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More a test of Vimeo than anything else, here is a lap at pace around Laguna Seca in the Advanced Solstice. Not a perfect lap by any means (in fact the line I use in the first three corners is quite different to the line I used in this video), but just a quarter of a second off my current PB.
1:48.264
iRacing Solstice @ Laguna Seca Hotlap from Samiad on Vimeo.
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Week ten saw the series return to Lime Rock Park for the third and final time. I think this week will actually be the very last time I take a Solstice out at LRP. Not that I don’t like the Solstice (I love it!) but because I don’t get on very well with LRP. There’s something about this short track that requires full commitment and sheer bravery to lap at the very fast laptimes. So many corners are fast entry with very limited run off area, and this combination means that any mistake is usually going to result in a very fast accident, and usually a wall or hard object involved at some point! A 99% lap at LRP is worth almost nothing – I find I can lose a second easily, unless I’m at 100%, ragged edge driving.
I had considered not racing this week, but felt I should at least give it a cursory race, just for the sake of completion. I had a race of 92 points to beat to increase my season tally so far.
I did a few quali sessions to warm up and joined a sparsely populated race session. I was gridded #1 and saw two much faster drivers, so I was a bit dejected and saw the race as a poor opportunity to increase my season score. It wasn’t so bad though, as I started the race from third and managed to steal second place at turn one, thanks to second place running out of road and going cross country. The rest of the race was uneventful – the highlight being seeing the fast second place driver rejoin the order in third place with a handful of laps to go. I had to do some quick sums in my head to calculate how much of a threat he would be, and also what pace I needed to run to be safe. My laptime always goes south in the second half of a race at LRP (a result or tyre overheating, or wear, I don’t know) but it just about worked out OK and I took a comfortable second place result, with no incidents.
Race Results (iRacing members only!)
Race score 109 points, which coincidentally is now my lowest weekly result, so it now becomes the next benchmark to beat as we go to week eleven – back to Laguna Seca!
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So we begin the final loop of the four tracks in the Advanced Solstice season 3 series and return to Summit Point Raceway for week nine. My goal this week was to score at least 84 points which would improve my points standings for the season (by making my poor week three be a ‘drop week’).
I started my practice on Monday evening and set some good times in the 10:05pm quali session (setting some new personal bests in the process). When I joined the race session I saw that I was ranked #2 in a small grid, and would start the race second. However from the warmup pace I could see at least three drivers who would be very difficult to beat based on their laptimes, and so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I had a good start from second but from the outside position I could not gain enough on the leader to take the lead at turn one. I resorted to taking a slower line into turn one (following the leader) and lost second place in the process. What followed was an intense battle between the first two racers that was amazing to watch and view from one second away! There was one or two places where I might have sniffed a half chance but both times I played it safe and kept a safe third (all the time I had fourth breathing down my neck).
I could see some lairy (but ultimately safe) as the first two battled for the lead and secretly I hoped they would end up taking each other out. What happened next was unfortunate as the second place runner experienced a laggy blip in an otherwise stable connection and was issued a phantom black flag (presumably the predictive netcode had assumed he had cut a corner somewhere) and thus he had to slow to clear it. Unknown to this at the time (and facing no other real choice) I took second place :
All the while I was trying to drive safely and keep my 1 – 1.5 second lead over the next chasing car. The leader was clearly much faster than me, but like the classic tale of the tortoise and the hare being the fastest racer doesn’t always result in the glory! Around the halfway point the leader made a mistake in putting his rear wheel on the slippy curb and caused a half spin, and lost a couple of spots :
I still had around eight laps to go and suspected the spinner would soon be on my tail (as he had only lost a handful of seconds in the incident). Still, it took a lot longer than expected for him to get back to second place and it was only on the last lap that he was in any position to come back for the lead – which was too little too late by that point.
I took an unlikely win in one of the most entertaining and action packed races I have had in iRacing so far. The 137 points massively improved on my week three score of 84 points and I managed to hop two drivers in the standings to 5th place. It will be difficult to stay there, but the next goal is to now improve on my week four score of 92 points.