Archive for the ‘Race Of The Week’ Category

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.

Week 12 – Mazda “Race Of The Week”

Friday, April 24th, 2009

Star Mazda Race Results

Sebring

Following the recent announcement that there was going to be an official “Race Of The Week” event last night in the Mazda I was really looking forward to the race. Last weeks ROTW had 99 entrants, and was a really anticipated event.

Last nights ROTW, featuring the Mazda at Sebring, was something of an anti-climax all told. We didn’t break 40 entrants, so had just two grids. Nonetheless I had an exciting race and was glad I made the effort. It was a busy race with 19 racers, and my qualifying time put me 10th on the grid.

As the video below shows, lap one was a blast. I narrowly missed a pretty big pileup behind me, and had a very determined overtake at the hairpin. The rest of the race was pretty intense as I’d be driving at full effort, watching the interval to some much faster cars behind me and watch as they took huge chunks out of my lead, only to spin and fall back further away. The last few laps were very busy as I really had to work hard to hold onto 6th place…. I had a faster car behind and was not planning on defending 6th with my life (I would be happy with 7th) but luckily he ran out of laps to get by me.

A good result then, 147 points for a 6th place and a fitting end to my Mazda season.

“Race Of The Week”

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Following last weeks epic 99 entrant Skippy race (see earlier blog post) iRacing has decided to make a weekly event around the mass gathering of members into a single race session.

Starting tonight, iRacing will be encouraging all interested members to join the midnight race in the Mazda at Sebring, as well as the SK Modified race just before at 23:15.

Sounds like a great idea to me – last weeks race (that split into 8 discrete grids) was a really interesting community event and if enough members can make it a regular event it’ll be a high point of the racing week.

I was not sure if I was going to race the final round in the Mazda at Sebring but I’ll definitely be around tonight, and hopefully we’ll top 100 entrants! Race report to follow…