Well, I’m back after a long absence from iRacing.
Since last fall a number of things have happened. During college football season my focus on other hobbies pretty much falls off the ledge because of tailgating and following what’s happening with my team (Go UCF Knights) in the news during the week. Then just before we won our conference championship in early December, I was diagnosed with leukemia by my doctor and thrown in the hospital.
I’ve been in and out of the hospital for the last few months and finally completed my bone marrow transplant in early April, and was released near the end of the month. Now I have a few months of recuperating at home to do before they let me go back to work, so I’ve got time to kill and thought it was a good time to re-engage with iRacing.
Tomorrow begins 2011 Season 2, so these past few days I’ve been trying to decide what cars I want to run. I had attained a C-class license in both Oval and Road courses during my previous time in iRacing, but since I’ve been away a while I wanted to drop down a bit to ease back into the sim. So this season I have decided to run the Street Stock cars in Ovals and the Skip Barber cars in Road Courses.
Since this has been the “fun week” — Week 13 between Season 1 and Season 2, I have been practicing these cars and last night finally decided to run my first race. I chose to run the Street Stock car at Thompson International Speedway in a 40-lap event. After some offline testing I jumped into an online practice session, and as I expected found I was a good half-second or more off the pace of the fastest cars. I dove into the pits then scanned the field to watch the fast cars turn laps and saw one thing right away, which was that I was trying to take the corners too tight and hugging the bottom, which the fast drivers seemed to shirk in favor of a line about 2/3 of the way up toward the wall. After getting the line and braking points, I jumped back in the car and began driving this new line, and noticed a little gain in speed, but still found myself in the slow half of the practice pack, but I was satisfied that I could maintain a consistent line and driving in the practice traffic showed me that I could both pass and be passed cleanly and safely without bumping into competitors and knocking anyone out of the race.
Finally I chose a race session and logged in, foregoing the opportunity to run a qualifying lap so I would be gridded near the back of the field and not risk bunching up a lot of faster cars behind me on the start of the race. That part of my strategy worked to perfection, so my #15 Invidia/Club Florida machine was gridded 18th out of 19 cars in my race, which put me as the last car on the outside line, and it meant I could get a nice easy start and not have to worry about holding anyone up.
For me the race started well, but Turn 1, Lap 1 there was a pileup. I made it past the carnage and picked my way through stalled and spun cars without touching anything, and by the time I finished the first lap I had gained four positions to reach 14th place in the field. There were still a lot of cars bunched up together, so I braked a little early for turns and watched the traffic ahead and my mirrors to be sure I wasn’t going to run into anyone or block a faster car recovering from a spin that was coming back up to charge through the field toward the front.
By lap 4, that outside line I had learned in practice began paying off, and I made my first pass of another car, moving up to 13th place by going around the outside of the #3 car driven by William Kirwin. He gave me plenty of room and I stayed up high and we both made it safely without any incident. Nice racing with ya, William.
Down in Turns 3 and 4 on Lap 5 there was another smash-up in the pack ahead of me, and I managed to thread my way around the outside of the spinning and crashing cars without hitting anything, and crossed the line to start Lap 6 up in 10th place.
On Lap 7, that outside groove was working for me again and I passed the #17 of Claude West on the outside coming off Turn 2. And I noticed that the #3 had slotted in behind me and was also using the same groove I was and maintaining pace with me, and he followed me around the outside of the 17 car as well. Again it was some nice clean racing on the part of all drivers–nice racing with you, Claude.
Apparently there was some trouble that I missed elsewhere on the track during that lap as well, and when I came around to finish Lap 7, I had vaulted up into 8th place. Then in Turns 3 and 4 on lap 11, I had my first “oopsie!” of the race. I had been closing in on the sixth place battle between the #10 of Andrew Russell and the #12 of Alex Reis. The 12 car got inside position going into Turn 3, but in the middle of 3 and 4 the 12 and 10 made a little contact and the 12 spun around. I tried to correct a bit to the outside but did not correct enough, and just clipped the rear bumper of the spinning 12 car to “help” him spin out some more as I drove by. Sorry Alex! Needless to say, when I finished lap 11 I had moved up into 7th place, but that’s not the way I like to make a pass for position on someone.
On Lap 14 I passed the #16 car of James Summers who had made contact with the outside wall out of Turn 2, and wound up moving up into 6th place, but this proved the highest point I would get in the field until some of the faster cars involved in earlier incidents began coming up alongside to take those positions back.
The first one of the these was the #3 car of William Kirwin, who finally got a chance to make a pass coming off Turn 2 as we ran lap 15. He came up alongside cleanly, and we had a tiny little “oopsie!” touching doors as we went down the back stretch, but he was clearly ahead of me before we reached Turn 3, so I braked and gave up the position without fighting since I didn’t want to risk collecting both of us in a stupid incident after we had run so many clean laps with each other.
Next up to take a position back was the #12 of Alex Reis, who also passed me cleanly in Turns 3 and 4 on Lap 17. One thing I have noticed from watching my replay is that I seem to have more trouble braking for Turn 3 than for Turn 1 at this track for some reason, and I think maybe it’s that I use a reference point that’s too close to the turn and I sometimes wind up locking the right front tire going into the corner, which loses grip and steering. When we come back here for a points race in Season 2, I’m going to try to have to find a different reference point for braking into that turn and see if I can get it a little smoother.
On Lap 23, the #6 car driven by Alysson Pacheco used a lapped car as a pick to make a nice clean pass on me as we came off of Turn 2. I had been following the #19 of Colin Taber for a couple of laps trying to find a good place to pass but couldn’t, so the lady finally had enough of me being patient and went storming past both of us. When the 19 moved up to give Alysson room to go by in Turns 3 and 4, I finally was able to follow the 6 car and get around the lapper, but it dropped me back to 9th place in the field. Colin and Alysson–nice clean racing with you there.
On Lap 25 I had my worst “oopsie!” of the race and the one that earned me a few docked points on my SR, as well it should have. The #11 car of Adam Bradford (who was already laps down due to an early incident) got around me cleanly by going low through Turns 1 and 2, but then on the exit of 2 drifted up high and had to wait to put the gas down going on the back stretch. I got my normal line off of 2 and had a good head of steam, so I crossed over and passed him on the inside going down the back stretch, getting up along even with him as we went to brake for Turn 3. Unfortunately, I locked the left front tire braking for Turn 3 and my car slid up the track, and I smacked poor Adam pretty hard in his left front corner and sent him slapping up into the outside wall. That was all completely my fault and I’ve got to own it, even though I know it doesn’t make Adam feel any better, nor would that help his car run any better after taking that kind of damage. If it’s any consolation, Adam, I did take a hit on my SR and I’m really sorry for adding more misery to what already seems like it wasn’t much of a fun night for ya.
After that my race pretty much settled down and there wasn’t very much in question until the last couple of laps when the leader, Diego Ballen in the #5 was starting to close in on me and possibly put me a lap down.
I wasn’t tracking the lap count, so I didn’t try to keep him behind, but when I took the white flag (and he took the checkered) his nose was up alongside my rear wheel, so I managed to finish on the lead lap by less than a car length. But I did finish on the lead lap and climbed 9 positions from the starting grid to get a Top 10 finish so I was pleased with that. The only thing that would have made my night better is if I had managed to avoid knocking that poor #11 car into the wall just after halfway.
My final stat line for the night included collecting 50 championship points and getting a +20 on iRating, taking a -11 hit on my SR, and turning a fast lap for the race of 23.818 (which is admittedly not very fast on this track). My average lap was in the 24.7 range, which was about 0.6 seconds off the average pace of our winner in the #5 car, Diego Ballen, who led from the pole and never trailed in the race. Congratulations, Diego.
And that’s my report from the track for the day!
