CAS-iRacing Community

Setting

Round 4 brought the Porsche Cup back to Germany and to the halfway point of the season — four rounds down, four to go. The Motorsport Arena Oschersleben is a 3.7 km, 14-corner circuit in Saxony-Anhalt, and it turned out to be a place where the racing was close and the passing was very hard. Two features decided the evening: the chicane, the one spot where a driver could genuinely get alongside, so nearly every overtake of the night started there; and the fast right-hander immediately after it, which collected car after car as drivers lost the rear on its exit. Fifteen drivers started, up from ten at Oran Park. Dry and clear, around 21 °C, 18 laps per race.

Qualifying

Lone Qualifying, three laps each, and Maurice Becker was in a class of his own: 1:24.244, six tenths clear of Willi Brand (1:24.845). Then Benjamin Schlosser (1:25.139), Andre Brechmann (1:25.236), Dominique Meyers (1:25.262), Remo Grossenbacher (1:25.416) and René Hollerung (1:25.507). Christian Schlosser set no time and started fifteenth.

Race 1 — Heat, 18 laps, standing start

Becker held the inside line into turn 1 against Brand's move around the outside, and that settled it: all 18 laps led, fastest lap of the race, 7.428 s in hand. It was a deliberately controlled drive and the booth read it as a direct answer to Oran Park, where he had thrown away both races. Brand followed him home on one incident point; Grossenbacher came from sixth to third and Hollerung from seventh to fourth. The real racing was in the midfield, and it produced the duel of the night: Jan Tobias Schrader against Antonio Cursio over eighth, lap after lap, with the clearly quicker car behind. Schrader was alongside at the chicane again and again and Cursio shut the door every time — firmly enough that the commentary called it hard, at moments too hard. Five hundredths separated them at the flag. Manfred Baar produced the recovery of the race, four places down on lap 1 and briefly last, then back to eighth. Behind, the circuit took its toll: Christian Schlosser spun after contact and lost eight minutes in the pits, Danny Platzer took a 24.7 s repair and finished a lap down on 13 incident points, and Benjamin Schlosser put it in the wall late but was still classified seventh.

Race 1 top five: Becker, Brand, Grossenbacher, Hollerung, Brechmann. Fastest lap: Maurice Becker, 1:24.311.

Race 2 — Feature, 18 laps, reverse-grid top 8

The inversion put Manfred Baar on pole and dropped Becker to eighth — and Baar jumped the start. The black flag came within seconds of the green and the drive-through ended his race as a contest before lap 1 was out; Dominique Meyers was black-flagged in the same moment and served on lap 1 too. On that same opening lap Baar and Antonio Cursio came together and Cursio went head-on into the wall, needing an 85-second repair. Benjamin Schlosser led the opening third from reverse-grid second and looked completely secure doing it — then lost the rear with nobody near him and handed the lead to Remo Grossenbacher. What settled second was a piece of team discipline: Hollerung, Grossenbacher's Big Point Racing team-mate, saw the Swiss was quicker and waved him through rather than hold him up. Grossenbacher was nine seconds clear by the flag. Hollerung then defended second from Maurice Becker superbly for lap after lap — Becker visibly quicker in several corners and still unable to find a way by — until Hollerung ran wide and spun himself out of it with minutes to go. Klaus Oberländer destroyed his car at the corner after the chicane and was out on lap 12; Christian Schlosser retired after 13.

Race 2 top five: Grossenbacher, Becker, Hollerung, Brand, Brechmann. Fastest lap: Maurice Becker, 1:24.386. Driver of the Day (round): Mario A Berger, merit 0.965.

Championship after Round 4

Remo Grossenbacher has taken the lead on 250 points from Alex Gründel (205), who did not start at Oschersleben — exactly the situation the season's single drop result exists to absorb. Then Dominique Meyers (182), Maurice Becker (172), Willi Brand (159) and René Hollerung (138). Four rounds gone, four to come.

Post-race: Jan Tobias Schrader

Schrader came on stream and cleared up the moment that had puzzled the booth — the point in the Feature where he suddenly let a whole group past. It was not a slowdown penalty: „Nein, hatte ich nicht. Ich bekam ein bisschen Rutschen ins Dreck. Ich hab den Wagen aber gefangen. Und dann sind die an mir vorbeigefahren.“ On his long Heat duel with Cursio: „Ich war ein gutes Stück schneller, aber rankommen und vorbeifahren sind zwei verschiedene Paar Schuhe, und ich wollte mich natürlich nicht irgendwo vorbeidrücken.“ He describes himself as a defensive racer — „wenn es nicht geht, geht nicht“ — and put his own result down to not having practised the circuit.

Notes from the booth

• The field grew back to fifteen after the ten-car low at Oran Park.
• Oschersleben can be rented in real life — roughly €50 for twenty minutes in your own car, floated on air as an idea for a future community outing.
• Calapex got a mention: Maurice Becker's new team-organisation platform, together with the write-up now on this site under Software — with the explicit note that the site is new and still being built out.
• The IEC three-hour multiclass series is still open for entries, solo drivers included.
• Next round: Donington Park, England, Thursday 10 September 2026.

Summary of the CAS Community Twitch broadcast by Thomas Herbrig. Results, grids, lap times and incident points taken from the iRacing event result (subsession 88275827); the Driver of the Day, the round points and the championship table come from CAS League Scoring (CLS); charts and the 2D replays are built from the iCASControl in-sim telemetry recording. Where the broadcast could not establish who caused an incident, this report does not speculate.

Setting

Round 3 took the Porsche Community Cup to the other side of the world — and to a circuit that no longer exists. Oran Park Raceway, in the south-west of Sydney, closed in 2010 and was swallowed by housing development; the 2.6 km Grand Prix layout survives only in iRacing. Its signature is the figure-eight bridge crossover, but the evening was decided by the corners at either end of the lap: the Turn 1–2 combination after the long straight, and the tight chicane before the final corner, where the kerb lifts a Cup car and the next corner collects it. The entry was the smallest of the season — ten drivers, down from sixteen at Jerez and nineteen at the Nürburgring — which the booth put down to the summer holidays and to internet problems reported in the Porsche Cup chat. Both races ran in the dark: the sim clock set the Heat at 17:20 and the Feature at 18:15 in early-May Australia, dry throughout, 21.3 °C falling to 20.4 °C.

Qualifying

Lone Qualifying, three laps each. Maurice Becker held provisional pole for most of the session on ~5000 iRating — and lost it on the very last lap to Remo Grossenbacher, 1:04.062 to 1:04.136. Benedikt Barth (1:04.465) and Alex Gründel (1:04.476) shared row two, from Andre Brechmann, Dominique Meyers, Klaus Oberländer, Antonio Cursio, Danny Platzer and Jürgen Michael Kraft.

Race 1 — 24 laps, standing start

Grossenbacher led every lap. Becker settled into second and stayed within about a second for fourteen laps without finding a way past — Oran Park’s only real passing place is the end of the long straight, and the tow is not strong enough to finish the job. He set the fastest lap of the race, 1:03.617, and then threw it away: two heavy shunts in quick succession, a 34.7 s repair and retirement on 16 laps. „Für mich ist Blackout dumm gelaufen“, he typed into the chat. Behind, the circuit kept collecting people. Alex Gründel was lifted over a kerb on lap 2 and fell to ninth, then fought his way back to fifth past a superbly defensive Antonio Cursio — who had earlier spun himself out on the exit of a pass he had already completed. Andre Brechmann lost the car before the ten-minute mark and was finished off by a 340 s stop on lap 14. Through all of it, Klaus Oberländer simply stayed on the road: seventh to second, 15.474 s down, one incident point.

Race 1 top five: Grossenbacher, Oberländer, Meyers, Barth, Gründel. Fastest lap: Maurice Becker, 1:03.617.

Race 2 — 24 laps, reverse-grid top 8

The inversion put Kraft on pole and dropped Grossenbacher to eighth — and lasted exactly two laps. Meyers led out of the first corner sequence, Gründel was past by lap 2, and Grossenbacher had gone from eighth to second in the same time. What followed was the race of the season so far: twenty-two of twenty-four laps with the two of them inside a second and a half, no contact, and 0.225 s between them at the flag. Grossenbacher had one early opening and refused it rather than take the leader out, then watched Turn 1 for a mistake that came twice but never big enough. He took the fastest lap, 1:03.943, on the final lap. Maurice Becker recovered from ninth to third before destroying the car at the final chicane for the third time in the evening; he took a 107 s repair and parked it. Andre Brechmann pitted on lap 1 and never rejoined. CLS records both as DSQ for the Feature. Antonio Cursio finished the night on 19 incident points and a black flag served on lap 17, and Jürgen Michael Kraft — from reverse pole — waved the quicker cars through and later lifted deliberately to stay out of a fight behind him.

Race 2 top five: Gründel, Grossenbacher, Meyers, Barth, Oberländer. Fastest lap: Remo Grossenbacher, 1:03.943. Driver of the Day (round): Klaus Oberländer, merit 0.877.

Post-race: Remo Grossenbacher

The round winner came on stream afterwards. On the track: „Mega, war eine Megastrecke. Man braucht viel Können, man braucht viel Mut, man braucht auch viel Willen — aber ich finde die Kombination Porsche Cup und Oran Park einfach wundervoll.“ On the fight for the win: the start was chaotic but he survived it and was on Gründel almost immediately, had one chance and let it go — „die Alternative wäre gewesen, ich hätte ihn abgeräumt“ — then spent the rest of the race looking for a mistake at Turn 1 that never quite came. „Ansonsten hat er dann einen perfect job gemacht.“

Notes from the booth

• Ten entries is the season low. Despite it, the verdict on air was „unglaublich viel Action“.
• Prize money still requires 7 of 8 rounds started, with one drop result — the rule combination Becker’s zero-score round is designed for.
• Oran Park cannot be traced from public map data because the venue was demolished, so the broadcast’s track map had to be drawn by hand. As a talking point the booth read out the circuit’s official lap record — 1:09.662, credited on air to Alex Davison and set on 13 August 2003, exactly 23 years to the day.
• Other CAS series: GT3 WCT has four rounds left after Le Mans; the SFL Cup is at Zolder on 19 August with Algarve now closing the season on 14 October; the Combined Cup restarts on 26 August at Okayama with the BMW M2 and a new rule requiring 75 % of the laps across both races to score; the IEC starts on 5 September at Sebring, solo entries allowed.
• Next round: Oschersleben, Germany, Thursday 27 August 2026.

Summary of the CAS Community Twitch broadcast by Thomas Herbrig. Results, grids, lap times and incident points taken from the iRacing event result (subsession 87937749); the Driver of the Day, the round points and the championship table come from CAS League Scoring (CLS); charts and the 2D replays are built from the iCASControl in-sim telemetry recording. Where the broadcast could not establish who caused an incident, this report does not speculate.

Setting

Round 2 brought the Porsche Community Cup home to Germany — though, as the commentary was quick to point out, the Nürburgring’s worldwide reputation rests on the Nordschleife rather than the Grand-Prix loop raced here. The GP circuit has its own character all the same: a tight, kerb-hungry Arena section, the double-apex Dunlop hairpin, the near-flat Schumacher-S, and a Veedol chicane that turned out to be the single most important corner of the evening. The field had grown from sixteen at Jerez to nineteen, with several season debutants — including Maurice Becker, whose ~5000 iRating made him the fastest man in the room before he had turned a wheel. Conditions were dry: 25 °C track, 18.8 °C air, light wind.

Qualifying

Ten minutes, three laps, fixed setup — and a pole margin of three thousandths. Becker took it with a 1:56.677 found in the final chicane on his last run, from Alex Gründel’s 1:56.680, with Dominique Meyers (1:56.924), Benjamin Schlosser (1:57.169) and Willi Brand (1:57.324) next. René Hollerung set no time and started last.

Race 1 — 13 laps, standing start

Gründel won the start and led into the Arena, and what followed was the race of the night: ten laps of Becker sitting between 0.18 s and 0.52 s behind, probing the inside at the end of the long straight, without a single touch between them — „sehr, sehr fair“, as the booth put it. The break came in the Veedol chicane, where a small Gründel error let Becker through; from there he left, winning by +6.55 s with the fastest lap (1:56.730) on lap 9. The opening lap wrecked several races behind: Benjamin Schlosser spun from fourth entirely unaided and again later, ending twelfth; Don Utz, Max Coldron and René Hollerung all took repairs, Hollerung losing 2:32 and a lap. Remo Grossenbacher climbed from sixth to the podium, while Meyers and Brand finished fourth and fifth split by 0.003 s — the same margin as pole. Christian Schlosser had the roughest night: a 4:07 repair on lap 7, a late black flag, 19th and two laps down.

Race 1 top five: Becker, Gründel, Grossenbacher, Meyers, Brand. Fastest lap: Maurice Becker, 1:56.730. Driver of the Day: Benjamin Schlosser.

Race 2 — 13 laps, reverse-grid top 8

The inversion put Jan Tobias Schrader on pole and Becker back to eighth. Schrader lost the lead almost immediately to Sean Pfennig, Gründel was up to fourth before the end of lap 1, and Becker worked forward more deliberately before clearing Schrader and disappearing — the final chicane again the decisive corner. Two starts, two wins, on debut, this time by +4.55 s. The drive of the night came from the back: René Hollerung, outside the reversed eight, started 18th and finished 7th for eleven places and eleven overtakes. Gründel closed to within 0.48 s of Grossenbacher in the fight for second but chose the championship over the risk; Willi Brand took the fastest lap (1:57.054) in fourth. Not covered on the broadcast, and taken from timing only: Dominique Meyers drew a black-flag pass-through seconds after the green, served it on lap 1 and still recovered to eighth; Klaus Oberländer dropped out after one lap and Clemens Müller-Rechner after five, both disconnected; Antonio Cursio collected a black flag, a 2:39 repair and 20 incident points on his way to 17th.

Race 2 top five: Becker, Grossenbacher, Gründel, Brand, Pfennig. Fastest lap: Willi Brand, 1:57.054. Driver of the Day: René Hollerung.

Notes from the booth

• Driver of the Day is new to PCCD this season, introduced after the league’s sponsor asked why the Porsche Cup did not have one. Round 1’s award went retroactively to Antonio Cursio.
• Prize money requires 7 of 8 rounds started, and there is one drop result — against three in the GT3 WCT.
• Jan Tobias Schrader, the only driver interviewed afterwards, explained his defensive policy: signal with a sharp weave and let clearly quicker cars through rather than lose time fighting them. His Race 1 eighth place — which handed him reverse-grid pole — came from a slowdown penalty, not tactics.
• League health: the GT3 WCT is past 50 registered drivers and now has a waiting list; the SFL round was cancelled because iRacing was down at race time; the IEC starts in September.
• Next round: Oran Park, Australia, on 13 August 2026.

Summary of the CAS Community Twitch broadcast by Thomas Herbrig. Results, lap times, grids and incident points taken from the iRacing event result (subsession 87590829); charts and the 2D replay built from the iCASControl in-sim telemetry recording. Names cross-checked against the official CAS League Scoring (CLS) roster for CAS PCCD Season 5. Where the broadcast could not establish who caused an incident, this report does not speculate.

Data-derived report. There was no broadcast transcript for this round, so everything below comes from the official iRacing event result, the CLS round and standings pages, and the in-sim iRaceControl telemetry logs. No motive or radio message is attributed to any driver.

Setting

Circuit Zolder in Belgium, in its Alternate configuration — four kilometres, ten corners, and by SFL standards a short lap: the SF Lights 324 needed barely 1:17, so each sprint fitted 16 laps into a little over 21 minutes. Nine of twenty registered drivers took the start. Eike Werner and Harald Pfeufer, who had both sat out the Nürburgring in the heatwave, were back and left with two of the biggest hauls of their season; championship contenders David Hoffmann and Dominic Waack missed the round entirely, as did Pascal Marx. This was Round 5 — the postponed Round 3 closes the season at the Algarve on 14 October.

Qualifying

Three laps, and Lucian Grabowski made it look routine: 1:17.042, pole by 0.871 s. Bernhard Wlach (1:17.913) and Kevin Chmielewski (1:17.991) shared the second row. Behind them it was absurdly tight — Andreas Wuschnakowski (1:19.096) and Thomas Herbrig (1:19.104) split by eight thousandths, Eike Werner (1:19.518) and Harald Pfeufer (1:19.539) by twenty-one. Marcus Rothe collected 15 incident points in the session, set no valid lap, and lined up last.

Race 1 — fifteen laps in the lead, and it goes on the sixteenth

Grabowski converted the pole and led every one of the first fifteen laps, never seriously pressured; by lap 15 he was 8.18 s clear of Chmielewski. Then came the last lap: a 1:27.882, flagged in the telemetry as a +10.46 s slow lap, and Chmielewski went past on a clean 1:18.730 to win by 0.549 s. Grabowski kept the fastest lap of the round (1:16.978, lap 9) and nothing else.

Marcus Rothe was the story behind. From last on the grid he was fifth by the end of lap 2 and third from lap 5, holding the final podium place for eight laps until a 1:25.350 on lap 13 let Bernhard Wlach back through — third at +22.395 s to Rothe’s +23.910 s. His 7 overtakes were the most of the evening. The rest of the order was written in the pit lane: Thomas Herbrig took a repair penalty and a black flag within 25 seconds and spent 78.8 s stationary on lap 3, Andreas Wuschnakowski 61.1 s on lap 4, and Friedrich Luhn — running a strong sixth — 143.1 s on lap 9.

Race 2 — full reverse grid, won from last

The reverse grid put Friedrich Luhn on pole and Chmielewski ninth. Luhn was in the pits 31 seconds after the green with a repair penalty, stopped twice for a combined 318 seconds, collected a black flag and parked after six laps. Thomas Herbrig led from lap 2 and then defended for six laps against Marcus Rothe, up from reverse-grid sixth — 0.04 s apart on lap 7, Rothe in front on lap 8, Herbrig back ahead on lap 9. The two spent 10 of the 16 laps within 1.5 s of each other.

While they fought, Chmielewski arrived: fourth by lap 4, 4.23 s back on lap 8, 0.91 s on lap 9, 0.08 s on lap 13, and ahead from lap 14 for a 4.574 s win with 8 overtakes and no positions lost. Herbrig held second with a zero-incident race and Eike Werner completed the podium at +9.588 s. Rothe crossed the line second on the road, 1.012 s behind the winner, but a black flag shown 16 seconds before the finish left him classified fourth at +35.648 s. Lucian Grabowski — a repair penalty, two stops, two more black flags — finished eighth and a lap down, with the fastest lap of the race.

Round podium & championship

Two wins from two sprints is the maximum this format allows: Kevin Chmielewski 61 pts (25+30+6), from Thomas Herbrig and Eike Werner on 46 each, Marcus Rothe 45, Lucian Grabowski 42, Bernhard Wlach and Harald Pfeufer 41, Andreas Wuschnakowski 38 and Friedrich Luhn 18.

Championship after Round 5 (CLS): P1 Lucian Grabowski 212 · P2 Kevin Chmielewski 201 · P3 Thomas Herbrig 158 · P4 Marcus Rothe 157 · P5 Bernhard Wlach 156 · P6 Andreas Wuschnakowski 144 · P7 Eike Werner 126 · P8 David Hoffmann 108 · P9 Dominic Waack 96 · P10 Pascal Marx 84. The lead is down from 30 points to 11, and third to fifth are covered by two points. Full per-race tables and the 2D replays are in the SFL Race Center.

Next round

Round 6 goes to Jerez GP on 2 September 2026. The postponed Round 3 at the Algarve International Circuit closes the season on 14 October.

No broadcast transcript this round — the report is derived from data throughout. Classification, teams and championship points are from CAS League Scoring (CLS); grid, gaps, best laps and incident points from the official iRacing event result (subsession 88080870); position-by-lap, lap times, pit and penalty timing from the in-sim iRaceControl telemetry logs.

Setting

The Nürburgring Grand-Prix-Strecke in its BES/WEC “no chicane” configuration — 16 turns, about 5.15 km, the layout the endurance series use. What made the round unusual was who was missing: twenty drivers are registered for Season 8 and six withdrew because of the heat — championship third Pascal Marx, fourth Eike Werner, plus Florian Brechmann, Riccardo Cavoto, Thomas Felix and Jim Gallo — leaving nine cars. The irony: after the GT3 WCT raced at Hockenheim in 44 °C track temperature the night before, the Nürburgring served up 19 °C. This was Round 4; Round 3 was postponed by iRacing maintenance and now closes the season at the Algarve on 14 October.

Qualifying

The closest session of the season. Lucian Grabowski and David Hoffmann traded the top slot lap for lap, and Grabowski took it back on his final run with a 1:45.457 — pole by three thousandths over Hoffmann’s 1:45.460. Nobody else got near: Kevin Chmielewski was third seven tenths back, from Andreas Wuschnakowski, Dominic Waack, Marcus Rothe, Bernhard Wlach, Thomas Herbrig and Friedrich Luhn.

Race 1 — a three-thousandth pole, gone in two seconds

Grabowski led into turn one, and two seconds after the green flag the black flag appeared: jump start. He served the drive-through on lap 1 and rejoined last. David Hoffmann inherited the lead before the end of lap 1, led all 12, set the fastest lap and won by 9.99 s. The racing was behind him and it was all Atzen Motorsport — Chmielewski, Rothe and Waack nose-to-tail in P2–P4 for ten laps, until Waack ran wide and waved Rothe through rather than defend a compromised line. On the final lap Bernhard Wlach finally attacked Wuschnakowski for fifth, out-braked himself and spun — handing sixth to the recovering Grabowski.

Race 2 — full reverse grid

The grid reversed completely: Luhn on pole, Hoffmann last. Herbrig led briefly, but Grabowski was past him and Luhn inside the opening lap and led all 12. The first corner did the damage — a multi-car collision shoved Wuschnakowski into Chmielewski and tore the rear wing off David Hoffmann, whose race ended there (DSQ, zero laps). Chmielewski needed a 165-second repair, Herbrig collected a repair penalty and two black flags, and Wuschnakowski served a drive-through. Grabowski won by 12.07 s from Marcus Rothe (from P7), with Dominic Waack third. Bernhard Wlach finished fourth on a visibly broken sidepod, and Friedrich Luhn took a career-best fifth with a single incident point by staying out of all of it.

Round podium & championship

Add the sprints together and neither race winner tops the round: P1 Marcus Rothe 52 pts (P3 + P2), P2 Lucian Grabowski 51, P3 Dominic Waack 47, then Chmielewski 44, Wlach 42, Wuschnakowski 40, Luhn 38, Herbrig 33 and race-1 winner David Hoffmann last on 31.

Championship after Round 4 (CLS): P1 Lucian Grabowski 170 · P2 Kevin Chmielewski 140 · P3 Bernhard Wlach 115 · P4 Thomas Herbrig 112 · P5 Marcus Rothe 112 · P6 David Hoffmann 108 · P7 Andreas Wuschnakowski 106 · P8 Dominic Waack 96. The two who stayed home paid for it — Pascal Marx falls to P9 (85) and Eike Werner to P10 (80). Full per-race tables and the 2D replays are in the SFL Race Center.

Next round

Round 5 heads to Zolder (Alternate layout) on 19 August 2026. The postponed Round 3 at the Algarve closes the season on 14 October.

Narrative from the cas_sim_tv broadcast (Max Coldron, with David Hoffmann on comms). Classification, teams and championship points are from CAS League Scoring (CLS); grid, gaps, best laps and incident points from the official iRacing event result (subsession 87736844); charts and replays from the in-sim iRaceControl telemetry logs.

Setting

The Autodromo Internazionale del Mugello, in the Tuscan hills, is a fast, flowing Grand Prix circuit that rewards commitment through its sweeping esses. 13 drivers took the grid in identical SF Lights 324 single-seaters for Round 2 of the CAS Super Formula Lights Cup, on a dry track that climbed from 25 to 31 °C. Format: lone qualifying, then two 13-lap sprints — Race 1 from the grid, Race 2 on a top-10 reverse grid. Broadcast live on cas_sim_tv.

Qualifying

Pascal Marx took pole at 1:37.065, edging Lucian Grabowski (1:37.216) and David Hoffmann (1:37.328) — the top three covered by barely a quarter of a second.

Race 1 — standing start

Marx converted pole into his first win of the season, managing his tyres carefully in the heat while Grabowski (P2, +0.76 s) and Hoffmann (P3, fastest lap 1:36.816) shadowed him but never got into striking range. The best fights were further back, where Bernhard Wlach recovered from a weak start with long, fair duels. It was a cleaner, lower-overtake race than Fuji. Friedrich Luhn spun and Thomas Felix retired.

Race 2 — reverse grid

The reverse grid was decided at the first corner: a five-wide crash at Turn 1 collected four cars, with Marx an innocent victim after being rear-ended. From P9, Grabowski charged through to win and controlled it from the front. Kevin Chmielewski took P2, and Eike Werner passed Wlach around the outside for P3, leaving Bernhard Wlach P4 and Thomas Herbrig a fine P5. Marx recovered to P7 with the fastest lap (1:37.053). David Hoffmann crashed out and dropped from second to sixth in the championship.

Round podium & championship

Combined round podium (per CLS): P1 Lucian Grabowski, P2 Kevin Chmielewski, P3 Pascal Marx. Grabowski banked 58 points on the day.

Championship after Round 2 (CLS): P1 Lucian Grabowski 119 · P2 Kevin Chmielewski 96 · P3 Pascal Marx 85 · P4 Eike Werner 81 · P5 Thomas Herbrig 79 · P6 David Hoffmann 77 · P7 Bernhard Wlach 73. Full per-race tables and the 2D replays are in the SFL Race Center.

Next round

Round 3 heads to the Algarve International Circuit on 22 July 2026.

Narrative based on the cas_sim_tv broadcast. Classification and lap data are from the official iRacing result; championship points are from CAS League Scoring (CLS).

Setting

The Streets of St. Petersburg — 2.9 km, fourteen corners, a combined street-and-airfield course on the Florida coast that has hosted racing since 1985. Concrete on both sides and essentially no run-off, and, as the broadcast opened, a track „geliebt, gefürchtet, gehasst, wie auch immer“. Two things shaped the evening before a wheel turned: the heat, with the surface climbing from roughly 44 °C to 57.8 °C by the flag, and the pit exit, flagged as a hazard on air before the start and then the direct cause of two drivers’ races ending. Format as usual: split qualifying, AM first and Pro second, 60 % fuel and one mandatory stop, tyre changes optional and taken by nobody. 29 drivers started. Round 10 was also the round where drop results began to count.

Qualifying

Elias Schleich set the AM benchmark at 1:11.559 and it was quick enough for fifth on the combined grid — a Mercedes among the Pro runners, and the booth’s verdict was that he belongs in Pro next season. In the Pro session Maurice Becker took pole with a 1:11.350, three hundredths clear of Yannick Wonnenberg (1:11.384) and four clear of Lukas Zörlaut (1:11.390). Dennis Richter was fourth, Mike Zocher sixth. Twenty-nine cars were covered by 1.4 s.

Race — the opening lap

Becker lost the lead at the first corner: Wonnenberg went around the outside and led across the line. Behind them the midfield folded — a car stopped sideways in a bad place and the chain reaction that followed brought out a full course yellow for three laps, the only caution of the race. Benjamin Warnow and Marius Becker both took repairs of around 200 seconds on lap 1; for Warnow, the AM championship leader coming in, it was the worst possible start. The yellow also saved a great deal of fuel and compressed the field, handing Justin Christiansen and Michael Endres eleven and thirteen places before the green flew again. Marius Becker’s night then got worse: a black flag for a pit infringement and a 92-second stop on lap 4.

Race — the stalemate

The restart replayed the start, and then nothing happened for half an hour. Wonnenberg led, Becker sat behind, and the two of them ran thirty-three of the forty-seven laps within 1.5 s of each other, the gap oscillating between about four tenths and nine. Becker set the fastest lap of the race — a 1:11.959 on lap 17 — and it bought him nothing; Wonnenberg answered with a 1:12.076. Behind them Dennis Richter and Lukas Zörlaut ran third and fourth, with championship leader Mike Zocher quietly fifth, and Elias Schleich sixth overall and untouched at the head of AM.

Race — decided in the pit lane

Becker pitted first, on lap 33: 36.5 s stationary. Wonnenberg stayed out three laps longer and his stop went wrong — he overshot his crew, reversed, still had no fuel going in, reversed again, and sat for 43.1 s, nearly nine seconds off the fastest stop of the race. Becker came out ahead, led from lap 39 to the flag, and the commentary called it as it happened: „Rennsieg in der Boxengasse.“ It cost Wonnenberg second place as well: short of fuel on the last lap, he had to lift, and Mike Zocher — who had pitted a lap later still and lost nothing doing it — took second on the final tour.

The pit exit

The other story of the round happened twice at the end of the pit lane. St. Petersburg’s exit rejoins at a point where the exiting driver cannot see the track and the driver on track cannot see the exit. On laps 36–37, with Markus Groß coming out, both Lukas Zörlaut and Dennis Richter were caught. Richter’s race ended after 37 laps; Zörlaut needed a 132-second repair and finished a lap down in 23rd. Richter came on the broadcast while the race was still running and was notably fair about it: „In meinen Augen kann da keiner von uns beiden irgendwas für. Ich hab mir beide Onboards angeguckt. Beide sehen nichts. Also wirklich nichts.“ He noted that a real pit exit has a blue warning light and iRacing gives the driver nothing equivalent here. Andreas’ conclusion on air: St. Petersburg is unlikely to return to the calendar.

Class wins

Elias Schleich took a commanding AM win — fifth overall, twelve seconds clear of the next AM car — from Ricardo Still and Dirk Bolte. It puts him at the head of the AM championship, past Benjamin Warnow, whose lap-1 repair left him seventh in class. In the GDC only two starters appeared, the rest of the CAS Tech Performance contingent having withdrawn: Michael Endres beat Markus Heinzl by two places.

Notable incidents & attrition

• Lap 1 — multi-car chain reaction, three laps of full course yellow; Warnow and Marius Becker both take ~200 s repairs.
• Mike Girenz — retires after eight laps on 16 incident points, the season limit; DSQ in the CLS classification.
• Thomas Kuebler — had climbed from 28th to 18th and was on course to be the drive of the night when the server dropped him on lap 22; DSQ in the CLS classification.
• Klaus Oberländer — more than one spin, nine incident points, still twelfth.
• Danny Platzer — into the wall, 263 s repair, two laps lost; Andreas Bastian put his Porsche into the barriers twice.
• Laps 36–37 — the pit-exit collisions that ended Richter’s race and wrecked Zörlaut’s.

Final classification — top 10 (overall)

P1 Maurice Becker (Porsche 911 GT3 R, pole, FL 1:11.959) · P2 Mike Zocher (BMW M4, +11.699 s) · P3 Yannick Wonnenberg (BMW M4, +12.107 s, led 36 laps) · P4 Markus Groß (Ferrari 296, +14.744 s) · P5 Elias Schleich (Mercedes-AMG, +26.113 s, AM win) · P6 Gregor Micewski (Aston Martin, +26.977 s) · P7 Ricardo Still (McLaren 720S, +36.327 s) · P8 Robert Gradwohl (Ferrari 296, +37.770 s) · P9 Justin Christiansen (BMW M4, +39.778 s, from P25) · P10 Dirk Bolte (Porsche 911 GT3 R, +40.105 s). Class winners: Pro Maurice Becker, AM Elias Schleich (P5), GDC Michael Endres (P19). Full 29-car classification in the Race Center.

Post-race interviews

Maurice Becker was cheerful and matter-of-fact, and had missed the lap-1 crash entirely. On the conditions: „Mit 50 Grad — puh, die Strecke ist Lava.“ Before the race he had also demoed the team-management platform he has been building for several months — one site pulling together calendars, setups, liveries, a sim-planner and an embedded stream centre across iRacing, ACC, LMU and others, so teams no longer need a spreadsheet plus three other tools. The platform is Calapex (calapex.de) — free to use, and written up in more detail on our Software page. Yannick Wonnenberg was blunt about the stop that cost him the win — „Ich habe halt leider meinen Boxenstopp komplett verkackt“ — and confirmed he had not changed tyres; the four seconds were entirely the overshoot and the two reverses.

Off-track notes

• Driver of the Day — Justin Christiansen (#15, Neon Simsports Blue, Pro): merit score 0.904, the highest of the season — P25 to P9, twenty overtakes, four incident points. Also flagged: Fritz Morawetz (P26→P16, 24 overtakes), Ricardo Still (P18→P7) and Kevin Osiewacz (P16→P11).
• The Season 13 special event was revealed — Round 12, on 7 September, goes to Montreal, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, with a longer race distance and different fuel settings than a normal round.
• Championship — Zocher’s second place keeps him top of Pro on 312, but Becker’s win closes it to ten points with two rounds left. Schleich leads AM on 340 from Warnow (322). Heinzl still leads the GDC; Speed Monkeys lead the teams on 452.
• Season 14 — registration is open and the calendar is drafted. To break the run of repeated street circuits the league will base it on the GT Sprint calendar and, in weeks that throw up an unpopular track, borrow from the three regional GT3 series instead — the constraint being that drivers must be able to practise in officials during the week, which rules out IMSA.
• Next round — Round 11, Red Bull Ring, Tuesday 1 September 2026.

Narrative from the cas_sim_tv broadcast (Andreas). Classification, the Pro/AM/GDC split, points and the Driver of the Day are from CAS League Scoring (CLS); gaps, best laps and incident points from the iRacing event result (subsession 88225929); the charts and 2D replay from the in-sim iRaceControl telemetry log. That log contains no incident, flag or penalty events for this round, so every incident figure quoted here is the official iRacing one.

Setting

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course — 3.92 km, 14 numbered corners, no names, because a third of the lap is the oval and the oval doesn’t do names. The evening’s real story was grip: an overcast, hazy in-sim morning at 25 °C, and a track everyone described as unusually slippery, worse than in the equivalent iRacing official. Best guess on air was humidity; the surface looked patchy and the haze never burned off. Format as usual: two 15-minute qualifying sessions, AM first and Pro second, 60 % fuel and one mandatory stop, tyre changes optional and taken by nobody. 28 drivers appeared — 16 Pro, 12 AM — after a long list of summer withdrawals including AM championship leader Elias Schleich. Round 9 was also the registration deadline: the Season 13 entry list is now closed.

Qualifying

The AM session was a genuine scrap: Manfred Baar set the first mark, Christoph Kiesel took it, Ricardo Still and Benjamin Warnow traded it twice, and Björn Krumpschmied put the field’s only Corvette second in class. In the last seconds Ricardo Still found two tenths for AM pole with a 1:24.152, from Warnow (1:24.245) and Kiesel (1:24.346). The Pro session was decided by thousandths — Wonnenberg first into the 1:23s, Maurice Becker past him, Lukas Zörlaut past Becker, and Wonnenberg’s reply one thousandth short. He found it in the end: pole with a 1:23.672 from Dennis Richter (1:23.703), Maurice Becker (1:23.753), Markus Groß (1:23.818) and Zörlaut (1:23.826). The top five were covered by 0.154 s, and all 28 entrants set a time.

Race — the twenty minutes that decided it

Green flag, contact at Turn 1 that wrecked Michael Gessner’s BMW and tore the bumper off Kevin Homburg’s Mercedes — no caution, the field sorted itself out, and Gessner was then hit again by Homburg’s detached bumper. At the front Wonnenberg was a second clear within two laps, and behind him the race that decided the race began. Maurice Becker versus Dennis Richter ran the best part of twenty minutes and ran identically every lap: Becker in the tow, Becker around the outside into Turn 1, Richter with the better exit. Becker eventually forced it on the inside after the infield straight; Richter took the place straight back; only the next attempt stuck. By then Wonnenberg had a cushion he never had to defend. Markus Groß was hit hard at the rear in the same phase and lost fourteen places from P4; Alvin Frauenknecht and Ricardo Still collided and Frauenknecht’s bumper flew off.

Pit phase & second stint

Roughly 60 seconds stationary was the working number, and the field was covered by five seconds — except Gregor Micewski at 82.6 s, which cost him five places. The window opened with the damaged cars on laps 17–19 and the bulk came in between laps 24 and 27. Maurice Becker stopped on lap 26 and was held up at the pit entry by another car; Wonnenberg ran a lap longer, got a clean stop and came out still leading and with time gained. Groß’s early stop was the one piece of real strategy, worth P15 back to P7. The last third was Wonnenberg managing the gap at three seconds and easing off entirely for the final three laps — hence the 1.730 s margin. Mike Zocher took third from Dennis Richter late.

Battles of the day

• Warnow vs. Kiesel for the AM win — 33 of 42 laps within 1.5 s, settled in the last corner of the last lap by 0.334 s.
• Becker vs. Richter, P2 — twenty minutes, one pass, one counter-pass, and the race handed to the leader.
• Krumpschmied vs. Still — the Corvette got to 0.3 s of the AM podium place and tried both sides; Still had the line every time.
• Kuebler vs. Gradwohl — cross-class, tenths apart for laps on end, and Kuebler declined the one opening he was given.

Notable incidents & attrition

• Kevin Homburg — bumper gone at the start, a slowdown, the escape road, several spins, a stop after a crash, then a black flag for reaching the 16-point incident limit and a drive-through of that endless pit lane. Race over after 31 laps and 15 incident points, the most in the field.
• Justin Christiansen — spun on lap 1 and again late, took a 3½-minute repair on lap 38 and did not return; the official result files him as Disconnected after 37 laps, which is iRacing’s label for leaving the session.
• Michael Gessner — hit twice in the opening minute and a third slowdown later, and still brought a wrecked BMW home P19.
• Cleanest run — Christoph Kiesel, the only zero-incident sheet in the field, set while fighting for an AM win.
• No attrition in the classical sense — all 28 were classified, 22 on the lead lap, and the hour ran without a single caution period.

Final classification — top 10 (overall)

P1 Yannick Wonnenberg (BMW M4 GT3 EVO, pole, led all 42 laps) · P2 Maurice Becker (Porsche 911 GT3 R, +1.730 s, FL 1:24.040) · P3 Mike Zocher (BMW M4, +11.781 s) · P4 Dennis Richter (Ferrari 296, +12.434 s) · P5 Lukas Zörlaut (Ferrari 296, +12.811 s) · P6 Marius Becker (Ford Mustang, +25.163 s, from P12) · P7 Markus Groß (Ferrari 296, +25.478 s) · P8 Alvin Frauenknecht (McLaren 720S, +26.347 s) · P9 Fritz Morawetz (Ferrari 296, +34.656 s) · P10 Benjamin Warnow (Ferrari 296, +38.327 s). Class winners: Pro Wonnenberg, AM Benjamin Warnow (P10), GDC Björn Krumpschmied (P13). Full 28-car classification in the Race Center.

Post-race interviews

Maurice Becker on why the Porsche couldn’t finish the job: “I could definitely get plenty of slipstream, but I was always only on the A-line, and because of that I couldn’t do much.” On his method: “I just applied a bit of pressure, stressed him a bit — and at some point it simply worked.” And on the cost: “What annoys me a bit is that I spent so much time on track with Dennis. That obviously threw me back.” Yannick Wonnenberg was watching the weather the whole time, with the rain percentage ticking up: “I wanted as much margin as possible in case a decision was needed.” After the stop he held the gap at three seconds deliberately and backed off completely for the last three laps.

Off-track notes

• Driver of the Day — Robert Zellner (#360, Neon Simsports Orange, AM): merit score 0.772 — seven places gained from P27 to P20, 16 overtakes, two incident points, and a mid-race crash recovered from along the way. Mike Girenz was the other candidate discussed on air.
• Championship — the Pro lead changed hands: Mike Zocher (274) now leads Lukas Zörlaut (272) by two points. In AM, Benjamin Warnow’s class win puts him top on 314 from the absent Elias Schleich (300). Markus Heinzl still leads the GDC on 199; Speed Monkeys lead the teams on 397.
• New this season — gold, silver and bronze medals were shown on stream for the Gentleman Driver Challenge, rewarding the drivers who turn up week after week in the parallel classification.
• Next round — Round 10, St. Petersburg Grand Prix, Tuesday 25 August 2026, followed by the Red Bull Ring on 1 September and the season’s special event on 7 September.

Narrative from the cas_sim_tv broadcast (Andreas). Classification, the Pro/AM/GDC split, points and the Driver of the Day are from CAS League Scoring (CLS); gaps, best laps and incident points from the iRacing event result (subsession 88055986); the charts and 2D replay from the in-sim iRaceControl telemetry log.

Setting

The Circuit des 24 Heures du Mans in its full 24-hour configuration — 13.6 km, 38 corners, three quarters of it public road, with the two Hunaudières chicanes and the Porsche Curves. Lap times of nearly four minutes changed the shape of the whole evening: qualifying ran as two 15-minute sessions, AM first and Pro after, which left each driver two or three realistic timed laps. Because the chicane before start–finish makes a two-abreast formation lap dangerous, Round 8 used a single-file rolling start — a first for the season, and by the drivers’ own verdict it worked cleanly. Andreas noted 41 drivers were signed up but only 33 appeared.

Qualifying

The AM session belonged to Ricardo Still, whose McLaren took class pole with a 3:54.868 from Hubert Diethard (3:55.927) and Marcel Holtmann (3:56.149); championship leader Elias Schleich managed only P13 on the grid. In the Pro session Maurice Becker answered the pre-race talk about the Porsche being hopeless here with an early 3:53.652, before Yannick Wonnenberg found a tow on his very last lap and took pole with a 3:52.590, 0.315 s clear of Mike Zocher. Two big names lost their session entirely: Markus Groß, the Hockenheim winner, crashed on his flying lap and started P22, and Kevin Homburg never got a lap counted at all and started P32.

Race — two laps that decided it

The single-file start went through the chicane without a scratch and Wonnenberg led lap 1 and every lap after it. Lap 2 then removed a quarter of the front of the grid: Michael Gasser, quickest McLaren of the weekend, tangled attempting a pass and was in the garage; Aaron Hatcher put his McLaren into the barriers almost simultaneously; and Mike Zocher came off a kerb awkwardly, spun and rejoined P17. Michele Grupe was out by lap 3. That promoted Dennis Richter to second, and the race at the front stopped there — fourteen laps within two seconds and not a single attempt at a pass.

Pit phase & strategy

Everybody took the single mandatory stop, and almost everybody took it on laps 7 or 8. Over a 16-lap race there was no fuel-saving alternative and therefore no strategy: the order came out of the pit lane exactly as it went in. Service times clustered between 54.8 s and 58.3 s — the long Le Mans pit lane makes even a clean fuel-only stop expensive. Only Justin Christiansen (76.0 s) and Thomas Herbrig (80.8 s) lost real time there.

Battles of the day

• The fastest lap that wasn’t — Wonnenberg’s 3:53.686 on lap 8, answered by Zocher with a 3:53.687. One thousandth of a second over 13.6 km.
• Still vs. Schleich for the AM lead — the title rivals ran nose to tail through the first stint, Schleich attacking at the Porsche Curves and Still holding every time. He finished five places and 16 seconds ahead.
• The recovery drives — Homburg P32→P10, Markus Groß P22→P8, Zocher P17→P7 after his lap-2 spin.

Notable incidents & attrition

• Four retirements — Gasser and Hatcher after 2 laps, Grupe after 3, Mario Severn after 8. All four quit the race after damage rather than limping on — the official result files them as “disconnected”, which is iRacing’s label for leaving the session, not a lost connection. Every other car reached the flag.
• Manfred Baar’s barrel roll — the night’s most spectacular moment, and from the outside not his fault. He finished P28.
• Toughest race — Marcel Holtmann on 11 incident points. Three drivers finished on zero: the winner, Gregor Micewski and Elias Schleich.
• Data note — this round’s telemetry log contains no incident stream at all, only two forced repairs (Michael Endres, Michael Gasser). The incident points quoted are the official iRacing figures.

Final classification — top 10 (overall)

P1 Yannick Wonnenberg (BMW M4 GT3 EVO, pole, FL 3:53.686, 0 inc) · P2 Dennis Richter (Ferrari 296, +0.639 s) · P3 Maurice Becker (Porsche 911 GT3 R, +14.489 s) · P4 Gregor Micewski (Aston Martin Vantage, +15.279 s) · P5 Kevin Osiewacz (Mercedes-AMG, +19.124 s) · P6 Lukas Zörlaut (Ferrari 296, +21.228 s) · P7 Mike Zocher (BMW M4, +22.098 s) · P8 Markus Groß (Ferrari 296, +25.768 s, from P22) · P9 Klaus Oberländer (BMW M4, +31.921 s) · P10 Kevin Homburg (Mercedes-AMG, +39.950 s, from P32). Class winners: Pro Wonnenberg, AM Ricardo Still (P11), GDC Markus Heinzl (P17). Full 33-car classification in the Race Center.

Off-track notes

• Driver of the Day — Kevin Homburg (#41, CAS Tech Performance Red, Pro): merit score 0.986 — 22 places gained from P32 to P10, 21 recovered from a P31 low, 22 overtakes, one incident point. Runners-up: Markus Groß, Don Utz and Christian Kaschta. Klaus Oberländer, the Hockenheim winner, was not eligible for a back-to-back award.
• Winner’s verdict — Yannick Wonnenberg on the cars: BMW and Ferrari were the right tools for Le Mans, the McLaren was quick but too rare in the field to be called dominant, and the Porsche was the expected compromise on a track defined by top speed. Which makes Becker’s third place the quiet performance of the night.
• Guest rig — Michael Endres raced from André Rajkovic’s house, in Rajkovic’s motion rig with a VR headset: different pedals, seating position and field of view, and still P26 at the flag.
• Next round — Round 9, Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Road Course), Tuesday 18 August 2026. It is also the registration deadline: after Indianapolis the Season 13 entry list closes.

Narrative from the cas_sim_tv broadcast (Andreas). Classification, the Pro/AM/GDC split and points are from CAS League Scoring (CLS); gaps, best laps and incident points from the iRacing event result (subsession 87885895); the charts and 2D replay from the in-sim iRaceControl telemetry log.

The start — the concertina effect through the chicane

The replay made it obvious: by the time the leaders took the green flag, the back of the field had not even cleared the Allard chicane. Gaps of three or more car lengths ran through the whole rear half — partly the chicane’s fault, partly self-protection, because everyone behind feared sudden braking ahead. Two practical findings: from the cockpit the distances feel far closer than they are — most overlays show a gap readout, and around 3 m bumper-to-bumper is a safe formation distance worth calibrating against. And a structural fix was proposed for next season: race control announces a grid-formation point (e.g. mid-way down the preceding straight, or simply via a chat call “grid formation now”), from which everyone holds a fixed reduced pace — around 70–75 km/h was suggested — and tyre-weaving stops, since the weaving is what tears the gaps open. Two-wide through the chicane at that speed is no problem, and the back of the field finally gets a chance to close up before green. Many other leagues run exactly this; it goes into the improvement-proposals channel.

Lap 1 — a pit-entry mix-up and an optimistic dive

The first flashpoint came before Turn 1: one car ran far right along the pit wall — the driver later explained he believed he was heading into the pits — and contact followed. The replay’s onboard raised a second question: after the initial touch the steering stayed turned towards the other car instead of opening up. The room explicitly declined to assume intent — iRacing’s netcode can briefly “glue” two cars together in close contact — but the follow-up steering input was flagged as the avoidable part. Context mattered too: it was the first racing lap on a green, cold track that everyone agreed was more than slippery.

The second flashpoint was the chicane: a dive from very far back, braking at the 50-metre board with a lot of optimism. The subtlety from the replay: the diving car appeared to time its braking off a Porsche making the same move ahead — a move that worked for the Porsche — rather than off its own braking references, and the car behind it expected a two-wide entry, not a late lunge. Full braking from that depth also means understeer; the result was contact and scattered debris. The takeaway was less about blame than about lap-1 calibration: brake on your own marks, and don’t copy the braking point of a different car on different tyres.

The outside-line 50/50

Mid-race, a car on six-lap-fresher tyres went around the outside of a rival who had just left the pits on a cold set — the outside line being, at that corner, essentially the racing line. The inside car had little room left to give under the rules; the outside car carried the speed advantage but also all the classic outside-line risk: the inside car’s understeer was always going to come, and it did. The room’s verdict was a clean 50/50 racing incident — both could have backed out, neither did. The strategic point for an hour-long race: with a big tyre delta, shorting the corner and re-passing with the slipstream into the chicane is often the cheaper move than committing around the outside against a car on cold rubber.

Full speed into the pit-entry queue

A separate incident at the pit entry: a car slowed early through the final chicane to position its pit-in — staying as far right as it could — and the car behind held full speed onto it. The room’s read: everyone knows where the pit entry is and that cars will be slowing there; running flat into that zone is your own risk, and in this case the offending car effectively penalised itself with the damage it took.

Paper cars — damage after the latest patch

One driver finished the race with a bent steering column and a missing splitter after a contact that looked harmless — “the cars are made of paper since the last patch” was the room’s shorthand. The instructive part: the other driver involved never realised the car was wounded. He saw the missing splitter but read the slow pace as a fuel-saving problem — and iRacing’s own contact report claimed no damage at all. The lesson cuts both ways: after any contact, assume the other car may be crippled even if it looks intact, and don’t trust the “0x” in the contact log.

Lapping etiquette — both sides of the blue flag

The most constructive thread of the night. A driver from the slower end of the field described the stress of being hustled mid-corner while already fighting a difficult car on dead tyres: “I’m happy to lift on the straight and let anyone by — but once I’m committed to a corner, I can’t dissolve into thin air.” The faster drivers’ answer was unanimous and practical: the easiest car to lap is one that stays on the racing line and simply lifts where it’s safe — because the line is the one place the approaching car can predict. Well-meant moves off the line to make room are exactly what faster drivers cannot anticipate; one driver recalled nearly wrecking someone years ago doing precisely that. A counter-example from a previous round was raised — a backmarker inserting himself into a 0.3-second fight he had no stake in, nearly collecting a third car — against a positive one from this race: a clearly faster car arriving on a three-way scrap and simply waiting it out. Context decides: early in a race a re-pass attempt is fair game; deep in the field with nothing to gain, patience costs nothing and protects someone else’s race.

Car talk — the Ferrari is a pair of pliers

Two drivers are testing the Ferrari 296 ahead of a possible switch next season, and the verdict so far is affectionate but wary: “a real Giftzange” — sharp, direct, and merciless. It wants calm inputs and one very specific skill: hitting the brake at exactly the right spot and trailing exactly the right percentage into the corner. Get it right and the front end loads up beautifully; let it start sliding and “everything turns to mush” over all four tyres at once. The counter-intuitive trick of the week: where a lift makes it slide wide, holding part-throttle — just over half — pulls it back into line, because lifting drags the rear tyres through engine braking. The Mustang, by contrast, was praised as thoroughly good-natured; and for the smooth-input drivers in the field, the room reckoned the Ferrari might be the faster home.

Summary of the community post-race briefing following CAS GT3 WCT Season 12, Round 11 at Thruxton. Race facts cross-checked against the CAS League Scoring (CLS) classification; some incidents may still be under review.