How Mansell helped Baldwin’s stunning British GT debut
The scale of sim racing convert
James Baldwin’s achievements in his British GT freshman 2020 year should not be understated. Paired with Michael O’Brien in a Jenson Team Rocket RJN McLaren 720S
GT3, and with minimal preparation, Baldwin won the season-opening race at Oulton Park.
He might even have gone on to take the championship had the odd card not fallen against him. Whatever was the case, Baldwin looked like he utterly belonged throughout and it all went way beyond reasonable expectations. Even team co-owner Jenson Button was impressed.
It astonished Scott Mansell too, who had given Baldwin some pointers before his victorious Oulton debut. “He’d not been to Oulton before in the real world, he only had very limited testing,” Mansell recalls to MN, “and he was like ‘I’m going to take it easy, just going to get some miles under my belt’. And then they go and get the result that they got! I thought you can’t contain that racing driver!”
Mansell also offered a nugget for one such as Baldwin who is more used to sim racing. “[It was] a piece of advice that was really really useful,” Baldwin notes to MN. “I was asking him a few questions and he said one point that’s stuck in my head and I’ve used it at every round.
“[He said] If you want to brake later you can’t just do what you do on a sim and brake later, end up in the barrier and escape and restart. You have to brake where you are currently, but brake harder and if you stop early then brake later. That’s a big part of why I didn’t shunt all year long, so cheers Scott!”
Mansell laughs: “OK, so I take all the credit for that!”