Kerstin Smutney, driving the iRacing sponsored VW Jetta TDi was forced to miss round 4 at Mid-Ohio due to budgetary problems.
From Kerstin’s website;
After having a couple of sponsorship deals fall through that would have helped with expenses associated to racing in the 2009 VW Jetta TDI Cup series Kerstin was forced to announce today that she will have to sit out the next race in the series June 20 and 21 at Mid – Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington Ohio.
It must be very frustrating to have worked hard to qualify for the series then have to miss a race like this.
The next round is being held at the Autobahn Country Club, in Chicago, Ill. on July 24-26 where I hope we’ll see the iRacing Jetta TDi back on track.
After last weeks bumper points haul at Road America it put me within striking distance of the top spot in division 8 so there’s plenty of motivation for the rest of the season.
I was coming to Road Atlanta as a complete rookie having never driven there before and I struggled somewhat to get and speed or consistency to begin with. Learning new tracks has never been a strong point of mine so I knew I had to just continue slogging through the laps until I started feeling comfortable. This is one tough track!
After a couple of attempts I managed a reasonable qualifying time, I seem to be unable to do much better than 75% down the qualifying times in this series and I was thereabouts again this week.
Joining the race I found myself 11th on a grid of 17 drivers rated as the #9 car so I knew I needed to pick up a few places to increase my iRating and pick up those valuable championship points.
The driver ahead decided to start from the pits so I was immediately up to 10th and altough I lost my traditional place at the start that driver slid off onto the grass in T1 leaving me a nice gap to the car in front to exercise a bit of caution going into the difficult T2-T3 section over the hill.
On lap 4 that section claimed it’s first victims finding 2 drivers stranded off-track which moved me up to 8th with 36 laps to go. At that stage I fully expected to be picking up a couple more places if I could run a mistake free race.
I was slowly pulling away from Tom Cabral and Umberto Perrotta who seemed to be having a ding-dong battle behind me and I was slowly gaining on Patrick Kluiters ahead. Coming up to half way I was only 3s behind Patrick and I was still steadily pulling back a few tenths per lap when we came across the first back-marker. I completely misread the situation when lapping which nearly ended in disaster which I narrowly avoided but lost 3s in the process. I think I lost a bit of confidence at this point as my lap times slowed and Patrick started to pull away again.
The traffic continued through the 2nd half of the race, being lapped and lapping the slower drivers. I didn’t do a great job in traffic and seemed to be losing loads of time, combined with my tyres starting to wear I was driving defensively but this was allowing Tom and Umberto to close all too quickly!
With 6 laps to go the gap was down to 5s but I knew I was safe at that point as long as I didn’t make any mistakes which I managed and kept the 8th place over the finish line.
The result was 78 points, +28 iRating (1771) and +0.18 SR (4.42)
That takes me to 527 championship points and to the top of division 8! That’s my pre-season target of 500 points smashed as I still have another 2 races to add to the total and maybe another good result to replace the poor start to the season at Daytona where I only scored 63.
NASCAR drivers Marcos Ambrose and David Reutimann talk about how Marcos tutored David at Virginia International Raceway in the finer points of road racing, Marcos being a former Australian V8 Supercar champion, prior to the recent road race at Sonoma.
There’s some nice in-car footage and of the VIR track at the 0:43 mark.
After the iRacing tour hit Fenway Pak, home of the Boston Red Sox, iRacing had a couple of featured spots on NESN (New England Sports Network), here’s the second spot, a pretty general introduction to the service.
Missing Barber Motorsports Park last week due to illness was a disappointment after I’d had a good few practise session, I think I might have pulled out a decent result. Nevertheless, with the best 8 weeks points counting my couple of missed weeks aren’t critical yet.
I think Road America suits me, a 6th place finish in the Radical last season and the season before that in the Star Mazda bear that out. I seemed to be struggling a little for speed though in practise and a couple of disasterous timetrial and qualifications sessions dropped my SR dangerously close to the 4.0 threshold.
I was able to make 2 races this week so my plan was to make the first effectively a warm-up for the second. Just like at Watkins though, race 1 was a complete disaster. On lap 10 the driver in front tangled with a lapped car on the fast ‘Kettle Bottoms’ section and span, leaving me nowhere to go but into him finishing my race with a dead-last 17th place.
In race 2 it was an ultra-high strength of field which left me in 13th on the grid from 15 starters. In a high stregth field there’s plenty of points on offer and with only a small field it only takes a few cars not to finish to be in the points.
The race started OK, I lost a place off the line but re-took it into T1 and settled into the race. The two cars behind me had some contact so I was able to pull out a few seconds gap but it was apparent that everyone on front was significantly quicker!
This wouldn’t have been a great result except that there was an amazing amount of problems for other drivers, PC’s freezing, pedals malfunctioning, engines blowing, running out of fuel, it seemed like everyone was having problems and I was slowly moving up the field despite not getting anywhere near any other drivers!
With a couple of laps to go I got lapped by the 1st & 2nd drivers but I was sitting in an amazing 7th place, equalling my best finish of the season (7th at Sebring) so I took it easy to the chequered flag not anting to risk anything.
Logging off I was stunned to see I’d scored a best-ever 131 points! +63 iRating (1747) and +0.16 SR (4.20) rounded out an awsome, if completely undeserved result!
I’m now at 449 points against my projected 500. With only 5 weeks out of 8 in the bag there’s no excuse for not absolutely smashing my pre-season target!
I’m up to 3rd in my division and eying that top spot, I’m not too far off….
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