The Academy Cup is the latest of The Sim Grid’s many highly competitive racing series’, but unlike the others, The Academy Cup is exclusively for ACC’s Porsche Cup cars. They are a completely new beast to everyone, having; less grip, worse tyre wear and no traction control in sight. The series takes place over five, forty-five minute rounds at; Silverstone, Zandvoort, Barcelona, Spa and finally Monza. Not only that, but the drivers have a new motivation. A cash prize.
Heading into the first round at Silverstone, nobody knew what to expect. With setup being one of the key factors, Coach Dave Academy has offered a 20% discount on Porsche Cup setups for the drivers to help them along their way. Not only that, but Trackwerks is also offering a 30% discount on their Thrustmaster brake mods, so the drivers had the opportunity to be well equipped for the first round.
How the results came to fruition
After a great lap to take pole position in the dying moments of qualifying, Joe McAuley led the field away for the first time in a race that was full of unknowns. Despite having the jump on our second place sitter, Samir Ibraimi, he couldn’t keep ahead through the first complex of high speed corners. Ibraimi took the lead as the field behind him fought tooth and nail for every position.
Yet, after just 12 minutes, Ibraimi pitted. For a 45 minute race with no mandatory pitstop, nobody knew what had happened to our leader. Was it a penalty, or a bold strategy? In fact, the cause of this unscheduled stop was a lack of fuel, after forgetting to add more after qualifying. This sent him way down to the back of the pack, promoting Amir Hosseini to the lead after also passing McAuley on lap one. From this point on, it was about recovery for Ibraimi as Hosseini suddenly found himself in the hot seat. Ibraimi would only make his way back to twentieth, but all eyes will be on him to see how he does next week at Zandvoort. But, no pressure could slow Hosseini who, from the point of inheriting the lead, didn’t once have his lead challenged.
Tyre wear is one of the the Porsche 911 Cup’s quirks. Its tyres are designed to last just 30 minutes, whereas the race is 45 minutes. This meant that strategy was to be the most important factor of the race. As many struggled to look after their tyres, especially with the ease of spinning on traction, Hosseini played his first half perfectly, preserving his tyres enough to keep them in shape for the end but not driving too conservatively to give our pole sitter McAuley a sniff of the lead. Our third place driver, Niels van de Koekelt, who drove a relatively lonely race, says he ‘has never driven with tyres worse’ as the tyre wear caused mayhem in the latter stage of the race.
The forefront of the action
The most exciting area of our 35 car grid this time out had to have been the battle for the top 5. Chris Hoeke, Egor Ogorodnikov and Tinko van der Velde engaged in some impressive battles for fifth in the early part of the race. Tinko van der Velde eventually managed to make it stick after getting very close to a crash at Club with Ogorodnikov, and from then onwards put on a charge to catch Kieran Prendergast for fourth – as he showed his pace that had been muted whilst being amongst the hardest battles of the pack. He would eventually just miss out, with Prendergast taking fourth. Despite the top 5 being the stand out area of battles, equal cars and a short race meant that there was no shortage of action.
The stand out drivers from Silverstone
Zachary Royall was one of the drivers who performed best this week, carving through the pack as he avoided the ensuing carnage ahead of him and made some excellent passes on his trek to the top ten. As he said in a post race interview, he was ‘surprised’ at how quickly he made his way up the order, coming from eighteenth on the grid to finish seventh, being one of the stand out performances of the field.
However, the best performance out of the top class grid was from Wolff Mattuschka, who started last after being disqualified from qualifying, but drove fantastically to take the checkered flag fourteenth after carving his way through the pack after a ‘crazy’ first couple of laps.
Owen Wenlock was another of the other most impressive drivers, gaining six positions to finish on the outskirts of the top 10. He gained a mightily impressive seven positions within the first couple of laps and from then on was right in the middle of the top ten train – excelling under the pressure of having a race-long rivalry with Jan-Luca Ganz.
Next time out at Zandvoort
Silverstone was a battle-packed race as the drivers took a step into the unknown in terms of strategy and setup, so looking towards the second round of The Academy Cup at Zandvoort next week, it’s set to be even better than Silverstone as the teams learn more and more about these tricky cars. Be sure to tune in live for all the action!
