Number 11 in the series is from Road America. Thanks again to Jay Bonvouloir for his generous permission to use his excellent source photography.
The iRacing recreations come by way of the iRacing Road America 200, which was a special race event in the 2010 iRacing World Tour. You can read my post on the iRacing Road America 200 by clicking here.
A static page containing all the source images can be seen here, and you can see the previous sets in the series by clicking here.
The start of the iRacing Road America 200
iRacing.com Road America 200 results (iRacing members only!)
The iRacing World Tour continued with the Road America 200, 50 laps with the Nationwide Impala B at Road America. I had a decent quali and was set to start 22nd in the main event (which was broadcast on PSRtv.com).
It was a pretty aggressive start with not a lot of room being given by anyone. That said, I managed to get through the first few turns without major incident. That soon changed after I was hit during braking into turn 5 (I think a car came spinning out of control from way way back) and I dropped to the back of the pack, but luckily my car seemed to be OK from the contact.
I raced on, picking up a few spots up to 14th but disaster struck on lap 18 – my PC overheated and crashed! First time its happened and couldn’t have occured at a worse time!
I scrambled to reboot the box and rejoined the race – 2 laps down and in 21st position. The worst thing was that there was no-one else on the same lap as me so basically I was in a race all by myself. I raced on, picking up positions from retirements and finished in 14th place and with no extra incidents. A pretty good result, but I was on track for an easy top ten had the PC not crashed.
Started : 22nd of 34
Finished : 14th, 3 laps down, 127 points (4 incident pts)
iRating : +14
Safety Rating : A/4.99 (no change)
The next round in the World Tour features the Lotus 79 at Silverstone. Not my favourite car, and not my favourite track, but I’ll still be racing to see what happens.
ORO racers compete at Road America for their season two event.
Oval Road Odyssey – Road America (iRacing members only!)
I haven’t posted about Oval Road Odyssey (‘ORO’) before on this blog, but a recent race at Road America is a good time to talk about this excellent league. The Oval Road Odyssey is an interesting weekly racing league that seeks to take the Chevrolet Late Model to a range of road tracks in iRacing and let the motor run loose in (usually) 30 minute race events. The late model is primarily an oval car in iRacing, but it also serves as a really great road racing car and is a lot of fun to race.
I first had a taste of road racing the late model back in 2009 when iRacing ran a fun event at VIR, and I blogged about that back then (here). The ORO started up last season and currently is working its way through season 2. The website for ORO is www.oval-road-odyssey.com. All comers are free to join in.
This weeks race took us to Road America in a lengthened 60 minute race with a mandatory pit stop. I didn’t have great pace and qualified 9th of 25 so I decided to run an extreme pit strategy and come in for my stop at the first possible opportunity. My hope was that it would put me in clear air for the first half of the race where I could lap at maximum pace without getting caught up in any battles or spins in the pack.
It worked pretty well – I had to put in a few laps before my pit window opened up (the late model fuel tank would only do around 21 of the 24 race laps in one fill) and generally my opening laps were good. I picked up a few spots and avoided all the early carnage, in spite of some (very) close calls! I climbed to 5th before diving into the pits on lap 4.
I left the pits in 15th and whilst I didn’t have a perfectly clear track, I was able to dispatch a few of the slower cars and generally make good progress.
A great moment happened on lap 14 as car #22 took his pit and left the pits precisely as I was barreling down the pit straight. It was extremely tight and close racing as we both entered turn one side by side, driving by inches! We had a little battle for a while before #22 spun out during a passing attempt and retired.
The final stages of the race saw some more action as I gained a couple of spots by virtue of a spinner and finally an unlucky entrant running out of fuel on the last lap! End result was a fourth place which was great considering the starting position!
I race in ORO each week and I’ll post more about it when appropriate.
