Archive for the ‘Homestead’ Category

Pro Series Week 18 – Homestead A

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Pro Series Race Results (iRacing members only!)

I had a pretty decent race at Homestead. Managed to keep out of trouble and picked up places along the way. The race itself was very long (over 60 mins) and so became an attrition race, where places were gained by not making mistakes. The track is quite interesting to drive but offers next to no legitimate passing opportunities. It was the same story when the series was at Road Course B earlier in the season (blog post here).

I started 21st of 22 drivers (no qualifying time) and managed to avoid quite a few spinning cars (some very close!) en route to a decent 13th place finish. 113 points.

I made a short highlights clip – no wild overtaking to speak of, but plenty of near misses.

This sees me move to 65th in the series rankings. Should I find myself in a position to get a top 50 placing (which is unlikely but still possible) I’ll skip some racing to ensure I don’t steal a berth in the Drivers World Championship. I’m not fast enough to qualify in the top 32 for the races, so it would be a wasted place that could go to a faster driver.

Pro Week 12 – Homestead Road Course B

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Pro Series Race Results (iRacing members only!)

This weeks Pro race was quite memorable (for good and bad reasons). It was my first race on the road track at Homestead and for a roval it’s not too bad. I decided that it would be worth qualifying but in the end it wasn’t really needed as I started 16th of 18, and was the last of the drivers who set a qualifying time (so I would have started 16th even with no quali time).

The race itself was pretty eventful. There was a lap 1 pileup where I was lucky to drive away with just a 1x incident hit and a slightly wonky wheel. It did mean that I was able to pickup a few positions and so I spent the first portion of the race in 13th/14th position, somewhere in a pack of cars.

Passing is quite hard at Homestead, as you have a one lane hairpin just before the oval section (so the cars are always spread out a certain amount as they navigate the turn in single file) and even after a long period of drafting the route to turn 1 is very tricky to drive whilst also battling another driver. Most of my position gains were the product of other drivers making mistakes and gifting me positions.

After some more lucky passes I found myself in 10th position with just 9 laps to go – but I was locked into a fierce battle with another driver and we both seemed to be getting more and more wild as the laps ticked over. Unfortunately on lap 42 the inevitable happened; after a lengthy period of drafting we entered the turn 1 kink side by side and I hit a bump in the road (a bump that I hadn’t felt before as I was now off my ideal racing line) and this pitched the car into a ‘tankslapper’. I was luckily able to reign it back under control and slow the car down, but I ran out of road and the car spun out into the grass.

I rejoined the track and was able to finish 13th, for 74 points (not too bad considering).

I made a short highlights reel of the race and the memorable moments:-

Season 2 – Underway with a poor start

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

Nationwide Impala Race Results

Season 2 of 2009 got off to a poor start with my first Nationwide Impala race in iRacing. This race was actually one of the ‘Race of the Week’ events that iRacing publicise (to try and get large grids) but with just 24 entrants it’s quickly losing any sense of grandeur as an event.

As an experiment I spent a few hours working on a setup and once I was into the race I found that it was pretty good – I was just a few tenths behind the fastest guys (who were amongst the fastest in iRacing). I was hoping for a good result.

Unfortunately it was not to be. Relatively early on I had to reset for a brand new car when someone spun on pit road and their car spun onto the track. If you check the (somewhat funny) replay below you’ll notice that the majority of the car was hidden behind my A-pillar and I had quite a shock when the car veered into my view! 4x and a reset later…

The rest of the race went pretty good – really long green runs. I had another 4x given out when someone veered into me (sigh) but the real race breaker was when I decided to make a green flag pit. We’d been racing under green for over 40 laps and with < 50 to go I decided to take a gamble and get fresh rubber, and a fuel load that would see me through to the end. The field were spread out now and as the race wasn't a yellow fest I thought it was a pretty safe bet. One lap later a yellow came, and I was one lap down for the rest of the race - oh well! Finished in 15th, so one of my worst results to date. In a few weeks resets will be taken away so had that been the case here my race would have ended on lap 13 so it's not all bad.

Here's a short highlight clip of the two hits I had during the race.