Without the muscle memory from racing the much more responsive and neutral Garaiya, I had a pretty successful run with the Zexel GT-R this afternoon. I did spin once at the second corner as I went over too much of the rumble strip, although the car turned in the correct direction very quickly and I only lost four seconds. I also got stuck behind the "mobile chicanes" three times, including, perhaps crucially, in two of the last four laps, when I had soft tires in an attempt to claim the two points for getting the fastest lap. In total, those tedious half-laps cost me between five and ten seconds. I also was fairly inconsistent, although with very few obvious mistakes; I had a couple blistering laps on medium tires, but my pace was mostly mediocre. That said, I think my strategy was the best possible for me (although WVUscion's comment about a two-stop race on medium tires is unnerving, to say the least!
), and the lack of major mistakes that I already mentioned was a good sign. Near the end of the race, I was planning to post that I had gotten a nearly 100% clean race, with no AI or wall contact and only a single grass excursion, a brief one at the end of the spin I mentioned, but then I overdrove the last corner of the race on orange tires and bumped the wall on the front straight.
While I suppose it isn't altogether surprising if you think about it, I found that the total race times for the two classes were remarkably close. Clearly, the asphalt-shredding levels of grip in the GT300 cars negates much of their horsepower disadvantage.
I was far enough in that the pit speed limiter took over my car and backed it up (because it was stuck against the pit wall) and got it going for me.
Needless to say, it does not improve one's lap times.
None of them are driving the RX-7. 
