September « 2008 « www.samiad.co.uk

Archive for September, 2008

Bag loads of new content!

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

My Helmet Design

I saw the great news that Sebring was released yesterday and with that I took the opportunity to finally dip into my wallet and buy some new content. I had been waiting for a really good track to splash out on and so felt it was time to stock up on some cars and tracks.

I was missing Road America & Silverstone (used in the Formula Mazda) so I snapped them up, along with the new Sebring and Barber (yes they aren’t used in races but are fantastic tracks and will be in use soon I’m sure). I also picked up two of the Late Model tracks as I am itching to try that this season. Finally I picked up the Class B road car, the Radical SR8 and a wildcard purchase of Bristol. Bristol is the true impulse purchase because I have no idea when it will be used or which vehicle will race it, but it’s such a cool looking oval that I wanted it since it was released.

So far I’ve only driven an outlap on all this new content but the high quality iRacing feel is absolutely evident throughout. Barber surprised me because it is clearly a fanastic track with some wonderful elevation changes.

Silverstone is of course an old friend but I am pleased all the variations of track are included, and should be fun racing on those.

Road America is an unknown at this point but good to have for the Mazdas in the future.

Sebring is really good too, and as bumpy as I could hope for. What surprised me about Sebring was how close the Forza 2 version is to iRacing – I guess that has to be testament to Turn10 because even their version of Laguna Seca is close to iRacing (and therefore close to reality).

The Radical is a cool car to drive, and certainly not as difficult as I feared it might be to drive (although driving on the bleeding edge will be a different beast I’m sure). The included setup is horrible though, very understeery and not a true baseline at all. I wish the cars would come with some decent setups (i.e. more than one).

Posted in General Musings, iRacing | Comments Off

Week Seven : Laguna Seca WIN!

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

I was really looking forward to coming back to Laguna Seca in week seven, primarily because when the series was there in week three I managed to balls up my week results by crashing out of two of the four races I raced. I scored less than 90 points for the week at a track where I feel I am closer to the top times than most other places.

So when the track came around again I couldn’t wait to get stuck right in. Except the first practice session I completed saw me 1.2 seconds off my previous racing pace! I had no explanation for it, and was totally bemused. The only difference I could detect was that I was now using Leo Bodnars G25 USB pedal box and it seemed to affect my braking into turn one.

I had a bit of work to do and after a whole bunch of practice and time trialling I felt I was back at my previous pace (I equalled my PB of 1:48.0 a few times).

Despite not having a great quali time (I was using a 1:48.6 set early in the week) I threw caution to the wind and dived into the 20:30 race on Wednesday night.

I was pretty pleased to see my grid position was to be second, and a quick scan of the other qualifying times made me think I might have a chance for a good finish if I could have a decent race pace of around 1:48.5.

I got off to a good start and kept second as we went into turn one. The early laps saw me having a real hard time hitting my marks whilst following the leader, but I was keeping with him. They had the edge over the first half of the lap, and I had the edge in the second half of the lap. On lap four I saw him slow greatly and my first thought was it was a black flag, as we had just navigated the corkscrew. It seemed to go on and on (for too long!) and so I passed at the final hairpin and took the lead. I since found that the driver had to take a phone call (gutting!) but at the time I had to deal with the increased pressure and maintain my composure to take the win!

8 tense laps later, I found my groove and after some initial worries I was able to bring it home to take a welcome win (first in a few weeks) and the highest points haul I’ve managed – 141 points.

All in all a good weeks work and this result has seen me hit my season goal of > 800 points (812). This was based on achieving 100 points for each of the eight counted race weeks, so I’m really pleased to hit that tally with only having seven weeks completed, and that includes two ‘bad’ weeks. Also my iRating is now over 2500 and it was another zero incident race.

Given all that I might be looking at a final total of more than 950 points for the season if everything goes to plan!