LunatiK ARL GT Championship S5 : Race 10 Zandvoort

LunatiK Racing was back in action on Sunday September 5th at 3pm est for the Wave Italy Apex Racing League GT Championship Season 5. This week saw the drivers head to Zandvoort coicidently on the same weekend as the Formula 1 race which happened earlier that day at the same circuit. The track was not the same though, as unforunately the iRacing model was of the previous track before renovations for it’s Formula 1 return. Never the less the drivers were ready to tackle the track as it looked like McKenzie and Bush were going to be relatively on the same pace for this weekend with Mathews just behind. The first 25 min sprint race saw McKenzie qualify in p15, Mathews in p21, and Bush was decided to not put a qualifying time in and would start in p24. The lights went green as the field came around the last corner for the start of the race. The entire field of cars barreled downinto the first hairpin which came to be extremely clean. McKenzie was able to move up a spot on the start into p14 but heading into turn 2 was turned by a lunging BMW M8. This caused a number of other drivers in the rear to wreck as well. Mathews made it through clear with Bush have no where to go hit McKenzie dead on the door sendhing him skyward. The remainder of the race continued pretty cleanly as Bush made his way up to p14 where he finished the sprint race. McKenzie followed in p20 and Mathews in p21 who ran into some issues on track. 

With the p14 finish for Bush he started p3 for on the invert start for the 40 minute feature race. McKenzie and Mathews were outside of the invert and would be starting in their finishing positions from the sprint race. The field came around the last bend as the lead car decided to take off so did the entire field. Right before the start finish line the leader decided to slam on his brakes which caused p2 to get a black flag and the pack to punch of significantly going into the first corner. All three LunatiK drivers were able to make it through turn 1 clean as well as the exit of turn 3 which had another incident with the same leader who slammed on his brakes at the start. This significantly wiped out the majority of the pro drivers with Bush being able to make it through. This put Mathews and McKenzie in prime spot for points but there were many laps ahead. McKenzie ended up sliding off in turn 4 but caught the car and was able to manage to get back on track with minimal damage done. Mathews struggled towards the middle of the race which saw him sustain damage that put him out of the race. Bush continued to battle in the front of the pack with the top tier pro drivers starting to make a comeback. He was able to take a top 10 coming home in p8, taking valuable points for himself as well as LunatiK. McKenzie drove his way back to p16  to continue his campaign to hold onto p4 in the amateur driver championship. 

The next race is scheduled for Sunday September 12th, at 3pm est. LunatiK drivers will be taking on the iconic track in Japan, Suzuka. More pictures and standings can be found on the Apex Racing League website here.