iRacing

Peter Read from Orion Race Team has put together this fantastic tutorial on how to tackle Barber Motorsports Park in the Radical SR8.

This is the 2nd high quality tutorial to appear in the last few days, I hope the trend continues, they are really useful!

Want to get as fast as Greger Huttu and the rest of the Team Redline gang? Now you can! Easy-peasy!

Heres a lap with Bastien Bartsch around VIR in the Radical with iRacing, we have included a hotlap and best places to pass, hope it helps! You can get the set and replay from our site. www.teamredline.co.uk

I was really hoping we’d be able to race the Spec Racer Ford during the upcoming week 13 events but it’s been confirmed that’s not going to happen.

I’m not sure if it’s because the car isn’t ready or if the new build is delayed and we have to wait for that or whatever the reason, I’m really disappointed.

I think it’s really in iRacing’s interest to make any new cars available to race in week 13 prior to their introduction into a series. If it gets people some experience, that has to make the racing safer. Week 1 was pretty messy when the Silverado was introduced and I’m sure that was a contributing factor.

Anyway, onto the good news

We have the Impala COT at Talladega, that should be a lot of fun if I can get my hands on a set-up I can drive safely for more than a few laps!

But best of all, multi-class road racing involving the Pontiac Solstice, Radical SR8  and Riley Daytona Prototype and my favourite track, Laguna Seca. Up to an impressive 46 cars on track at once!

The closing speeds involved between the Solstice and the other two are incredible which I’m sure will make for some ‘interesting’ incidents. I wish SR was in place during all series in week 13 to clean the racing up a bit.

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• Lots to look forward to in iRacing! (popabawa.net)

I had high hopes for a decent finish at Watkins Glen to finish my season in the Radical SR8 on a high.

This season has been a bit of a roller-coaster with high’s and low’s but not much in-between but lying 5th in my division, I just needed a reasonable result to jump a place up into 4th.

For the first time this season there were enough drivers to split the field and I was placed in 7th on the grid amongst 16 others.

The start was a little crazy with numerous evasive manouvers required by many drivers through an error strewn first few turns but I came through without any contact sitting in 8th.

The remainder of the first couple of laps passed uneventfully with a pack of 4 of us testing each other out.

Coming out of turn 10, disaster struck, I got the power down too early and half-span, coming to a full stop just off the racing line causing one car to spin to avoid me (I later found out he din’t pick up any incident points. Phew!) .

It was a horrible mistake but worse was to come… subsequent unforced spins on laps 9 & 13 dropped me all the way back to 15th and I was on the point of quitting in frustration, I hadn’t ever driven this badly in all my time in iRacing. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Only the thought of saving my SR kept me going and with some undeserved luck I picked up 5 places as other drivers ran out of fuel, disconnected or ended their race in the pits.

Unbelievably, this was just enough to put me up to 4th in my division with 47 points with only 2 days of racing left for my opponent to respond. Fingers crossed!

The cost was quite high, -0.13 SR to take me down to 4.86 and -8 on my iRating.

After 3 pretty poor results in a row in the Radical, any chance for me to grab a top 3 finish in the division was all but gone.

There wasn’t a lot of time to practice the Miami Homestead Road Course ‘A’ this week either and my very poor qualifying time reflected that so it wasn’t with a great deal of hope that I entered the last race of the week in the Radical.

After the horrible start last week at Sebring and the subsequent drop in my SR to below 4.99, my pre-race strategy was going to be to start from the pits and try to have  a clean race and see if I could pick up some places along the way. I was very surprised to find myself sitting on 8th spot on the grid (14 entrants) when entering the race.

So, a change of strategy was needed as it looked like I could pick up a reasonable number of points with a decent race.

Somewhat nervously, I waited for the green light. Unusually, I managed to get away pretty well (I lost one spot) and seemingly so did everyone else as the start was almost flawless as we headed safely through turn 1. Phew!

A few mistakes over the first couple of laps left me in 6th spot with the top 5 haring away from the rest of the field. I got into a groove fairly quickly and was consistently putting in reasonable lap times although a few guys behind were slowly putting the pressure on. My consistency paid off as the race wore on they started to drop away after mistakes leaving just one driver to worry about sitting a few seconds beind me in 7th.

With 15 laps of the 40 to go the driver in 5th suddenly appeared a few seconds ahead after a mistake. I closed the gap to 2s as we hit a couple of backmarkers and the leader came round to lap us. Unfortunately he did a lot better job of negotiating the traffic and the gap was up to an insurmountable 10s with 10 laps to go.

The driver behind had dropped back after a mistake but pushed me hard over the remaining laps and finished just over a second behind at the chequered flag.

A very satisfying 6th place, SR back over 4.99, +27 iRating and 62 points to put me up to 5th place in my division.