Oulton Park was completely new to me. Six hours of practice — that’s all I had — and this track doesn’t politely welcome newcomers.
It punches you straight in the face.

It’s not a circuit.
It’s a hostile environment.
A narrow, bumpy, twisting fight for survival.

And there I was in the BMW M4 GT3 — a car that can be elegant one moment and a violent bull the next.

Warm-up — I Thought I Had It

In practice I actually felt confident.
I worked out my target pressures: 27.1 in the front, 26.8 in the rear.
I dialed in the ARB, finally got the balance where I wanted it, and I honestly believed I was ready.

I wasn’t.

Because the moment qualifying started, it was obvious something was wrong.

Qualifying — My Tires Betrayed Me

Normally the M4 warms its tires quickly, the pressures rise, the grip comes in, and everything starts working.

Not this time.

They stayed cold.
Then they dropped.

Fronts: 26.6
Rears: 26.3

I instantly knew:
“This is going to be hell.”

The car refused to turn.
The front washed wide everywhere.
The rear had no traction.
Every corner felt like the car was fighting against me, not with me.

The first ten minutes of qualifying were honestly miserable.
Every lap felt useless.
Nothing behaved the way it should.

I wasn’t enjoying a single second of it.

The Risk — My Make-or-Break Decision

Then came the moment that changed everything.

I took a gamble.

I added +0.4 PSI to every tire mid-qualifying.

It was risky, desperate even — but at that point, I had nothing to lose.

And immediately, the car transformed.

The Switch — The M4 Woke Up Under Me

Suddenly the M4 felt alive.

The front stopped folding into corners.
The rear started gripping.
Rotation returned.
The balance finally made sense again.

For the first time that session, I felt the car working with me.

And that’s when I went for it — the one lap that had to count.

1:36.05

I crossed the line and saw the number.

I actually said “oh my god” out loud.

That was my fastest lap of the entire day — and it came three minutes before the end of qualifying, in a session that felt doomed from the start.

It felt unreal.
Like I had finally hit the level I had been chasing all week.

The Grid — And the Numbers Behind It

That lap put me P19 on the grid.

But here’s the part I’m proud of:

• I beat O’Leary by 0.5 seconds
• I was only 1 second off the Silver drivers
• Bronze P2 was just 0.6s ahead
• And Bronze P1 — Fitzpatrick — was 1.0s ahead

Fitzpatrick was on a different planet that day.
He squeezed everything out of that car.
I could tell even before the race that he wasn’t joking around.

Respect.

The Panic Before the Race

Then reality hit me:
My race pressures were wrong.

I had maybe two minutes to rewrite my entire strategy.

So I quickly bumped everything up another +0.4 PSI, took a deep breath, and reset my mind.

Qualifying was over. On to the race.

Oulton Park was my fifth ever ACC race and yet another track I had never driven before. Still, when the lights went out, I felt ready. The car finally felt close to perfect — balanced, predictable, confident. Even on cold tires, the opening corners felt good. I genuinely believed this could be my cleanest race yet.

Lap 1 — The Disaster

Then came Turn 4.

Ferrari #28 Iliescu lost control ahead of me. Fair enough — it happens.
But instead of removing himself from the racing line, he returned to the track blindly, right into the narrowest part of the circuit.

The crash he triggered was enormous.

I was milliseconds from avoiding him when he suddenly rolled back across the line, collecting me and several others before half a lap was completed. All the work from qualifying, all the optimism… gone in a heartbeat.

ARB settings don’t matter when another driver decides to gamble with your race.

My car spun, nose pointed the wrong way. I had no choice but to turn it around and rejoin — and when I finally got moving again, I was dead last.
P26.

But I’m not here to quit.

The Calculation — Stay Out or Pit

The hit was big, but I refused to pit. By the second lap I could already tell the car wasn’t as broken as it felt. I was losing maybe one second per lap versus optimal — and once the tire pressures came up, I estimated the damage would cost me only around half a second.

A pit stop?
Fifty seconds gone, minimum.

Easy choice.
I stayed out.

And incredibly, chaos took more victims ahead of me.
By the end of Lap 2, I had already climbed back to P23.

The Middle Phase — The Car Wakes Up

Once the tires reached the window, everything changed.

The car came alive again.

My average pace stabilized around 1:37.2, which was better than I expected with damage. I kept picking off positions one by one — Oulton Park was claiming plenty of victims that day.

Before the pit window I had climbed all the way to P17.

Now it was time for the stop.

The Pit Stop — Perfect Execution

I hit every mark:
Perfect braking point.
Downshift to first.
Limiter on.
Fuel and repairs correctly selected.

Forty seconds standing still. No mistakes.

I rejoined in P20, but crucially — I saw something incredibly motivating:
I was P3 in the Bronze class.

A podium.
After all that.

The Second Wind — Full Confidence

Then suddenly the car felt perfect.
Fast.
Stable.
Beautifully loose on turn-in.
I was averaging 1:36.7 — my best pace of the entire race.

My confidence soared.
I pulled away from O’Leary at about 0.2 seconds per lap, slowly but surely choking the gap until he was no longer a threat.

By Lap 25, I had climbed back to P19 — exactly the position where I started.

More importantly, I hadn’t made a single mistake.

Final Laps — One More Hit

Lap 30: P18.

I was holding Bronze P3 with a huge gap behind and no realistic chance to catch Caraballo or Fitzpatrick, who were simply too fast that day.

Then fate took one more shot at me.

Another Ferrari tapped me — in the exact same needle’s-eye corner where the Lap 1 chaos began. I was covering the inside, he misjudged, and we touched. I cursed the world for a moment… but then he did the right thing:

He waited.
He gave the place back.
Respect.

It brought O’Leary a little closer, but thankfully the gap was still too large for him to attack.

The Finish — Nothing Left to Prove

I crossed the line in P18.
Two hits, one at the start and one at the end.
Zero self-made mistakes.
Bronze podium.
And one of my best recovery drives ever.

I lost 26 seconds on Lap 1. And 15 sec two laps before the end.
And still — I refused to die.

Ending Position: P18
Bronze Class: P3
A brutal race, but a beautiful one.

simracing #assettocorsa #assettocorsacompetizione #acc #simracer #gt3racing #esportsracing #racingcommunity #simrig #bluedragonracing #bdracing #bmwm4gt3 #m4gt3 #bmwsimracing #oultonpark #racingdrama #bronzeclass #comebackdrive #racingincident #racerecovery #racingstrategy #tiremanagement #pitstopstrategy #damagedcar #nevergiveup #racingmindset #fromlasttopodium #estoniasimracing #balticsimracing