GT3 Challenge Revisits The Glen

It’s been an exciting week of online racing as Week 1 of the iRacing.com GT3 Challenge Season 2 took us to the fast and simple Watkins Glen International Classic Course. It was chock full of action as we saw many new faces take to the field for the first time with the new BMW Z4 which proved to be the dominant car of choice this week. The gloomy grey skies and cool temperatures did little to quell the adrenaline rush which, for many, exploded in the first turn. With this week’s share of “Turn One heroes” as well as several epic battles between drivers and manufacturer’s alike, here’s a quick recap of some of the action.

The GT3 Challenge returns to The Esses of Watkins Glen

Being that it was a 30-minute online sprint race, many drivers attempted to quickly pass as many cars as possible while everyone was still bunched up at the start of the race. This caused many (did I say many? I meant MANY) incidents at the start of the races. Reminiscent of last season, the tow trucks were again kept busy. From the get-go, however, several of the prominent figures from Season 1 were emerging from the Week 13 break and they came out swinging. Among them was Finland’s Tapani Linnaluoto who finished P3 in Season 1. Linnaluoto, who drove the BMW Z4 in Week 1, notched several wins to his name this week and has already made it clear that he is a strong contender this season. Also planning to be a contender is relative newcomer to the GT3 series Kay Kaschube of Germany. Kaschube comes to the GT3 Challenge series after several successful seasons running the Corvette C6R in the iRacing Prototype & GT Challenge series. With multiple GT3 wins under his belt already, we can expect to see much more of Kaschube in the coming weeks. Another prominent driver who appeared was John Emerson. In a recent forum post, Emerson did some research of his own between the three GT3 cars.  In his test, he put 10 liters of fuel in each car, set each for minimum wing and did one flying lap in default weather at Talladega. Click here to see his results!

The new BMW Z4 was the prominent car used during Week 1.

With the first week of Season 2 done and in the books, the GT3 Challenge Series packs up and heads to Ontario, Canada. Eh? The 10 Turn 2.46 miles of the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (aka Mosport) will be the site for 30 minutes of adrenaline fueled racing. One of the world’s classic road courses, Mosport will undoubtedly bring a fair share of action (Turn Two anyone?). Will the BMW continue to be the driver favorite as it was at Watkins Glen? Will the RUF reemerge from the shadow cast by its newest rival to reclaim dominance? Or will the GT3 underdog, the McLaren MP4, be driven to its former glory?

Be sure to follow iRacingNews as we continue our coverage of Season 2 of the iRacing.com GT3 Challenge.

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