. This meant we got the first green flag, then Spec E46 got a second green, then Spec E30 got a third. It worked well and we generally didn't have any issues as we started up front.

On a normal weekend, though, GTS2 is part of the "Thunder" race, which has GTS3/4/5, American Iron, Camaro/Mustang Challenge, and ST3. All of those cars are either faster overall (GTS3-5, STx) or faster in straight lines (V8 Murica stuff) but run slower lap times overall. We usually end up as one of the middle waves, and then it can be harder to go as fast as qualifying if you don't qualify well in the first place - the frontrunner guys in the wave behind you can catch up, and then you're in this mixed GTS2/CMC disaster.

Long answer but hopefully it explains it enough! The short answer is if you keep your right foot down hard enough, you should be able to run about as fast in the race as you do in qualifying, which should provide fairly ideal conditions for a hot lap.