When I was a poor college student a dozen or so years ago, I made an exciting dorm room discovery after a trip to the supermarket. The store brand of Lucky Charms, it seemed, had more marshmallows and tasted better than the name brand.

It was like an epiphany: an off brand didn’t always have to suffer in quality.

That wasn’t always the case, though. Later, I found quite painfully that generic brand razors were, in fact, inferior to the name brands, and my face had the bloody spots blotted in bits of tissue to prove it.

I tell that unusual anecdote to introduce week 3 of my Summer Road Trip in the most roundabout way possible. As I encountered iRacing’s version of an off-brand product — the Ruf GT3 car — I had to determine whether it stacked up favorably against the true-to-life GT3s as in my cereal success story, or if it would be another strike against generic brands in my life experience.

The Ruf on iRacing is largely a relic of darker sim racing days, when Porsche’s license to its virtual car rights seemed irrecoverably under lock-and-key with a different video game producer. As iRacing looked to diversify into multi-make road series, it signed a deal with Ruf, the German manufacturer that puts their own engines in Porsche chassis.

iRacing built and released an impressive four versions of the Ruf, although only two ever gained much traction. Despite their impressive horsepower, the street car all-wheel-drive and rear-wheel-drive versions largely fell on the deaf ears of sim racers eager for actual race cars.

However, the Ruf “CSpec” — modeled after a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car — and the Ruf “Track” — a Porsche GT3 car in disguise — were both met with much greater anticipation and popularity.

Those Porsches-in-Ruf’s-clothing did generate some controversy among purists who insisted they were fake cars that went against iRacing’s mission of ultimate accuracy. But the fact that iRacing recorded audio from each car’s real-world Porsche counterpart, effectively circumventing their licensing roadblock, largely silenced that criticism, especially among realists who never expected we’d see an actual Porsche in iRacing.

The main knock on the race versions of the Rufs was their decidedly un-racecar-like interior, which couldn’t be masked with a Porsche facade due to iRacing’s contractual agreement with Ruf.

I quickly fell in love with the CSpec version and drove it competitively for several seasons, mostly in a multiclass setting, before iRacing landed a Porsche license last year and replaced it with the equally fun 2017 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car and its standalone series.

Prior to this week, I didn’t have as much experience in the Ruf Track version, and the last time I drove it, I remembered it feeling floaty and slippery compared to iRacing’s other GT3 cars. However, it seemed to have a decent following, and for two and a half years after its release, the Ruf Track assimilated fairly well into iRacing’s GT3 series, competing alongside the McLaren and BMW.

Once a pair of new store-brand GT3s — the Audi R8 and Mercedes AMG — arrived in 2016, they kicked the Ruf off the shelf and onto an end cap by itself, running in the Ruf GT3 Challenge series. It’s essentially designed as a junior GT3 division, running at the D-class license level instead of C-class with 30-minute races rather than 40, no pit stops required, and fixed setups.

In my first practice laps around Watkins Glen, I found the Ruf still handled largely like I remembered. The car had plenty of downforce, but it felt like it was on top of the road, and sliding the tires even once began a vicious cycle of overheating, which led to even more sliding.

As I prepared to race, I changed the one non-fixed part of the fixed setups and bumped up the brake bias, hoping that I wouldn’t completely burn off the rear tires. However, I hadn’t completed a full run entering my first race of the week, and that wasn’t the only part of this Ruf that I was inexperienced with.

The Race is On

I qualified on the pole in a Tuesday evening time slot, but when I took to the starting grid, I remembered that this series uses standing starts. I wasn’t prepared for it and it showed, as I got off the line with all the speed of a tortoise compared to the hares around me.

The car next to me on the grid easily jumped ahead, and the car behind me had a great run as well. To keep him behind me entering turn 1, I juked my car to the right just as he began to peek to my inside. It was an aggressive, borderline-dirty block, and he could have doubled down by making it three wide up the middle. Instead, he practiced patience — a rare sight in a GT3 race.

Exiting turn 1, I found myself in second place. It was the first time in this year’s Summer Road Trip that I hadn’t been in the lead. My first time following another car. The first time dealing with dirty air.

Once I adjusted to those unfamiliar confines, I quickly realized that I was better under braking than the car ahead of me. I was almost able to make an outside pass on him going into the bus stop, but I backed off and vowed to wait for a higher-percentage opportunity.

That chance came less than a lap later. The leader got a bad exit from the final turn, so I set up a move under braking for turn 1 and managed to get past him.

As I began to pull ahead, I didn’t want to push too hard and risk a similar silly incident as what happened in the Solstice last week. Instead, I just hoped to keep the car on track to pad my sinking safety rating and see how the handling changed over a full run.

By the midway point of the race, I indeed noticed some changes. The tires were becoming slippery in the corners and on acceleration. In that sense, the loss of grip over a run reminded me of my many Power Series races around Watkins Glen in a heavy, powerful stock car.

So I pulled from that experience and drove the Ruf in much the same way. I backed up my braking points, avoided any sudden steering inputs mid-corner lest I coax the car into a spin, and tried to exit the corners as straight as possible with gradual throttle application.

Even with that more cautious approach, I nearly overstepped the available grip a few times and kicked out the back end while cornering. But I managed to keep the car pointed mostly straight and come home with the victory — my fifth in a row to start this year’s Summer Road Trip.

Adversaries Arrive

I made my next start two days later in an earlier afternoon time slot that usually seemed to attract a few more good drivers. It did this time as well. In fact, with 44 total entrants across two splits, it was the most popular race of the week.

While practicing some qualifying laps before the race, I happened to notice how I could feel the traction control kick in exiting some of the corners.

Wait a minute — traction control!

That’s why I got such a bad start in the previous race! All GT3 cars come equipped with it, but I’d never had to worry about it in the main GT3 series since it uses rolling starts.

For the standing starts in this series, though, the traction control was bogging me down as I tried to surge off the starting line. To overcome that, I would need to toggle the traction control override button just as the race was about to go green.

The few practice starts I did were inconsistent, and the multitasking required to manage one foot on the gas, one on the clutch, one hand on the wheel, and one hitting my override switch made me more nervous for this start than for any I had done in a long time.

Even more unnerving were my opponents on the the starting grid. I qualified in second place, but I was surrounded on all sides by a trio of Spanish teammates. I knew they would be working together and giving me no quarter, which made it even more important to have a clean getaway.

When the lights finally went out, I got a decent but not a great start. The car behind me had a better jump and passed me to my inside, but I stayed ahead of his teammate entering turn 1.

I escaped with only one position lost and a good run on the car ahead of me through the esses. Although I got alongside him down the backstretch, as in my first race of the week, it seemed too early to make such a risky pass attempt, so I backed off early and held my position.

The next few laps went largely the same way. I was faster than the second-place driver in a few areas, but none of them were good passing zones. After another failed attempt to draft past him entering the bus stop, I began following closely behind him through that section but not going side by side so I wouldn’t invite his teammate behind me to get any closer.

Tag Teamed

Both drivers were racing fairly aggressively, defending their positions and taking peeks to my inside under braking when I didn’t defend, but it was all totally clean and incredibly fun. As a solo driver sandwiched between teammates, I figured my best chance to break their blockade was to preserve my tires early in the race, which would help me run consistent laps and make me less prone to a mistake.

My plan worked, and on lap 7, a mistake by the car ahead opened the door for me. He drove a bit too hard into the carousel and had to back off mid-corner to avoid pushing wide on exit. I capitalized, jumping to his outside and outbraking him into the boot section to make the pass.

It was another fair move on his part. He could have easily blocked my run, but instead, he gave me the room to make a clean pass and I made it stick.

Just as I was breathing a sigh of relief, I overdrove the next two corners and nearly gave the position right back. After following another car for so long, being in clean air made me want to push, and the tires were screaming at me that they couldn’t handle it.

On the next lap, the two teammates behind me swapped positions as if the former second-place driver was tagging out and letting his higher-iRating and faster-qualifying countryman have a go at me.

For the next six laps, he stayed within a half second of me, filling my mirrors corner after corner. My best friend was turn 1. As long as I could get a good run through there, I could limit my opponent’s ability to draft up to me and largely hold the gap steady for the rest of the lap.

On lap 14, though, I screwed up. I tried to carry too much speed into turn 1 and pushed wide on exit. The car behind me was as close as he had ever been entering the esses, and I was already preparing to defend down the backstretch.

But I didn’t have to. I was shocked at the scene that unfolded in my mirror: the car behind me tracked out wide exiting the fast left-hand ess, then BAM! He made hard contact with the armco, ending his race. Perhaps he was feeling a bit of unanticipated aero push, or maybe he couldn’t see his normal driving line being so close to me.

In any case, his error gave me a buffer of just over a second ahead of third place with less than four laps to go. I was able to back down my pace to avoid a potentially costly slipup on worn tires and hold on to second place at the finish.

Series Status

It certainly wasn’t the easy win I had for five straight races to start this Summer Road Trip, but even with a better start, I probably never had a chance at keeping up with the 8,500+ iRating driver who won the race.

Instead, it was a relief to finally find some cars to race with in iRacing’s lower license level series. Although GT3 often conjures up thoughts of dirty driving and carnage, I was pleased to see just the opposite in this race.

I had the sort of battle — twice! — that racers live for. It was close and clean with constant pressure being applied and my eyes focused as much on the mirror as they were on the windshield.

And I wouldn’t have had it any other way. That type of competition, in my opinion, is the essence of racing: evenly matched drivers going head to head in equal cars only separated by the abuse each one was putting on his tires. We didn’t need DRS or hybrid boosts to make passes. The best overtaking assist was forcing the other driver into a mistake.

Unlike the real GT3 series, where balance of performance is a necessary evil and each car has inherent strengths and weaknesses, the Ruf GT3 Challenge removes those differences and even any driver-to-driver setup changes like downforce levels that can make battles more variable but also more frustrating.

Although some drivers moan about fixed setups, in this series, the setup seems neutrally balanced and generally well-liked. Tire management is definitely a necessity, but that just adds another strategic element to the racing.

Of course, not every race will be that close, and as a lower-level series, the Ruf GT3 Challenge suffers from the same dilution of talent as I noticed in the Global Challenge and Production Car Challenge.

If you want higher odds of close racing with drivers near your own speed, you’re probably better off running in the GT3-headlining VRS GT Sprint Series, which always seems to have multiple splits with higher strengths of field.

But if you don’t want to worry about setups, if you fret that you might choose a car ill-suited to a given track, or if you’re just eager for pure racing in a sprint environment with a hint of strategy thrown in, then the Ruf GT3 Challenge series is a great option.

No, the Ruf Track — from its looks to its handling — may not be quite as sweet as an Audi, Mercedes, or a bowl of store-brand Lucky Charms, but it also didn’t leave me bloodied up, even after my best and closest fight of the summer so far.