Archive for June, 2010

World Tour Visits Road America

Sunday, June 20th, 2010

The start of the iRacing Road America 200

iRacing.com Road America 200 results (iRacing members only!)

The iRacing World Tour continued with the Road America 200, 50 laps with the Nationwide Impala B at Road America. I had a decent quali and was set to start 22nd in the main event (which was broadcast on PSRtv.com).

It was a pretty aggressive start with not a lot of room being given by anyone. That said, I managed to get through the first few turns without major incident. That soon changed after I was hit during braking into turn 5 (I think a car came spinning out of control from way way back) and I dropped to the back of the pack, but luckily my car seemed to be OK from the contact.

I raced on, picking up a few spots up to 14th but disaster struck on lap 18 – my PC overheated and crashed! First time its happened and couldn’t have occured at a worse time!

I scrambled to reboot the box and rejoined the race – 2 laps down and in 21st position. The worst thing was that there was no-one else on the same lap as me so basically I was in a race all by myself. I raced on, picking up positions from retirements and finished in 14th place and with no extra incidents. A pretty good result, but I was on track for an easy top ten had the PC not crashed.

Started : 22nd of 34
Finished : 14th, 3 laps down, 127 points (4 incident pts)
iRating : +14
Safety Rating : A/4.99 (no change)

The next round in the World Tour features the Lotus 79 at Silverstone. Not my favourite car, and not my favourite track, but I’ll still be racing to see what happens.

Mid-Ohio released (plus new Real Vs. Virtual!)

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

The next track in the iRacing line up is the excellent Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. Offering a generous five different layouts, the track is a fantastic addition to iRacing offering a unique set of flowing corners and many elevation changes. All of which makes preparing a set of Real Vs. Virtual all the more interesting!

The next series of Real Vs. Virtual is available on Vimeo below and as direct static photos here.

You can see the previous sets in the ‘Real Vs. Virtual’ photocomparison series by clicking here.

Early Preview of the FW31

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Announced back in January 2010, iRacing have been working on their version of the Williams F1 FW31 – slated to be the absolute top tier open wheel racer in the iRacing.com service.

When it was announced there was a glimmer of hope that the car would be available for use in time for the iRacing.com World Tour event in July (the ‘F1′ event at Silverstone). That goal was a bit too optimistic as it seems likely the event will now use the Lotus 79 instead.

Nevertheless engineering work is continuing and iRacing released a very early development shot of their FW31 in action. Clearly a long way to go but a very interesting glimpse into the early stages of the car modelling.

An early insight into the iRacing FW31