Archive for September, 2009

Saloon cars on a short oval…

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

24HdF Race Results (iRacing members only!)

This race was too much fun to not make a blog post about. This weeks 24 Heures du Fun was an unusual pair up of the VW Jetta at South Boston. With a fixed setup (for road racing!) the entire field was incredibly close, with mere tenths separating the fastest from the slowest.

In this race I led the field of 18 cars to take the green and enjoyed 50 amazing racing laps with my fellow competitors. Lots of side by side racing that went on for 4+ laps at a time, and some really cool passes on the outside.

This is a short highlight reel of some of the side by side action.

Pro series arrives at Barber

Monday, September 14th, 2009

Pro Series Race Results (iRacing members only!)

Racing in the Pro series has been a humbling experience for me (but an expected one). Instead of finishing in the top 25% (which is where I usually finished – not at the cutting edge, but usually in the second pack of racers) now I find myself racing to not finish last.

That’s fine, as I still enjoy the races. If there is someone battling with me the race just flies by, and if I’m lapping alone then I challenge myself to lap at 100% effort with the aim of netting up the laptimes within 0.2 – 0.3 tenths of a second apart.

However there is something else to consider when starting races from the very back – you have to drive turn 1 completely different to a ‘normal’ race. Most races featuring large grids have pileups on lap one, and you have to drive cautiously just waiting for them to happen. Sometimes, I’ll drive as cautiously as I can, and I’ll still get into a crash (just see my recent race at Laguna)

This week I did a little better, and managed to work through the mayhem at the start without incident. The only problem was that I was held up for SO long, that any chance of a close battle was completely dead and buried.

I finished 16th of 24 for 86 points. This week I rose six positions in the standings, from 87th to 81st. I wish more of the 250 would race!

Pro Week 5 – Being Graciously Slow…

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Pro Series Race Results (iRacing members only!)

This weeks Pro race was at Watkins Glen (my first official race there). I put in a ton of practice but could not get anywhere near the real pace I needed. It’s a 100 second lap, so I’d expect to be two or three seconds off the top pace, so I was pretty humbled when I found myself almost five seconds back per lap!

I qualified with the slowest time in the whole Pro series and seriously considered sitting this week out. (why risk a messy crash when you are guaranteed to score few points and lose up to 100 iRating units?) In the end I realised that the main thing is just to take part and try to feature in as many Pro events as possible.

In the end I had a pretty good race. Got in a really great race long battle with Adam Haufrect who was faster, and I finished 14th of 19 for 70 points and zero incidents (lost a little iR though, but that’s OK, my rating is inflated anyway). A pretty fantastic result. I was really pleased with my consistency – after the early laps I settled into a good even pace around 3 seconds behind Adam and reeled off this set of race laps (probably the most consistent I’ve ever been).

1 01:49.863
2 01:46.117
3 01:45.907
4 01:45.343
5 01:45.034
6 01:45.661
7 01:45.827
8 01:46.284
9 01:44.394
10 01:44.976
11 01:44.469
12 01:44.779
13 01:44.651
14 01:44.372
15 01:44.255
16 01:44.732
17 01:44.485
18 01:44.432
19 01:44.576
20 01:44.446
21 01:44.508
22 01:44.298
23 01:44.486
24 01:44.300
25 01:44.406
26 01:44.223 fastest lap
27 01:44.347
28 01:44.591
29 01:44.366
30 01:44.522

I hope I’ll be more competitive in future weeks. Currently I’m sitting 87th in the series standings.