Finished off the 20th Anniversary tour and had a few races in the Ginetta Juniors MP races, including one around the Nurburgring, 2/3rd of the lap battling with another driver, ending up going side-by-side down the last straight and corners all the way to the chicane.
Biggest thing this weekend though was painting a replica of Conor Daly's livery at the Bonmarrito 500 WWT at Gateway - took me around 15 hours, but I've had to make a lot of the logos as I didn't have them. The Indycar badge took about 1.5h on its own, Chevrolet logo was horrid.
View attachment 1459800View attachment 1459802
Looks like a good livery for multiplayer racing...
I wound up revisiting some OG Builders' Cup tours over the weekend, working my way through the German Rivals in an E46 M3, and then the JDM Legends tour.
The E46 with a few basic modifications was an absolute peach to drive, sorta tuned to CSL+ levels of performance. Great traction, but a bit of controllable oversteer when required, and brilliant turn-in. The last race of the series at the Nordscheife, with the PP up to 700, I went a bit nuts with a widebody kit, M-Sport wing, suspension, brake and tire mods. Used the remaining points to up the power a little more, then in practise, since I was miles ahead of my target time I decided to start from P24. Still had the entire field passed by Steilstrecke. Cracking car that one, although I did inadvertently make it a bit nervous in the rear through fourth-gear sweepers, which required a bit of careful throttle control to balance.
For the JDM Legends tour I chose the black sheep of the group, the Mitsubishi 3000GT, resplendent in green and white PUMA livery from the Super Taikyu series cars. Dropped the weight, threw all the suspension and brake upgrades at it, and once again used the few PP I had left to give it a bit more power. And at the first two races? Well, it lived up to its in-period reputation for being a bit porky, aloof and slow. It was a whale - did not want to turn in at all, and couldn't brake as deep as either the Supras or the RX7s that seemed to have permanent control over the top 7-8 spots. The overly-tall gearing didn't help, and though I eventually managed to slipstream/barge my way up to 5th, it was not fun. Mugello was a largely similar experience; any advantages gained braking like a lunatic into the first corner or with the unexpectedly good entry into the second-last corner were squandered with miserable understeer through the last bend and through the two S-curvers at the top of the hill.
And then after that, it somehow seemed to click. I tweaked the differential settings, sending 68 percent of drive to the rear and loosening up the front in both accel and decel, as well as decel on the rear, and all of a sudden it started to come alive. It helps that Kyalami was next, but I found I could go easily flat through the sweeping left at the bottom of the hill, I was faster into and out of the first left-hander and up the hill into the following right-left complex, and I could get on the power far earlier than the competition out of the hairpin. And I managed my first win of the series. Then, Bathurst? In the rain? Oh hell yes, the big Mitsubishi sailed up the hill through the cutting, up through Reid Park and was flat-out almost everywhere while the Supras and RX7s struggled to put their power down. And I could brake late and turn hard into the Chase, and get on the power much earlier. It was a similar story at Maple Valley, the differentials really making the difference to keep the nose pointed into the corner on throttle through the corners, even if I nearly died every time I went through the last downhill corner onto the main straight. And with those two wins and a second at Suzuka for the final race I managed to win the series by four points.
Not bad 3000GT, not bad at all.
