www.samiad.co.uk

Week one of the Pro series finished up last week and it’s really good to have got the series up and running. Since my last post there were a few last minute changes (now 4 scheduled race times instead of 3 and a new grid allocation algorithm) but otherwise we are now locked into the 25 event racing season.

At the final standings I was ranked 119 / 250 so picked up my Pro licence (thankfully!). I missed the first weeks action owed to moving house but if things go to plan I will be taking part from this week onwards. The schedule means I will usually be in the race that kicks off at 23:00GMT Sunday night (i.e. the last race of the week). Given that my raw pace sees me in the bottom 10% of the 250 Pro racers I’ll probably be losing iRating and scoring low each week but I’ll be giving it a fair crack if only to be part of something cool like this.

I’m not sure how many of the 250 will actually compete in all racing weeks, but secretly I’m hoping to finish in the top 150. Progress updates to follow!

Just two more weeks to go until the standings for the Pro standings are finalised. The Pro licence is a licence given to 250 drivers (for each category, road & oval) based on a qualification criteria that is 70% based on finishing results (and therefore outright speed), and 30% based on car safety (rewarding safe driving).

We’ve been getting weekly updates for the last few weeks and I’m currently sitting in the 90-120 range for the road licence. Large movement changes are possible (people regularly jump/drop > 100 places every week) but barring any huge mistakes I *should* be able to finish in the top 250, in time for the first Pro series starting August 2009.

There’ll only be three Pro races every week so it sounds like it’ll be fairly close to a league atmosphere, which I’m looking forward to participating in. I’m sure a sizable number of the 250 will either (a) not have an iRacing subscription any more, or (b) have no interest in Pro series, but even so I’d hope at least 150 people will actively participate in the series. With such a limited schedule of three races I secretely hoping for packed grids for each race…. fingers crossed!