iRacing

It’s almost time for the first iRacing World Tour, the Rolex 2.4 Hours at Daytona (30 Jan 2010).

I’m really looking forward to the race although it’s significantly longer than anything I’ve ever driven in before.

Getting up to speed in the Riley hasn’t been easy as I haven’t driven it for some time but I’m hoping I can last the distance.

Getting custom skins in iRacing is a great addition to the serrvice, this is the scheme I’ll be running tomorrow;

Riley Daytona Prototype

Check out the new screenshots page here for larger versions;

http://blog.popabawa.net/?page_id=591

After the poor performance in week 1 at Sebring I was looking for an improvement at Daytona this week on the road course.

Practice was in pretty short supply but what I managed went well and without being super-quick I was pretty consistently in the 1:47’s with my race set-up so I suspected I could get a decent result if I could translate that consistency to the race.

Despite posting a qualification time only 0.1s slower than my PB I was down in 14th on the grid (22 starters).

The start was pretty messy. The driver in front of me got a terrible start so I was forced to slow right down which caused a concertina effect behind me leading to some contact which I was lucky to escape unscathed. The pause at the start let some of the other guys get a run on me and I lost a LOAD of places going into T1. This turned out to be a blessing as the exit out of T1 was almost blocked by stationary cars facing in all directions. I had time to tip-toe through the carnage and found myself up to 13th at the end of lap 1.

Even though I was a little way off my anticipated pace I was pulling away from the guys behind and keeping pace with the guys ahead. As mid-race approached I was up to 10th place with a big 30s gap back to 11th.

I’d have taken a top 10 finish at the start of the race that’s for sure so I upped the concentration levels for the last half of the race.

I was slowly catching 9th place until we caught some backmarkers that caused me a lot more problems and dropped me back a few seconds with a few laps to go so I decided to not push and cruise it for the last few laps.

On the very last lap, coming through the chicane on the back stretch for the very last time I lost connection. Disaster! I only lost 2 places but I was gutted to lose my top 10 position.

An incident free race game me a whopping +0.19 of the SR so I’m slowly gettign back to where I was at the start of the season.