Aston International Rev. Introduction

Round 2 of 15th City Liga's season features the longest track of the season. An 8 kilometer long, wide, sportscar track with plently of elevation changes, challenging corners and overtaking possibilities is a very different venue from tight South City Classic, as we're about to see. There are two highly interesting chicanes, which almost narrow down as the one from Round 1, when you get into them and a lot of very fast corners which tend to be very though of front left tire. The car we're using for this round is XR3. It's a XR GTR, with 35% intake restriction which leaves us with 303hp. But don't let it fool you, it's every bit challenging to drive as it's 490hp big brother. The less horsepower reduces XRR's ugly turbo lag and also gives us opportunity to use R2 tires. R2 being a softer compound makes things only more difficult as it heats much faster than R3 and is much colder in the end than R3 as well. The tire goes thru the whole cycle in 25 lap, the race distance, and can only barely last to finish the race.

The track opens with a 1.3km long start/finish straight, followed by one of the trickiest complex of corners on the track, if not the in whole of LFS. Many of us know this corner from various races, including 24h race from a year ago on AS historic rev. The difference is most of us didn't run XRR back then. As you already may know, this car likes to flip and T1/T2/T3 complex chicane with it's high curbs doesn't make things any easier. So, in order to go thru smoothly you have to take a good cut thru T3, just before the apex, where the curb will launch all four wheels of the ground momentarily.

There's a short uphill straight after the chicane with two little sweepers and what you really want to do is just carry the speed all the way thru. T4 is a very cambered left hairpin, followed by a kilometer long straight to finish off sector one. The straight itself goes downhill with two little kinks and then a very steep uphill with another kink. You deferentially want to get the speed out of that corner, as it gives great overtaking possibilities. If you get T4 right, you can get a massive toe down here.

T5 is a very, very long right bend, the fastest corner on track in fact. We're taking it full speed, which is around 230km/h into it, just drop down to 5th thru the middle and touching the inside curb, flick the car to the left for T6 using all of the curb, stay thru the middle for good early entry for T7 and T8, which is also taken flatout. It's a very fun part of the track with all the elevation changes and only when you reach T8, you're dropping just under 200km/h.

The rest of sector two is filled with elevation changes as well. We continue with left T9 and then a sharp downhill left T10 corner, which then goes uphill into a very tricky T11/12. It's tricky because it's at the end of  the hill and it's competently blind. T11 is a small left corner where we brake for T12 which is a fast right corner. As we've already had couple of very fast right corners front left tire tends to heat very much in this one. We're continuing with a short straight into a mid-speed downhill left bend which leads onto the 1.25km long straight to finish sector two. This is the best overtaking opportunity on the track together with s/f straight. There's T14 in middle of it, but maybe only in FZ5 you need to lift there. After T14 there's a steep uphill and if you get in the toe before it, you can have full car in front for T15, something like Turkey's track with DRS.

Sector three opens with insanely quick right corner, the last of those that overload FL tire, where you just dab the brakes, get it back to 5th and you're already looking into T16/17, but you can't see it. The track drops so bad that it's completely blind. You could say it's a fast version of Laguna Seca's Corkscrew. It's taken almost flatout. You just touch the brakes and lift a bit before you're back on power over all of the bumps watching to stay right on the curb, to have clean tires for T18.

T18 is the first in sequence of three hairpins. Approaching speed is the biggest of all the hairpins here and it's the only place where we change down three gears. Mid corner is very bumpy, but there's a nice curb on the exit waiting for you. With this hairpin we finish sector three. T19 is very nice hairpin where the track opens on the exit, so a lot of speed can be taken out and T20 is a tricky hairpin on braking as the track rises a bit thru the middle and the rear end gets slightly unstable, so it's very important to keep the rear at bay there for the lap time and for close battles as well.

From what we have seen so far the competition is fierce. Patrick, CLs bet for champion is showing some great pace around here. It's no wonder really as he's done a 24h of MoE with their XR2 car around Aston and posted the best time for their team. Paddi is expected to be very strong as well. FOX specialists Daniel, Maurizio, Max, Chris and Markus should be very ok with this car too, as it resembles FOX a lot by the cornering and top speeds. But it's heavier, it has a roof though and that makes it feel a lot more like XRT, my favorite car. The restriction has removed the turbo lag and the car can be really pushed to the limits now in it's sports-car version.

You can track the laptimes from the training here.