iRacing

iRacing founder John Henry recently started using Twitter. You can follow his updates here;

http://twitter.com/John_W_Henry

Unfortunately he’s been tweeting more about baseball (boooring!) than iRacing so far.

There’s also an official iRacing twitter feed here;

http://twitter.com/iRacing

There’s no getting away from the fact that iRacing is a US-centric service. It’s a US company with a US development team and I can see it makes sense for them to take care of the home market before expanding their horizons.

We’ve only had Silverstone, admittedly a great track, from outside the US shores so far and I think for some, the lack of non-US content is becoming a big issue and patience is wearing a bit thin.

Looks like some good news is close on the horizon though. Responding to the above critisism in the iRacing member forums, iRacing owner John W. Henry stated;

Friday you’ll hear about a couple of non-US tracks I’m excited about.

iRacing have been teasing us for a while saying that they were working on licensing tracks outside of the US but it’s nice to have some firm news.

Dare I dream that the Spa-Francorchamps circuit is part of the announcement? I think it’s more likely though we’ll hear about the first Australian tracks following the tie-up with NASCAR driver Marcos Ambrose.

As long as it is isn’t as some wag put it; “Must be Canadian tracks then!”

Looks like iRacing are continuing the marketing push with the appointment of video games specialist PR agency Maverick;

We’re really excited to announce that iRacing.com Motorsports Simulations, the most realistic racing simulation game in the world, has chosen Maverick PR to lead all video game enthusiast public relations outreach for the iRacing.com service.

The appointment comes at an interesting time with the “big announcement” mentioned by John Henry due this weekend. I guess you really need your PR agency when you have something big to shout about?

You can read the full announcement here.

iRacing founder John Henry posted this rather cryptic comment on the iRacing member forums today;

“Each sport was created over time – had to be built. It won’t happen in the first year. But this weekend will take us another step closer.”

Something big this weekend? Let the speculation begin, is it Indycar? Is it the “big May” announcement that was hinted at? Or is this finally the mysterious #4 announcement???

Jack Roush Jr. (son of Jack Roush, co-owner of  Roush Fenway Racing with iRacing founder John Henry) has credited iRacing with helping with his race preparation for a recent Grand-Am race at Miami Homested.

I was there just once before, back in 2007. Being prepared to drive the course before showing up this year was a concern of mine. So, I spent a lot of time on the course in the iRacing.com simulator. This helped a great deal. When I got out on the real course, there was no time needed to relearn it — I already had a good handle on all of the subtle angles of the turns.

Read the full account of his race here;

http://www.mustangandfords.com/eventcoverage/mdmp_090406_jack_roush_jr_grand_am_racing_2009/index.html

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• John Henry and Jack Roush team up (popabawa.net)

An interesting piece at ESPN about John Henry and Jack Roush teaming up to for Roush-Fenway racing. Of course, iRacing gets a mention!

Henry is a capitalist god, a 57-year-old self-written success story. In financial circles he was once described as a “numbers genius” after earning billions for investors by deciphering the global futures market. In baseball circles, he’s the owner who earned a ring in only his third season with a team that hadn’t won one in 86 years. But late at night, when no one else is around, he shelves all concerns about lagging funds and nagging Steinbrenners, focusing only on making it around Thunder Valley with all four fenders intact on his virtual race car. “I have the whole setup. Three screens, steering wheel, shifter, you name it,” Henry says, describing a tricked-out simulation station. Henry loves the product so much, he bought the company that designed it, and renamed it iRacing.

Full story here;
http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?section=magazine&id=3622086

This is a very interesting post from John Henry, explaining how iRacing’s ’strength of field’ system works. I had assumed it just tried to match up drivers with similar ability but it seems that it is designed to give you opportunities match your skills in a variety of situations, where you may be the fastest, or slowest, driver in the field.

“There is a hell of a lot of talent here. One the best things about this service is that as your iRating matures you will find yourself racing people with similar skills. Not everyone in every race will have similar skills, though, even with mature iRatings. Let me explain.

One of the cool aspects of the algorithm used to determine who races whom is that it doesn’t just group people linearly.

Last Dec 24 I was in a race with an iRating of 1293. The top driver in that race came in with an iRating of 1841 and won by 2.5 seconds over a driver rated 1327. The second driver actually gained more iRating integers because the top driver was expected to win. The winner gained 65 and the second place driver gained 67. But the point is a driver rated 1841 drove in a 1293-rated race. The worst rated driver was 705.

What does this mean?

Well, the winner Jim Kepford was placed into a field where he should have won and he did. But not by much. He was certainly the big dog in that field. His iRating rose from 1841 to 1906. In his next race a week later he was place in a field where he should be an average driver (as most drivers find in a particular race). The field was rated 1856 before the race and after because iRating integers are simply exchanged. He was rated 1906 and predicted to finish 7th (he was in car #7) in a field of 16 cars. He finished 4th – 13 seconds behind the leader and that drove his iRating to 1957.

4 days later his 1957 iRating put him into a race rated 2346. Even with his new iRating up to 1957 he was predicted to finish 14th in this field of 17 cars. He had to face the big dog in that race, Adam Haufrect, who was rated 3754.

Jim managed to finish 7th and his iRating rose to 1992. The lowest rated driver in the race was rated 1732. Although he was predicted to finish 17th, he managed to finish 10th. That was Erin Nagy.

Erin was placed in a field too tough for him while Adam was in a field that was too easy – one might say. But this is done by design. If a race rated 2346 had all drivers rated between 2300 and 2400, we don’t think drivers will learn as much as they would with a driver rated 3700, another rated 3200 etc. And we think a 1700 rated driver will learn something in a field like this rather than running 100% of the time with 1700 rated drivers.

In Erin’s next race he came in rated 1740 and the field was rated 1112. In the previous race he was favored to finish 17th but finished 10th 49 seconds off the pace. And in this race he was favored to win. He did so by 18 seconds.

So there is an example where in one race a driver is predicted to finish 17th and four days later in his next race he is predicted to finish 1st. We think this is better than being predicted to finish mid-field every race – although generally you will be placed in a race closer to midfield. We want each driver to once in a while be one of the best drivers in a field, once in a while one of the worst. We don’t want races necessarily always full of drivers evenly matched. That makes passing pretty difficult and is unrealistic as far as what goes on in the real world.

BTW, Erin scored 60 points finishing 10th in that strong field and 81 points winning in the weaker field. An average driver in iRacing is going to score approximately 50 points per race no matter what the strength of field is.
So this is probably controversial, but it is how we do it. I hope I have been somewhat clear. “

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The completely unofficial word (via the Race Sim Central forums) is that invites will be going out “very soon”. This is an upgrade from “soon” anyway!

The evidence so far;

• John Henry posted this in the iRacing member forum on 16 June; “Next week we are inviting in more than 1000 subscribers. We realize this is a low race week as people begin to sign up. Anyone who has any spare time this week should race because I know it must be frustrating for some who are trying to race and not getting a full field. I’ll try to be there when I can. This is the calm before the storm.“
• The next rookie season starts 29 June.

Presumably iRacing would prefer us to get a bit of practice before racing so it seems an almost certainty that some invites will go out this week at least.

Assuming that iRacing are sitting on around 6,000-7,000 names on the invite list (I can’t imagine that every beta tester managed to submit their full allotment of 10 names) and an unknown number of of people who have signed up on the website there will most likely be a lot of disappointed racers when the invites eventually start to flow.