It’s crunch time in Season 3 of The Sim Grid Sprint Cup, and after a wild, weather-affected race at Zolder, there’s plenty of stories to pick apart from the penultimate round. Here, we’ll go behind the scenes to speak to some of the key drivers involved in what was a Sim Grid classic. 

Harry Spiers – SideMax Motorworks #285

Although not in the hunt for the title, it was Harry Spiers and Marcell Fuzy who stole the early headlines at Zolder when they claimed their first-ever pole position in The Sim Grid Sprint Cup. With Spiers behind the wheel, the team managed to set a strong flying lap before the looming rain clouds hit the circuit. As Spiers goes on to explain, the sudden downpour was something that SideMax Motorworks had planned for all along.

“I saw at the end of free practice that it was going to rain in 30 minutes, so I was shocked when the heavens hadn’t opened before quali started,” he said. 

“I knew that it was essentially going to be a Superpole session, which I love so that was a treat. I just wanted to get a single lap down before it rained, so I did a banker lap then just started going all-out, trying to set as many laps as possible before the rain started – which happened to be after only my second hot lap. I couldn’t believe my luck when I managed a 27.3 on my second lap.”

Things would be a bit trickier in the race though. Despite fending off attacks from Niels van de Koekelt and Robbie Stapleford for most of his stint, Spiers was the first to admit that he struggled for pace in the rain.

“Wet weather driving is actually my weakest skill set when I reflect on my driving,” he revealed. “I don’t feel like I shy away from the limit when the rain starts coming down, but it feels like everybody has this hidden secret of how to drive in the wet that I’ve not figured out yet.

“I was a lot slower than those behind me in the race, helped in no small part by the fact I forgot to make adjustments to our dry setup to suit the wet, so it felt like we had a couple of bananas for brake pads!” 

Nevertheless, SideMax Motorworks were still fighting around the top five when Spiers pulled into the pits for a driver swap. Unfortunately. that wouldn’t last for long. Shortly after Fuzy hopped into the car, he made contact with Excel Racing’s Ferrari, thus earning the team a drive-through penalty.

“It’s always frustrating when it happens,” Spiers explained. “My friends always tell me that I go silent when an endurance race goes awry. We go way back though, so I’m not sure I could find it in me to lose my rag with him. As I said to Marcell, he may have crashed, but that just means less ballast for us at Suzuka!”

Maximilian Wohlmuth – Excel Racing by RennWelten #16

Being the penultimate round, this race was always going to have a big impact upon the state of play in the championship standings. One team to benefit from the drama in Belgium was Excel Racing by RennWelten, however, when they were on the receiving end of that punt from Fuzy, it looked like they might be one of the casualties instead.

“Yeah, he was just too late on the brakes and touched me slightly at the rear, which is sadly enough to spin a car in ACC.” said Max Wohlmuth, who had only just taken over driving duties from Fèlix Ruppert when the accident happened. 

“Obviously incidents can get you a little bit out of your focus, but I think in that race it didn’t change that much.”

Despite that less-than-ideal start, Wohlmuth soon found his rhythm and towards the end of the race was battling for a step on the podium. Sadly though, it wasn’t meant to be, as Manos Gerardis and Jaroslav Honzik both managed to pass the Ferrari driver.

“The conditions were very difficult, and before the race, I even said that the worst situation for us could be a drying track because we were on a fully wet setup and I think I haven’t been driving on a drying track in the Ferrari until this race,” Wohlmuth explained. 

“On top of that, we hadn’t got our dry tyre pressures spot on, which made me fight with the car all the way through the stint. I don’t think that I could’ve done much different there apart from just having that last bit of consistency, which is still missing, but you’re always learning and improving.”

In the end, the team would come away with a very respectable fifth position, elevating them to second place in the standings behind series leaders, BMW Team G2 Esports. However, when we spoke to Max’s teammate Ruppert after the previous round, he said that he didn’t expect to be fighting for the title. Surely now the mood has changed?

“Of course, we are now going into the last round as P2, so anything can happen,” Wohlmuth beamed. “But we are just looking at ourselves and how we can get everything out of the car to finish as high up as possible.”

Sadly, Wohlmuth won’t be able to take part in the season finale, however, he has good faith in super-sub Tom Reiher to put in the performance that the team needs.

Luke Whitehead – H3 Racing #404

Where there are winners, there also must be losers, and unfortunately, H3 Racing was on the wrong side of fate this time out. Heading into the event, the Ferrari squad were leading the way in the standings, but after a misjudged call on tyres in the race, they now find themselves down in fifth position overall.

After a tricky qualifying, the team’s fortunes appeared to change for the better once the race got underway, as Luke Whitehead made rapid progress up the order.

“We got up to P9 I think before I came into the pits,” he recalled. “I posted the moves that I did on social media, and to be honest I was very proud of them. Some of the moves I made were quite brave, but around that track, you have to take risks to make overtakes work. A few moves that I did, I kind of had to drive at the apex in the hope that I’d scare the other driver out of the way – and it worked!”

From 26th on the grid, it certainly hadn’t been a bad start. But then, the team made a fatal error during their pit stop. Instead of swapping over to slicks, H3 Racing sent Hamada Erquizi out on wet weather tyres, which ultimately would prove to be their downfall.

“We were talking about this about three or four minutes prior to making the pit-stop,” Whitehead explained. “We knew it was going to dry out, it was just a case of how long it would take. 

“We thought that if it was gonna stop raining, it was quite cold, so it would take quite a while. Obviously, that was completely incorrect. We misjudged how quick it would dry with how many cars were on track. 

“We both made the collaborative decision to go on wets, and to begin with it worked out really well, we were flying up to the front guys. Then it went from damp to completely dry within about two laps. That was really frustrating, but the more frustrating thing was that once Hamada switched onto slicks, he actually set the fastest lap of the entire race. The pace was there, so we honestly could have fought for a podium I think.”

For Luke and Hamada, their title push may have just fallen short, but the pair are taking plenty of positives out of this, their debut season in the championship. 

Join us at Suzuka on Thursday 20th May to find out if H3 Racing can pull off an epic comeback, or if any of our other title contenders can wrangle the championship away from Nils Naujoks and Arthur Kammerer. In the words of Luke Whitehead, “It’s gonna be a fun race, I think anyone who hasn’t tuned in to the previous races needs to tune into this one!”

See you in two weeks time at Japan!