A new era of the MotoGP eSport Championship is already underway with the third Online Challenge of the WINDTRE Rising Stars Series providing another opportunity for young gamers to promote their reputation and qualify for the regional finals.
Le Mans, the home of the French Grand Prix, is the venue that must be conquered by any young hopeful, with Aleix Espargaro’s much-improved Gresini Racing Team Aprilia RS-GP the machine of choice for this Challenge.
Like the venues in the first and second Online Challenges, Le Mans is another venue steeped in motorsport tradition, with the French venue requiring a different type of skill sets from many other tracks, namely braking ability and good acceleration set-up.
Renowned for its endurance racing, MotoGP uses the Bugatti circuit, a short layout that shares its start-finish straight with its counterpart, famed for endurance racing. There are numerous heavy braking areas as well as a host of subtle camber changes that make a number of corners a challenge.
After hosting a number of races through the eighties and nineties, Le Mans has been the venue of the French Grand Prix every year since 2000, a day when Spanish great Alex Criville won his final grand prix. Once a favourite of Yamaha’s M1, the track has become popular with Marc Marquez and the Repsol Honda RC213V, the winner in each of the past two seasons.
It all starts with the daunting run toward the fast turn one. Begin on the left side of the track and turn in late, feathering the throttle as you do. Now on the outside of the track, begin braking heavily for turn three and the chicane. Here, turn in early, hold your throttle as you switch from left to right. Once you hit the apex at turn four, apply the throttle smoothly through turn five and then fire down to turn six.
For turn six, shift back from fifth to third gear and hug the inside apex before accelerating up to sixth gear with angle. Then comes the awkward turn seven, which requires the gamer to brake down to turn one. Again, brake toward the apex but be mindful of the camber changing. From early, it’s time to go up through the gears, all the way to sixth before another heavy braking area, this time for turn eight (again shift back to first).
Then comes the drag down to the fast chicane at the end of the back straight, taken in third. Make sure you shed just enough speed off in order to make the apex in both turns nine and ten. From there upshift to fifth before another heavy braking zone, this time at turn eleven, a corner to be taken in second. Hold that gear as you move from right to left and pitch into turn twelve.
One final dash up to turn 13 remains. As you click third gear it’s time to downshift to first. Run it wide, taking both 13 and 14 as one and begin accelerating at the mid-point of the double right. Then start clicking up through the gears as you cross the line.
