iRacing kickstarted their 2010 “World Tour” this past weekend with the first event taking place at Daytona road course.
The iRacing World Tour is a series of virtual events that are closely based on real world racing events over the coming year. This first event corresponds with the Rolex 24 endurance race (a full 24 hour racing event).
The iRacing version saw the Daytona Prototype vehicle in use for 90 laps of Daytona, in an event that took over two hours to complete. The race was a huge success as 950 racers took part, and interest in the event was sky high. A total of 24(!) races were split off and hosted at the same time, which took place just a few hours before the real event started in Daytona.
iRacing Rolex 2.4 Race Results (iRacing members only!)
I had a great race – and didn’t really suffer with loss of concentration over the 90 laps as I feared. I ended up racing in the third split (I was ranked 86th of the 950 entrants). I was hoping to finish the race incident free but I suspected it wouldn’t really come to fruition. I took a 4x hit early on (lap 7) which was OK really as it meant I didn’t have to really worry about maintaining a clean sheet for the rest of the race. Later on I made my one and only major mistake in the race and took an extra 1x off track excursion.
I made a short highlights reel of the race. Not the most exhilarating race recap I’ve seen but it serves as a nice memento of this landmark racing event.
iRacing did a fantastic job at hosting this event which went off without a hitch. There are many events on the calendar to look forward to and it’s truly great to have such a strong community backing to these events – it really makes them special. The next event in two weeks sees a re-enactment of the Daytona 500 to coincide with the start of the Sprint Cup. I’m 90% likely to race in it (although it starts at midnight for me).