The sixth exciting RDHGP season is almost here. This season see's a number of changes to the format including the use of GTC-72 class cars and much more!
Welcome to Season 6 of the RaceDepartment Historic Grand Prix (RDHGP), covering the Autumn / Winter session of 2010/2011. After last season’s (successful) breaking of the “mod car” vehicle availability, this coming season also navigates into previously uncharted waters. This season we are running a class not included in GT Legends by default - the GTC-72 class. Comprising of the cars that were not really on a par with the fastest in GTC-76, and some high quality mod cars deliberately made to compete in this class, we may have come across the closest set of vehicles (in performance terms) that we’ve ever been able to assemble for an RDHGP season. Additionally, we race on the African continent for the first time in RDHGP, and also visit Japan and Sweden for their first RDHGP events. Our final “first” is actually a repeat oddly enough, as we return for the first time to a track we have used in RDHGP previously - since I’ve been running at least.
I hope that the testing event we held recently is a genuine indicator of the closeness we will experience throughout the season. The individual cars showed their (relative) strengths and weaknesses over the 2 test events, but the overall pace was pretty well matched across all the cars. I’m hopeful of it being a classic season, with multiple drivers challenging for the title and battles right the way through the field.
The season opener takes us to North America, specifically to Bowmanville, Ontario in Canada and the legendary Mosport Park.
Located about 10 miles North of Lake Ontario, Mosport (pronounced “Moe-sport”) was Canada’s second purpose built road racing circuit, after Westwood Park in British Columbia. Designed and built in the late 1950’s, it’s first major race was held in 1961, the Player’s 200 sports car event, won by Stirling Moss in a Lotus 19. At Moss’s suggestion, the proposed hairpin was expanded into two discrete corners, to challenge the drivers more and to increase the excitement for the spectators. The two corners are collectively named “Moss” in his honour. Mosport held the Canadian F1 Grand prix for 10 years, from 1967-1977, the Can-Am series every year of it’s history from 1966 except 1968, as well as events in the American Le Mans Series, The World Sportscar Championship, Formula 5000 and the Nascar Canadian Tyre Series.
Unlike so many legendary and historically significant motor racing venues, Mosport’s track layout has remained almost completely unchanged from its original form. With 10 turns in a just over 4km length, Mosport is one of the higher speed circuits we are running during our season, but don’t think that it’s simple or toothless, as it uses some impressive gradients to add degrees of difficulty to it’s generally high speed corners.
BMW CS2800's, Escorts, Capri's, Skylines, Pantera's and Porsche's will battle it out, 1972 style. This was a golden age of motorsport, no electricery here, no CPU's and 'Mapped' chips. Side draught Webbers and 'propper' ignitions were the order of the day. These cars look and sound amazing and make for some really close and exciting racing.
To find out more about the RDHGP look
HERE