Archive for July, 2010

Avoid a box of neutrals

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

iRacing release their new build today (it’s out now) and one of the key talking points is the addition of a serious transmission model. No longer will we be able to slamshift into gears with perfect results!

I find that I can understand how things work much better when I can get a visual reference for what is going on. I only had a very rough idea for how a gearbox works so I spent the morning seeking some good visual representations for what goes on when you try and force a gear change in various gearboxes.

This link is the best one I’ve found so far – posting here as a permanent reminder for myself as I’ll definitely revisit it again and again!

Car Bibles – Transmission Bible

Return to Indy

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Intense battling in the late stages of the Brickyard 400

iRacing.com Brickyard 400 results (iRacing members only!)

The next event in the iRacing World Tour has come around already (second event in the month of July!) and this time it was the virtual recreation of a popular NASCAR event, the Brickyard 400. The race sees the top tier NASCAR Sprint Cup racing at the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway for 160 laps of high adrenaline action.

The event was scheduled at a pretty unpleasant time (01:30am) but as I have raced in every 2010 event so far, I made the choice to race and I’m very glad I did.

As suggested in a recent post I decided to avoid the early mishaps by starting from the pitlane, despite being gridded 5th in my split (which was the 4th highest split of the 11 splits). I’ve had such terrible results in the previous oval World Tour events that I set my goal at just lapping at the very back and just seeing what happens. A lot of drivers crash out and retire in these events, so I was just hoping to gain the positions from the retirees and leaving it at that.

The plan worked pretty well. In the early stages of the race everyone was extremely co-operative and willing to give room and it seemed most everyone was on the same page in realising it was a long race and there was no value in racing hard from the get-go. When the inevitable wrecks happened I generally had plenty of space and crept through the carnage unscathed. Mostly.

The first half of the race I stayed in positions 25th to 30th biding my time and then I started to slowly gain track position in the second half. As the laps unwound the field became more racy and I picked up some damage on lap 121 when my car was clipped whilst evading a wrecking car. I had worked my way up to 11th (I was positioning my car for the end-game) but the damage was severe enough for me to use up my one and only reset. Once restored, I had a great car again and it fared well compared to the rest of the field who had already used their resets and taken further knocks.

The last 30 laps were very intense – everyone was firmly in ‘race’ mode and no quarter was given. It made the race quite messy with yellows following yellows but in the short green laps in between the racing was fantastic.

I had an exhilarating battle in the dying laps and was able to finish 4th as we crossed the line for the last time.

Started : pitlane (was gridded 5th initially)
Finished : 4th, 113 points (8 incident pts)
iRating : +66
Safety Rating : A/3.30 (+ 0.07)

The next world tour event takes place on August 14 and features the Tour Modified at Thompson Speedway.

Disappointment at the British GP

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

The wrong type of aero package

iRacing.com Historic British GP results (iRacing members only!)

Tonight saw the running of the next leg in the iRacing World Tour for 2010 – an event featuring the Lotus 79 at Silverstone. Earlier in the year there was talk of this event using the 2009 Williams F1 car but unfortunately the car is not yet ready for release so iRacing chose to use the ‘other’ F1 car, the Lotus 79.

I spent a decent amount of time in practice for the race and had a very drivable setup for the 60 lap race at the historic layout of the Silverstone circuit. My qualifying time saw me start 21st of 25 in the second split and given the very rearward starting position I decided to take it very safe until we were spread out enough to start to challenge.

The plan worked for the first few corners – but my luck ran out pretty quickly when two cars collided ahead of me and spun into my path, leaving me nowhere to go. I used my reset but the race was all but finished at that point. The reset took around 2 minutes to complete (during which you are held in your pit box), and the real killer was the fact that my car was then filled with a full tank, leaving the car extremely difficult to drive and over 2 seconds a lap slower. That meant that whilst I was able to continue the race it wasn’t much fun as a) I wasn’t racing anyone, and b) the car was a pig to drive.

I carried on with the challenge of running the rest of the race with no further incidents, and no pit stops which I was able to do. 58 laps on the same set of tyres!

Started : 21st of 25
Finished : 15th, 2 laps down, 70 points (4 incident pts)
iRating : -46
Safety Rating : A/4.99 (no change)

Next time I will give serious thought to starting in the pit lane to avoid the lap one collisions!