This week the Skip Barber series is at the excellent Lowe’s road course, last driven (by me) at the 13th week Solstice challenge. It’s an excellent course that allows heavy drafting all the way around the oval section. It can be frustrating too – pulling out a second over a rival in the infield is usually nullified by the slipstream effect on the back stretch.
I managed to get three races in, and generally enjoyed all of them. I think I discovered a new bogey corner – turn 5 – I really struggled with it as the car arrives with the suspension and weight so loaded that there is really no room for any error or microcorrection that you might need to use.
I finished the week generally improving my points tally in each of the three races. 112 points average for this week.
Here are some highlights from the races.
Due to lack of free time I couldn’t run any other series this week so missed out on the late model at Irwindale
Had a great race at Summit Point this week – really starting to love this track and especially this car/track combo. I did the bare minimum race preparation, just running a quali session and diving straight into the race (a full field of 14 entrants). I started 3rd and got off to a good start, keeping pace with the top two early on. One of the leading cars fell off the track leaving the rest of race for me to battle for the lead.
It was a great chase that lasted many laps. Coming into lap 16 the leader made a mistake in the final turn and I was able to snatch the lead and hold on for the win, setting a new PB in the process. One of the more enjoyable iRacing races for sure!
I dipped into a few other series this week too; namely the late model and chevy silverado series. I am still on track for completing a full LM season and this week I spent some time actually trying to make my own setup. A mixed affair, as I still don’t understand all the basics… there are times when a change gives me the opposite results but that’s true in real racing I guess. For some reason my late model races are netting me around 73 points exactly each time… weird!
My first truck race was memorable too – the batteries in my wireless mouse expired literally the exact moment I moved the pointer over the race ‘join’ button! Literally. Mouse was moving fine all day, and the exact moment I move to join the race… nothing! I thought the PC had frozen but soon enough I was searching my room for a spare mouse before cannibilising a remote control for the AA batteries, and luckily I joined the race with one minute left in warmup.
A really enjoyable race with a nice bit of strategy and planning, and long green runs. 3 cautions and 2 pitstop saw me finish 7th in a field of 16 – really good fun throughout. Given the setup work and intensity of the long racing I think when I run a full truck season I’ll have to do a single race a week… the races are seriously hard going!
Finally, the divisions are out for all the racing series in iRacing and as expected I’m bucketed into division 1. Cool to be in the top bracket, but clearly going to struggle to make top 20, let alone top 3 this season!
