I was not expecting that...
I have an insanely short little Python script I use for selecting the evening's track. I run it literally in the moments before the room opens. I discard tracks that we've already visited during the season, but other than that, what it says, goes.
The "sweet spot" for DDRS sprint races seems to be about 25 minutes. I feel it's important that everyone should be able to complete their final lap and see the checkered flag at the end. This means that I'd been artificially limiting the tracks we could race on to those for which the lap times were under 3:00 minutes, the maximum delay between checkered flag and final lap completion for folks farther back in the field.
In the run-up to this season's start, I made some improvements to the spreadsheet I use to track all the points, including pole bonus, fast lap bonuses, finish position from each race, qualifying times, etc. I modified the script to handle the drop rounds we've added, and I also modified the spreadsheet to compute whether a given night's event would be a timed race or a distance race, based on practice lap times. Suddenly, the available track list expanded, and now includes Circuit de la Sarthe (Le Mans), which has a lap time of about 4:00 in the C5.
Naturally, the random track picker selected Le Mans for our first round. I honestly didn't know whether this was going to work or not. Sure, it was going to be a drafting battle, but what I wasn't expecting was just how bad the tires would be. It wasn't that they wore out. Far from it. The problem was that the straights were so long, the tires lost heat faster than they could regain it in the corners. By then end of the first lap, the tires were essentially stone-cold, and judging braking distances became a massive dare.
Would I do it again? Absolutely! It made for some interesting racing, and I think everyone had a good time. Thank you, everyone, for participating in the first round of the Winter 2026 DDRS Spec C5 Cup Series!
Congratulations
Top honors on the evening goes to PainlessInjury, who swept the evening with pole and three race wins! Keeping him
honest was Rek, who managed to take fast lap bonus points in all three races. Great job to both drivers!
Photos
Thanks to Painless for capturing some action shots from the event!
Results
| Pos | Driver | R1 Pos | R2 Pos | R3 Pos | Total Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Painless | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1060 |
| 2 | Rek | 2 | 2 | 3 | 970 |
| 3 | CaptainSlow420 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 900 |
| 4 | itc42 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 810 |
| 5 | Hollywood | 4 | 6 | 5 | 790 |
| 6 | Guckeezy | 6 | 7 | 10 | 700 |
| 7 | The_Griff | 7 | 5 | 12 | 690 |
| 8 | Edminus1 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 690 |
| 9 | Nip | 10 | 11 | 7 | 650 |
| 10 | Coriracer7 | 9 | 9 | 11 | 640 |
| 11 | Weespat-Mr.Clean | 9 | 220 | ||
| 12 | Zap | 10 | 210 | ||
| 13 | Maze | 13 | 180 |
Bonus Points:
- 10 points for qualifying pole to
PainlessInjury. - 30 points for fastest laps in Race 1, 2, and 3 to
Rek.
And PainlessInjury earns three DDRS Race Winner stickers! Collect them from itc42's gallery in GT7.
Up Next
Our next event is on November 8th, 2025. See you all there!