Archive for the ‘Sebring International’ Category

iRacing 120 Minutes Of Sebring

Saturday, March 20th, 2010
Start of the iRacing 120 Minutes Of Sebring 2010

Start of the iRacing 120 Minutes Of Sebring 2010

iRacing 120 Minutes of Sebring Race Results (iRacing members only!)

The next event in the iRacing World Tour took place today with the iRacing 120 Minutes of Sebring – a two hour endurance (ish) event featuring the Corvette C6.R. It was a great combination, as the race would require two pitstops and tyre degradation was a major issue, with the drivers needing to really nurse their tyres if they wanted to keep pace through the stint.

371 drivers participated across 10 races (37/38 drivers per split). I ended up in the top split (worse luck!), starting 23rd of 37. I was really looking for a good result as I seemed to have good pace at this track, but it was not to be as I was tangled in a rough turn one incident that wrecked my car.

I had to use my one reset which saw me take a 3 minute wait in the pitlane before starting again, dead last. It was a big disappointment as I was really looking forward to the race, and you can’t afford to give everyone a 3 minute headstart and still salvage a good result. Still, I soldiered on and put the laps down and eventually clawed my way back to a 17th place finish.

I’m hoping to participate in many of the iRacing World Tour events. The next event is a double header in April with two races at Talladega, one in the Nationwide vehicle and the second in the Sprint Cup car. I’ll likely join those races even though they will be safety rating killers! More news on those closer to the time.

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.

Week 11 – Epic Race Splitting at Sebring!

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Had a very cool night last night. At short notice iRacing planned an ‘insiders night’ that involved a short Q&A session with one of the founding members of iRacing, Dave Kaemmer. It was an interesting night with some little snippets of information on future features such as the looming private league support and general service improvements. John Henry held an impromptu Q&A in a separate chat area which also revealed some interesting comments, such as confirmation that iRacing have had a dialogue with the FIA about a partnership but nothing imminent to come there (a bit of a non-story but interesting nontheless).

To cap off the night we were told iRacing staff would join the 01:15 Skip Barber race at Sebring International, and anticipation was very high for an epic set of races!

Skip Barber Race Results

Sebring

A total of 99 racers joined the race session (the highest I’ve been part of) and it looks like we spawned 8 packed grids. Ian Berwick, Tim Wheatley, Randy Cassidy, Dave Kaemmer and Divina Galica (all iRacing staff) all joined in on the action, although unfortunately my split had no staff participation.

The race itself was pretty good – it was a high SOF (3656) and I was rated 9th of 13 so I was just looking for a solid and consistent race. Sebring is challenging to drive in the Skippy as weight transfer is really hard to keep on top of, especially in the first and last corners of the lap. In the end I had a safe, if slightly forgettable drive to 6th place and 133 points.

Here are the results of all 8 race splits (clickable if you are an iRacing member…) :

SOF = 3656

SOF = 2708

SOF = 1946

SOF = 1542

SOF = 1436

SOF = 1317

SOF = 1302

SOF = 902