Here are the results, replays, and photos from the second round of The Fourth Oppositelock Endurance Championship. In addition, a post race analysis is in this post, as well as a few notes for the next round.
THE RACE
If you missed the race, check out the streaming list. All of the replays can be found there. Special thanks to everyone who streamed. The race was fairly quiet and lengthy but still fun.
RESULTS
Here are the results by class, as well as a picture of the car used by each driver.
PHOTOS
Here are some more photos from the race. If you have any pictures from the race that you want to share, post them in the comments.
POINTS STANDINGS
Here are where the current championship standings will be for all classes once they are completed. A MASSIVE shoutout to DDM Law for helping to setup the points sheet, which is no easy task given the class structure in this series. He deserves all your praise and love. He’s a busy man so it’s still a work in progress, but hey points are whatever here anyways.
THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS
This race was interesting in the sense that I think a caution would have been beneficial. Three hours of non stop racing, combined with pace differentials in classes, led to a fairly lonely race for a lot of people. It was still fun, just sitting in voice chat bullshitting about whatever is half the reason I race. But the race itself was just too spread out for large scale battles. Not to say there was no action, but most of the race was quiet. Given some incidents in race, I want to reiterate the importance of calling cautions when you’re involved. There were some incidents that could have been called but were not. Don’t be afraid to call out the caution if you think it’s needed. It’s not my job to decide whether something is a caution or not in race, that falls on the drivers involved since they’re the ones who actually see it. Otherwise we end up in situations questioning what the fuck is going on, then the track gets cleared and there’s no caution. Hopefully this won’t be an issue going forward, but just wanted to reiterate that.
Also some of y’all made post race summaries, which I’m posting below.
JA 37 Viggen:
Difficult Race for Dinamic Motorsport
We’d like to thank Oppo for hosting this race during this troubling time. Dinamic Motorsport is an Italian team and it was important to race on home soil and give the Italian people something to cheer for amidst the Coronavirus crisis. Unfortunately, we struggled with tires through the entire event and there weren’t any cautions to help us recover ground. It was just a difficult time all around.
Porsche Customer Racing driver JA 37 Viggen: “Sadly our tire situation just put us on the backfoot. The car struggled on braking and it was difficult to maintain grip. It understeered a lot which always makes traffic interesting. Hopefully this was just related to the track. With Dinamic going back into quarantine, it’s another change of team for me. I’m looking forward to going to Spa and teaming up with my old friends Herberth Motorsport.”
Corey CC97:
Scuderia Oppo On Podium In Round 2 Of Oppositelock Endurance Championship
After their success in Round 1 of OEC this year, Scuderia Oppo came into Round 2 with their familiar Momo sponsorship, a Reiter Gallardo, and a pole position. However, this was not enough to hold off efforts from the Pro lineups fielded by Nissan and Ferrari. The team did still manage to hold off efforts from fellow VAG manufacturers Bentley and Porsche for the last spot on the podium.
Team owner and driver Corey CC97 had this to say: “I’m obviously pleased we got on the podium, though somewhat disappointed we couldn’t keep pace with some of the other teams. Thankfully, our Gallardo proved reliable and stable throughout the race. I do have some concerns about the available aero packages for Spa, but we’ll work through and try to get on the podium again.”
Despite not getting a back to back win, Scuderia Oppo is still the current points leader going into Round 3. Time will tell if the team can keep their momentum going and continue to build that lead.
Blu3Fox77:
First, a huge thanks to Oppo and Hankook for putting this event on, and to the guys over at GReddy for getting us that sweet Rocket Bunny kit for the BRZ on such short notice! Today was a huge amount of fun, but not without its darker shadows.
Due to issues with getting parts through customs in the updated Round 2 time frame we had to make a big change from the SP1 McLaren chassis that we ran last round in Dubai to a used BRZ that we had to pick up and get ready in a hell of a hurry. I want to thank my team and their families for all the time spent and last minute late nights getting the BRZ gutted and dressed back up for the OEC Race-prepped TC Class Round 2.
We weren’t able to get a lot of seat time in the BRZ and it showed. Our times in practice in the low 2:02’s proved to be difficult to duplicate during the race, where we ran mostly mid 2:03’s. The track is very demanding in terms of track position and trust in the car to get you through those fast corners - knowledge and trust that I wasn’t able to develop. Also, I was massively humbled by the absolutely immense talent of the other drivers we faced today.
All in all, The Flame Veil Apocalypse garage did an amazing job of getting the car in the ballpark but didn’t have time to get the car really, really dialed in for Mugello.
TC Class guys - next time won’t be so easy! We’re coming for that #1!
WELL DONE BAKU:
Statement from The Most Iconic Duo™️
As always, a thank you to Oppo for putting on this round of OEC during an international lockdown, although some teams didn’t exercise social distancing on track.
A careful strategy choice lead to a class win for the Nissans in both GT3 Pro and GT3 Am, with the Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3 (Senpai Edition) driven by The Hulk and the Nissan GT-R (Totally not a GT500 car) driven for us by WELLL DONE BAKU.
The race was very much trouble free for all, setting the new CrevOppo distance record for Mugello, although there were some murmurs of a Mitsubishi on track occasionally falling over.
News come from our sister team mid-race that the Nissan boss was hiding in the Lebanon, and that the Nissan Chassis was no longer going to be supported by Nismo as a factory outfit. The Most Iconic Duo™️ are unsure of what this means for the team at this time and are exploring all available options for getting to the next round in the Belgium mountains.
rockbeau25:
Statement from rockbeau25:
For the first time in 75 years, a German tank takes another victory on Italian soil
First off, thanks to Oppo for once again putting another world class event!
The team was finally able to showcase their potential and bring home a decisive SP3 class victory. Having missed the inaugural round of the CrevOppo championship, the car’s debut was a long overdue. We lined up on the front row in 2nd place of the SP3 class and were able to take the lead under braking into turn 1, and never looked back. We were even able to duke it out with SP2 cars that were battling in the mid-pack of their class during the first stint. After that, the only on-track interactions we had were with faster lapped traffic. All in all, it was an incident-free, near perfect race from start to finish. The team would like to congratulate DDM Law and DDM Jam on their respective class victories. The team looks forward to Spa and hopes to carry this momentum into the next round!
DDM Law:
Statement from The Hulk of Pennzoil-Zexel Racing:
We would like to thank the race hosts at OPPO for having a race during these trying times. We were able to get the win today in our Nissan GT-R Nismo GT3 (Senpai Edition).
Despite this great win, we were told that halfway through the race that the boss of Nissan was hiding out in Lebanon, bringing questions into being able to use the Nissan chassis going forward.
These questions were answered after the race, as we were told by Nismo that they were pulling support for the car after this race, leading us to have to look to another chassis for the next week.
We will be submitting a number of waivers for a new chassis for the upcoming race at Spa, and hopefully will be able to put together a competitive car by then.
DDM zrolizac:
Statement from Cody Ware of Rick Ware Racing
First off I’d like to thank OPPO for hosting our race even crowdless amidst the pandemic. We were able to get on the podium, but the lead up to the race left a lot to be desired.
After having our race winning i8 GTR impounded by the organizing body after concerns of illegal modifications, we were left scrambling to find a replacement car for the event. We would like to offer a big thanks to Porsche North America in getting us a new 991.2 cup car chassis in such a short amount of time. Being as we were racing a 911 for the first time in many years, we decided to do a throwback livery on it and ran our famous Grand Am livery on the car.
After a hectic start to the race, we settled in 4th racing Remo and his AMG-Mercedes GT-R GT4. We swapped places a few times based off traffic and pit strategy, until they unfortunately had to withdraw from the race 1/3 of the way in. We spent the rest of the race alone in class, but racing one of the SP-1 Vipers for overall position. We were able to bring the car home mostly incident free, 3rd in class and 11th overall.
Massive shoutout once again to Porsche North America and our sponsor Fuel Doctor for all the support behind the scenes getting us to the race.
Now onto Round 3 at Spa! Actually just kidding. Spa isn’t until July. Next up is the world famous Oppositelock 2.4 Hours of Le Mans. And this year is a bit different. Covid-19 has postponed the real race, and one of my favorite parts of Oppo LM is shit talking the real LM 24. Therefore, I am running two Oppo LMs this year, each with a different car list. The first one will be held on Saturday June 13th, and the second the Sunday after the real Le Mans 24. I’ve revealed the car lists already to some of you, and the first one will be revealed very soon. For those not in the know, I leave these teasers.
Race 1:
Race 2:
I’m really looking forward to LM this year. I’ve had a lot of fun with OEC so far, so hopefully both LM’s will be a lot of fun! See you all then.