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The new season is upon as and I’ve updated the paintschemes of my cars for 2009. Just the road series cars have been changed, from the purple & yellow of 2008 to a black & amber for 2009.

I’ve also bought the Impala SS, the top tier stock car in the iRacing stable. I’ve had a handful of practice sessions and one fun race in it and I am extremely impressed!

This season I am going to be concentrating on the Star Mazda series first and foremost, but also trying to make a strong showing in the Chevy Silverado series on the oval side.

The Mazda will be difficult – the car has a variety of advanced setup parameters and it’ll take more time than ever before to get a really well matched setup. Same thing with the trucks really, in order to do it justice I need to be able to develop my own setups to make it fulfilling.

One big change for 2009 is that I think I am going to go back to the ‘one race and done’ approach to each racing week. I think I enjoyed doing that for the Solstice season more than I enjoyed the ‘multiple races per week’ approach of the Skippy season.

My goals for this upcoming season are :

1. Finish Mazda series with more than 800 points
2. Get a win in the Mazda
3. Compete in at least eight racing weeks with the Silverado truck
4. Lead at least a single lap in the oval discipline (it STILL eludes me!)
5. Achieve a B 4.99 rating in both road and oval disciplines
6. Have an ‘incident per race’ stat of less than 2.0
7. Finish the season with an iRating above 3000

A lot of goals there – the hardest one will be the ‘inc per race’ stat. The Mazda races are longer so more chance to mess up!

Season 4 is upon us and I’m about to begin my second full season in iRacing. My first season went really well, and I documented the results in a blog post here.

This season is going to be really difficult to manage, time-wise, as there are now so many quality vehicles to drive in a given week. Each one requires practice, and as the cars are more advanced they now require even more time to develop setups!

As much as I’d like to run multiple series throughout the season, I am going to have to concentrate on just one for the time being, to make sure I can practice comfortably and get a race in each week.

My primary series is going to be the Skip Barber series. I managed a few races last season and it’s a great car to drive. This time, I’d like to work on my own setups and so each week I’ll be spending a good amount of time practicing before running the race each week. The series will take me to lots of new tracks such as Infineon and Virginia.

My secondary series is going to be the Late Model series. I really enjoy oval racing and will try to run a full 12 week campaign in the late models. It’s going to be a steep learning curve as I have no setups ready, but if I can (and have time) I will try to develop custom setups for each of the racing weeks. I don’t own all the tracks for this series yet, but I will be able to compete in eight racing weeks so I shouldn’t be disadvantaged too much.

In addition to these two series I also have an interest in running some extra series in a part time basis. As I have a C licence I need to run some sessions in the Star Mazda and Chevy Silverado. During the season I’ll pick one or two weeks and run some events to fulfill the requirements. I also might try a Radical race as well, we’ll see how it goes.

I have definitely decided to approach season 4 in a completely different way from season 3. This time I am not going to care so much about the championship and my weekly points results – I’m going to race more. Instead of ‘sitting’ on a good result for the week (for fear of bringing the average down) I’m going to race for the fun of the individual race itself.

I also expect my iRating will begin to decrease during this season. Last season I spent a lot of time practicing for good race results, and my iRating increased throughout the season. I achieved a key milestone in reaching 3057 in my road iRating which I was very happy with. Now, I will be joining races with less practice time so my underlying pace is going to be a bit lower. I’ll probably get matched into faster grids than I should be for a while, until my iRating stabilises.

Goals

My season goals are :

1. Finish Skippy series with more than 800 points
2. Get a win in the Skippy (my first?)
3. Compete in at least eight racing weeks with the Late Model
4. Finish season with an iRating of 2500 or more
5. Achieve a C 4.99 rating in both road and oval disciplines

Some of those will be easy, some will be hard. All are possible, with a bit of luck and some hard work!

So, onto Week 1 – Infineon Long!

This season I am planning on concentrating on the Advanced Solstice series as my primary series. I really enjoyed driving the rookie car over the last four weeks and the prospect of a full 12 week schedule with more variation of tracks and basic setup options is really appealing to me.

This means that each week whatever iRacing time I have spare will be spent with the Advanced Solstice, learning the tracks and setting up the car. Sunday – Wednesday will typically be spent in the practice and time trial sessions, so that I can become competitive and consistent. Then, from Thursday – Saturday I will typically go in for the qualifying and race sessions.

During weeks when I can go through this process quickly (such as if its a track I already know, or a setup I have already made) I might have some time to dabble in some of the other series. When this happens I will look to compete in the Skip Barber and Mazdas (but only on tracks I already own and know well). I’ll also like to have a few races in the rookie legends car as I miss the oval racing I used to do a few years back.

I think the first chance of racing the Skippy is going to be next week (week 3) when the series moves to Summit Point. The Advanced Solstice series is at Laguna so I should be competitive from the get-go, and I know Summit Point fairly well too, so hopefully next week will see a few races from me in both categories. It’ll also be the first time I can see the division I’ve been allocated too as well which should be interesting.