Last week Monday marked the beginning of the Ford Performance #LockdownLaps competition: an online sim racing challenge that aims to reward some of the top sim racers in the country with bragging rights, prizes and glory. Held on the popular Gran Turismo Sport platform, the first week of the competition was all about going out and setting a qualifying time around the tricky Red Bull Ring in a Gr.4 Ford Mustang. .

Having five days to set a qualifying time (the track “closed” on Friday at 9pm) is a double-edged sword. On one hand it gives sim racing newbies such as myself an opportunity to learn the track and slowly improve our lap times the best we can. On the other, however, it lets the experienced racers whittle their times down and make qualifying for the event that much harder for everybody else. At the end of the first day if you ran a 1:38.500 you were pretty much in there. But by Wednesday if you weren’t running a 1.37.500 then there was absolutely no way you’d be one of the 72 making it through to the second round.