Shortly after lockdown first started last Spring, a bunch of motor journalists & PR people started a friendly & informal weekly competition on GT Sport. A car and track is announced, everyone then goes to make a livery for the car, with historically linked racing liveries being popular. There's then a timetrial to set your best lap time, with a deadline of 7:30pm UK time Thursday. The timetrial acts as a 'pre-qualifying' for the online race from 8pm Thurs, although extra overflow rooms are established for anyone who misses the cut. There's then qualifying followed by one or more races.

I've been enjoying it for a few reasons. It's varied and not too serious, you can drop in and out each week depending. The TT rules are fairly relaxed, and once online people make their best effort to avoid bumping others but don't get too bitter if things do go awry. The participants are mostly our kind of age, and include some names like Dan Trent & Nick Trott that may be familiar if you read Pistonheads or Evo magazine, as well as car industry PR people. We've had a few visits from truly talented racers, but generally the field is competent but not crazy-quick - I usually end up mid-pack. There's quite an interest in historic motorsport, both in racing older cars and adapting classic liveries. Doing the livery is more fun when there's a theme and people are going to see it, and pounding round the track trying to shave off tenths then becomes invaluable in staying on the track for the race itself.










If anyone's interested, sign up at https://27racers.com/start , this week's challenge is the MX-5 at Suzuka East (see last pic for my R100-based livery). I appreciate that 8pm UK time (currently UTC) won't work for many here, though.