Three rounds in, every championship was close. Grid-and-Go.com eSports led BS+COMPETITION by 2 points in GT3 after the two teams split the season's first two wins. Bleu Mercure Esport were 2 clear in PCUP, and Team75 Bernhard by SimRC 6 clear in GT4 with two wins from two. Qualifying was bone dry, with Rainer Talvar on pole for BS+COMPETITION and the championship-leading Team75 entry only 11th in GT4. Then the weather broke, and all 53 cars took the green on wets.

The start set the tone. Luca Wunsch's Falken went door to door with Talvar and Dino Lombardi slipped through into second. Behind them a Turn 1 melee wrecked the race of CARLAR esports CUP, Bleu Mercure's closest PCUP rivals, inside 3 minutes. Race Control issued 7 penalties in the first 25 minutes and stayed that busy all day.

The other big story of the day showed up just as fast. The 992-generation Cup cars race with ABS and traction control, and in the wet that made PCUP very quick. The booth was only half joking when it called the new car "a GT3.5". Augustin Bernier took Bleu Mercure Esport from fifth to the class lead inside 21 minutes, with Ayden Young's WSR Esports car third and closing.

The first pit cycle ran entirely on wets, and the no-tyre calls sorted the order. Wunsch's kept the Falken ahead, and Bleu Mercure's stretched their PCUP lead to 25s. Then a real dry line appeared and lap times tumbled. The slick gambles lasted exactly one lap before the radar settled it, with 100% rain for the rest of the race. Talvar took fresh wets at his stop, reeled Wunsch in from 5s back and swept past at Turn 12 at T+1h41m.

At T+1h46m the storm arrived, and it did not leave. Wunsch spun the Falken on worn-out tyres and the slick runners dived straight back into the pits. Bleu Mercure had taken full service at the exact moment the deluge started, the best strategy call of the race. Rain intensity hit 77%, "pretty close to 77mm per hour", and for a spell Young's WSR Esports Cup car led the overall race.

It's shades of Petit Le Mans 2015¹ when the Porsche GT car won overall. With the rain that's coming, it is a very, very real possibility.

— Booth call, with a PCUP car leading overall

The driver changes then put the title rivals nose to tail. Lucas Hermann took over the BS+COMPETITION #89 and rejoined 7s behind Lombardi's Grid-and-Go #1, so the championship's top two were running first and second on the road. Lombardi settled it with a hip-check up the inside at T+2h17m and pulled clear at over 1s a lap, leaving James Beumee's Falken a distant third.

The halfway stops put Alessandro Quintaie into the Grid-and-Go #1 on fresh wets and sent Hermann back out on fuel alone. As the rain got heavier the race came down to two BMWs. Hermann and Beumee ran less than a second apart for 8 laps, trading sectors in the spray. Beumee saved one huge moment behind a backmarker. Hermann locked the rears a few laps later, and at T+3h37m the Falken led the race.

The Falken's lead lasted 10 minutes. Threading GT4 traffic through the esses, Beumee lost the car and spun. When he engaged reverse to recover from a standstill, the engine bounced off the rev limiter and let go, a freak technical failure. Smoke and a mechanical black flag² followed, and the #44's race was over after 23 laps in the lead.

That's a real shame... I've never seen an engine fail that way before.

— David Haynes

With the Falken gone, BS+COMPETITION led again until their next stop put Talvar back in on fresh wets, and Quintaie inherited the overall lead for Grid-and-Go. Then the tyres fell off a cliff. Double-stinted wets lost their grip without warning, and Quintaie's 30s cushion shrank to 17s with Talvar closing.

GT4 turned on the same problem. Dani R Calvo's XBD Racing Sim-Lab had led on an alternate strategy, but on worn-out rubber he dropped from first to third inside a handful of corners, with the Team75 Bernhard by SimRC car among those that passed him. As dusk fell, the booth was already working out the championship points.

If BS win, Grid-and-Go finish second, they would leave the first three rounds of the championship tied on points.

— Arjuna Kankapati, at T+4h37m

Lombardi took the #1 back for the run home, but only after Grid-and-Go had served 15s of accumulated contact penalties. Nobody knew it yet, but those 15s would decide the race.

The night belonged to Bernier. Down 5% on power under the class BoP, he spent a stretch of the evening running the Bleu Mercure Cup car third overall, and was briefly even the net race leader, holding Lombardi's GT3 behind him lap after lap. When Grid-and-Go finally forced their way through, Bernier shoved back up the inside at Turn 1 and made contact. The stewards sided with the BMW, and Bernier's 15s penalty handed the PCUP lead to Young and co-driver Teemu Myllykangas by almost exactly the size of the penalty.

After sunset the race went fully dark, since COTA has no permanent floodlights, and the gap for the overall lead shrank from 1.6s to under 1s and then to just 0.1s. The flashpoint came at T+5h25m. A GT4 squeezed Lombardi onto a kerb and he spun into the BS+COMPETITION BMW. He backed off straight away and gave the position back, and neither team protested. On a day that ran the stewards' notice board to 104 entries, the title fight policed itself.

The last twist came in GT4. Gareth Higgins had qualified the Team75 Bernhard by SimRC entry 11th in class on what he admitted was "a full dry setup... we had no idea it would be this bad". He spent the closing laps with Octavio Rondoletto's Byte.Collino Max 1.3s behind. With 2 laps left Rondoletto over-pushed and spun off on his own, with no contact involved. Team75 had a third straight win, from 11th, on the wrong setup.

Never count them out. Never count them out.

— Booth call, as Team75 Bernhard by SimRC sealed a third consecutive GT4 win

Talvar brought the #89 home in pitch darkness after 145 laps, 15.7s clear of Lombardi and Quintaie. The margin was almost exactly the 15s of penalties Grid-and-Go had served an hour earlier. SZESE E-Sport completed the GT3 podium. In PCUP, Young and Myllykangas took WSR Esports' first class win of the season and finished fourth overall, with Bleu Mercure 6.1s short. Of the 53 starters, 12 failed to finish.

Stay out of trouble, really. Avoid all the penalties you can avoid.

— Rainer Talvar, on the key to the championship

Team75 Bernhard by SimRC lead the overall standings on 60 points. BS+COMPETITION and Grid-and-Go.com eSports leave Texas dead level on 56, with BS+ ahead on wins, two to one. Bleu Mercure hold 54 and Byte.Collino Max 52. The storm scrambled every class for 6 hours, but it could not separate the GT3 title contenders. Round 4 heads to Portimão on 6 September, with the series' first street circuit at Adelaide and a 12-hour Silverstone finale still to come.