Hypercar S2 R3 - Review

This weekend saw the 3rd race of Hypercar Season 2 which was to be held on the Van circuit. A small track, with tight corners.

Race 1 & 2 were both won by Pagani Corse, however this race was expected to be interesting for not 1 but 2 reasons.

1- It was a very small track with tight turns, the Pagani Zonda R which generally had a lot of understeer was not expected to do well here, this track suited cars such as the Gordon Murray T50 and Aston Martin Valkyrie better.

2- This race would be the first to feature "Shootout Quali".

This was a new method of qualifying introduced to MCRO in S4 specifically for Hypercar. Each team would be timed individually over 3 laps, best of 3 laps would be taken for final comparison.

Quali

First team to get timed was Detomaso. Michal (holepeletenis) was behind the wheel of the P72. Quali started off, he made an error on lap 1 however he made up for it with a splendid lap 2, but then he crashed multiple times on lap 3. Making lap 2, a 30.71 his best lap which got him a P2 in qualifying. Since times done by other teams were not announced publicly till the end, he was oblivious to the fact that he was to start from P2 on the grid and was quite concerned that he had done poorly in qualifying.

Next up was Mazda driven by Lio, all of Lio's laps were quite clean however his first lap, a 32.19 was his best. Unfortunately this meant he started dead last.

After the Mazda, Egg represented Valkyrie for qualifying. His best lap was only 31.14 which was slower than expected by many.

Then it was GMA's turn, Syrz showed up to drive the T50. Expectations were high but once Quali began, it was learnt that Syrz had prepared for the wrong track. He was then shown the track and was only able to put together a lap time of 31.83.

Lastly came Pagani, Sot was behind the wheel of the Zonda R. He was quickly up to pace and set the fastest lap time of everyone on his first attempt, a 29.78. All of his other laps were slower though.

Michal's P2 in qualifying came as a shock to many, but his inconsistency was also revealed during qualifying with him making mistakes in 2/3 laps.

Race

Race began nearly an hour after qualifying had begun and 4 of 5 drivers were going solo, while Michal had a teammate in the pitlane he still decided to race alone as his teammate had to learn the track just moments before the race. Only Zonda R had 2 drivers available to race.

When the race was finally go, Sot in the Zonda R got away well, Michal got away decently, Syrz got away slightly better than Egg in the Valkyrie while Lio had an okay start.

1 lap in and Michal was already down to P4, Egg was in a battle for P2 with Syrz in the T50 while Lio and Sot were still where they started. Lio seemed to be off pace by a lot, few minutes in and he was already lapped by Sot in the Zonda R, battle for P2 between Syrz and Egg was still on however both had made a few mistakes. Sot was considerably faster than everyone else as he soon lapped everyone on the grid. But the battle for P2 was still on, interestingly Egg pit very early at around 15 minutes. He had to pit again as he was driving alone but he had 1 pit stop fewer than Syrz who stayed out. This obviously came at a cost, Egg was down to P3. But to Egg's fortune, Syrz made a dramatic error which caught a lot of attention as he went spinning and rolling around. This gifted Egg P2. The battle was soon on again.

They both made mistakes on and off but smaller much less dramatic ones, giving each other a shot at P2 but once again to everyone's surprise Egg pit at around 25 minutes in along with Michal. Once again Syrz took P2, but Egg was attempting a strategic masterclass.... he had already pit twice while Syrz was yet to pit. If Egg could hold it together for the next 50-55 minutes, without big mistakes, even if he was on a slightly lower pace, he could finish in P2. Even after his 2nd pit stop, Egg was not far behind, at around the 30 minute mark, Syrz pit and Egg caught up to Syrz. The battle for P2 had resumed. Meanwhile at around 35 minutes, Lio pit. The battle for P2 went on for another 8 minutes until Syrz had a shunt on the pit straights and then Disconnected.

This came off as a delight not only to Egg but also to Michal who was now running in P3. By the time Syrz could reconnect, it was too late.

Egg's attempt at a strategic masterclass had gone to waste.

Not long after at around 42 minutes, Egg disconnected but he was able to rejoin in a minute's time. This brought in the SC allowing Egg and Michal to fully unlap themselves, while Lio in the Furai who was down 4 laps was able to get the gap down to 2 laps. Sot pit during the safety car, Aggelos was now behind the wheel of the Zonda R, Upon resumption Egg was not far behind, Michal was half a lap behind, Lio was still 2 laps down. This left Egg with a chance to win the race but much to his misfortune few minutes later, he was lagging quite heavily to the point where his movements on the track was unclear. However by the time Lio had disconnected and Michal knew he couldn't catch up to Egg (unaware that Egg was laggy) so the Detomaso was no longer pushing, this meant Egg kept his P2. Later, Michal in the Detomaso had completely lost pace losing a lot of time to the leader, towards the end of the race Michal was going so slow that he was down 6+ laps while Egg, with all that lag managed to go down by not more than 2 laps.

The race ended with Pagani finishing in P1, The Valkyrie of Egg in P2, and Michal's Detomaso in P3 with GMA and Mazda not making it till the finish.

Post Race Controversy

Like a lot of MCRO races, this one didn't lack controversy. It started with Aston Martin's Bugqti accusing Zonda of gaining advantages by cutting while he was not present during the race itself, however this was quickly cleared up by Tyler, who was monitoring the chicanes for cuts, when he said Zonda was one of the cleanest in terms of cc consistency this race. But it didn't end there, Sot's sensational drive which led to him lapping the field in less than 15 minutes brought Syrz under the impression that he might've been cheating by using the race engine, but he was proven wrong when Sot showed footage of the fact that he hadn't purchased race engine for the Zonda R in the first place.

First half of this race was interesting mostly due to the battle for P2, but once Syrz had disconnected, this race might as well be worthy of "The Most Boring Race of MCRO" title.