iRacing

Riley Daytona Prototype

With a nice result at VIR last week it was time to head to sunny Florida and the historic Sebring track.

Sebring hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for me in iRacing up to this point, in the previous 3 races here my best result had been a lowly 17th place which I really wanted to improve upon.

Initially I was really struggling for pace in practice until I changed set-up’s which dramatically improved the handling of the car and I was suddenly nearly 2s a lap quicker!

With my newfound speed I managed a fairly respectable 1:57.9 in qualifying, 3rd fastest in Division 8 and good enough for 7th on the grid of 18 drivers. As the #14 ranked driver this was a great opportunity to pick up some iRating as well as championship points.

Not having resets available any more seems to have really cleaned up the start of races and we had another good start in this race. Unfortunately I lost 2 places into the first turn with the #6 driver, Jakko Y Oksanen, taking off like a rocket and gaining an impressive 5 places and Fabrizio Raffa, with who I’ve had many close races with, nudging in front.

At the end of lap 2 I was in 9th, close behind Fabrizio and we were pulling away from the rest of the field. The car was feeling good and I was looking to pass at this early stage as I obviously had a bit of extra speed. Coming into T7, the hairpin, I got a little too close and locked the wheels, semi-spinning and missing Fabrizio by a whisker, my front wheels going over the grass to pick up 2 incident points. Incredibly, I ended pointing the right way and was able to take off again before the car behind caught me. Phew!

Luck was on my side again on the next lap, I’d nearly caught Fabrizio coming up to Le Mans Curve when he made a slight mistake into the turn running wide, I hit the apex just about perfectly and was able to cleanly pass on the Ulmann Straight and into the last turn.

That was about the extent of the excitement in the race though, I was gradually losing time to the top 7 but pulling away from the rest of the field. I’d settled for 8th when one of the leaders experienced an unfortunate disconnection with 2 laps to go to gift me another pace for an excellent 7th place finish!

I scored a season best 86 points (my 5th best points haul ever on the road in iRacing), increased my iRating +41 to a best-ever 1720 and gained +0.10 SR despite the 2 incident points.

My target of 500 points is looking quite possible now with 229 in the bag after 3 weeks against a target of 187.5, and that’s not taking in the account the possibility of dropping my first week score of 63 from Daytona.

Next week it’s my favourite track Laguna Seca, can’t wait!!!

Related articles by Zemanta

• First race in the Riley MKXX Daytona Prototype (popabawa.net)
• Week 2 in the Riley – Virginia International Raceway (popabawa.net)

Tags: Riley Daytona Prototype, Sebring International Raceway

This entry was posted on Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 07:09 and is filed under Cars, Racing news, Tracks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.