Day: February 23, 2024

GT World Challenge

This is the premier GT car championship in the world. It is organized by SRO ( Stephane Ratel Organisation ) and has several divisions worldwide ( Europe, America, Asia, Britain, and, from this year, Australia ). The main branch is Europe, where up to 60 crews are exhibited annually. The championship includes sprint races (one hour each) and endurance races up to 24 hours. Seven manufacturers are fighting for first place in the world standings.

The GT World Challenge features a whole string of classes – from the most popular GT3 and GT4 to the more recently formed GT2 and GT1. The last two classes are open to amateurs only and have nothing in common with the old GT2 and GT1. But even this is not all. In America, they perform on TC cars as close to factory ones ( with TCA/TCX subclasses ).

The balancing of the cars helps them to be very close to each other in terms of efficiency, even though there is a wide variety of vehicles in them, from the large front-engine Bentley Continental GT3 to the small mid-engine Audi R8 LMS GT3. Here, the skill of the pilots comes to the fore ( from 2 to 3 pilots driving one car, depending on the race ), as well as the well-coordinated work of the team.

Where can I watch this? Direct to YouTube. Visit the official GT World Challenge channel and watch live broadcasts of any race; unfortunately, they are only in English.

GT3 and GT4 cars are featured in almost every racing game. It’s easier to list where they are not. But GT World Challenge has an official championship game: Assetto Corsa Competizione. It already contains cars and tracks from 3 seasons (2018-2020), and tracks from the British GT Championship and the Intercontinental Cup have been added. Let’s hope for further development of the game and further addition of other divisions of GT World Challenge, new vehicles and classes.

Trophy

While thousands of people create the best asphalt surfaces for circuit racing, the organizers of trophy races go out of their way to organize pits and windbreaks for participants.

Swamps? Great. Snow and mud? Amazing. Sand and clay? Wonderful. “The worse, the better” is the main route choice principle. It’s only suitable for some, but there are plenty of fans. Along the way, there may be tasks that add points, but even without functions, there is something to do here:

  • Pull a car out of a swamp.
  • Clear the road from beaver lodges.
  • Dig out a comrade who got stuck waist-deep while saving everyone.

By the way, crews often help each other get out: sport is a sport, and you shouldn’t even abandon your opponent in trouble. When going on a race, teams fully equip their cars: in addition to food and gasoline, they must take shovels, saws, wheel chains, winches, cables, and a lot of zen with them because anything can happen along the way.

Drag racing

It’s an extraordinary race: everyone drives along a straight section. Something is interesting: there are no turns. Here, only speed has a price, and nothing more: pilots accelerate to 350-400 km/h and experience more significant overloads than astronauts during launch.

Drag racing competitions can be held on almost any vehicle: races for motorcycles, electric cars, scooters, bicycles, and even tractors and lawnmowers. However, for professional racing, unique ultra-light cars called dragsters are built.

Only two cars compete in one race, and classic distances are ¼ mile, ⅛ mile, ½ mile or 1 mile. In Russia, drag racing is relatively young; it did not immediately become an independent sport. At first, motorists drove at night on empty roads, which, of course, considering the speeds developed, was unsafe, but in 2005, we had our first tracks, and now races are held on them, too.