AMERICAN LE MANS SERIES
Mosport International Raceway
Gran Turismo 3 Grand Prix
19/08/2001
 
A Lap Of Mosport
Hans Stuck
 


With its long sweeping corners and its up hills and down hills, Mosport is a track that requires a rhythm to your driving. This is one of the very few tracks that we still race on that has not been destroyed by chicanes to bring the speed down.

Turn 1 is a very fast down-hill right-hander and you must be precise here because if you miss the apex there is a very good chance that you will be history at the end of the corner, and just at the exit is a bump that you should never hit sideways.

After your adrenaline comes down maybe ten percent you come to the most critical part of the track - the very fast, fourth gear downhill left-hand turn two that you turn into seeing only the sky ahead of you. Although the apex is blind you must be precise as you carry a tremendous amount of speed here. The runoff area has been widened here as there used to be a wall very close to the outside of the line.

For the right hand turn 3 you have to brake down hard to third gear for another blind apex.

The right line for sweeping left-hand turn 4 is to stay on the inside and upon entering the slower right hand turn 5 you must be careful to hit your braking point and not flat spot your unweighted front tire.

The next right hand turn 5b is the slowest corner of the track - a first gear corner - not much grip and it is a good place to spin the car. You must be careful of the curbs at the exit because this corner leads onto the long back straight where you reach top speed in sixth gear. Any mph you are missing here will double at the top of the hill. The straight is a good place for overtaking and being overtaken. The slower class cars stay on the right and the prototypes stay on the left. The back straight incorporates turns 6 and 7, but these turns are essentially part of the flat-out run through the woods.

Turn 8 is a very fast right-hander and in all my career I have never found the latest braking point. When you brake, shift down and reach the apex it always seems that you could have been on the brakes later, but when I have tried to brake later it was sometimes too late. There is a small margin here for being right on or right off.

You shift down to third for turn 9 - an easy left-hand corner - but the line is important because you must be on the left side of the track to set-up for the final turn.

Turn 10 is an off-camber right-hander so the car tends to oversteer here and unless the car has the best set-up you cannot get full power down at exit for the trip down the pit straight.

PTG M3 GTR image from Sears Point.






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