Archive for the ‘Weekly Review’ Category

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

Week 10 – Worst Truck Race Ever!

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Chevy Silverado Race Results

My Chevy Silverado

Ouch… just had my worst oval race ever. I really excelled at Bristol and picked up 16 incidents, in a total of 4x car contacts.

3 of them by the same guy who, judging by his recent Bristol races, scores 20+ incidents per race! Man, I’m used to picking up a 4x here and there when it’s ‘not my fault’ but this race was a new record that I wasn’t interested in claiming.

Here’s my therapy/frustration venting video :

Annoyingly the last hit spun me round with just 7 to go while I was battling for 3rd. In then end I nursed the broken truck home for 7th. I want to forget this race! It has also eroded my stable 4.99 oval safety rating, taking it down to 4.54.

Week 9 – Mazda on the Phoenix Oval

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

Star Mazda Race Results

Phoenix International Raceway

This week was the second of two trips to an oval for the Star Mazda season, at the excellent Phoenix oval. It’s still a little bit muted as it’s almost a full throttle race (can go full throttle for the first few laps, then very minor feathering required) but it’s still a race where you have to drive it very much like an oval race and not a road race. It requires a completely different approach and discipline.

I started 7th of 13 and kept out of trouble for the most part. I raced mid pack and one by one people collided and left the race. It was going really well until I picked up my mandatory 4x hit towards the end (just when I thought I was getting a clean oval race!)

In retrospect I might have been able to slow a bit more quickly, and harder. Generally when I see trouble ahead I don’t jump on either the brakes or throttle – I come off the gas and gently apply the brakes until I can assess the situation more. Usually I’m looking for either a clear path that I can aim for, or for more information (i.e. slow down severely!)

I was able to drag my car to the pits and reset (I’ve never driven a more damaged car… I almost picked up a ton of incident points just by nursing the car to the pits!).

The end of the race was fun. With 13 to go, and 5 on the lead lap, I took the risk and took 4 new tyres. The next under caution saw 3rd and 4th also dive into the pits for rubber (not sure why they didn’t go for new tyres when I did) but I found myself starting 3rd and racing 1st and 2nd who had old tyres. I was able to blast into 2nd easily enough but all I could do with 1st was maintain the 8/10ths gap to the lead. Slowly, as the laps unravelled, my tyres came into play and I started eating into his lead. Unfortunately just as I was pulling into his slipstream for a late late passing move we just ran out of laps so I had to settle for 2nd, 0.2 seconds behind. 128 points to my Mazda season.

In other news Logitech have posted a brand new G25 unit to me (it’s in transit right now) so hopefully I’ll have a working shifter again very soon. As well as a brand new wheel and pedal unit for spares!