With 10 GT3s to choose from, season 9 of the ARL GT3 Trophy is set to be one of the best ever! Our most popular single driver series returns on the 16th of January and features, 8 rounds with pro, pro-am and am divisions, all broadcast on Apex Racing TV.
The Acura NSX GT3 Evo 22 makes it debut in the series, joining the other 9 GT3 cars, including the McLaren 720S GT3 EVO, which while featuring in the final 2 rounds of season 8, now makes its full season debut.
Daytona opens the season just a few days before iRacing’s Rolex 24. Other familiar hosts like Suzuka, Road Atlanta and Spa return, but we also make the visit to some recently underutilised tracks, in the form of Donington and the demanding Long Beach street circuit. Every track is visited by the GT3 or IMSA Sportscars official series before featuring in the calendar, so everyone should have relevant datapacks to use and race practice on each circuit.
A combination of 60 and 75 minute solo races as well as our double-race reverse-grid format are used during the season. The single races have a fuel tank capacity of 60%, forcing a pit stop to be made. The double race format opens with a standard 25 minute race 1. However, the top 10 from race 1 are inverted to form the race 2 grid, demanding even the quickest drivers to overtake their way to the front. Qualifying for each round lasts 30 minutes, with each of the 3 driver divisions occupying the circuit for 10 minutes.
Rain is threat at each round. iRacing’s weather generator takes into consideration the location of the circuit and time of year to decide the weather, making the likelihood of rain similar to real life. Drivers are notified about the forecast a week before each round to give them a chance to practice in the likely (although not certain) conditions. Last season we had near constant rain at Nurburgring and a drying circuit at Monza (check out the video to the right) – on both occasions causing a mixed up grid due to the changing grip levels in qualifying.
Anders Myhre’s move to the Mustang for last season yielded a first GT3 Trophy championship for the RacingLab Esports driver. He was pushed all the way by Chris van de Nesse, the pair having several great fights, the one at Hockenheim (video to the left) being one of the best.
Every round of the series is broadcast on Apex Racing TV’s YouTube channel live from the Apex Racing Esports Studio by Sam Fitzpatrick and David Sampson (Sampsoid). They will be covering qualifying as well as the race(s) with their SDK Gaming overlay and live timing, 3D track maps and interview drivers post race
The top 3 in each of the three driver divisions win trophies this season for the first time. The top drivers and teams will claim Apex Racing Academy subscriptions, worth a total of £650!
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