iRacing

iRacing member Jeroen Ganzeveld has produced another tutorial video for the VW Jetta TDi, this time at Road America.

This weeks Jetta TDI tutorial is about Road America, and has quite a different structure than last weeks tutorial.

The major difference is that this week there is only one lap to view: a 2.37.8, this was done mainly due to the length of the track, but also because it’s much harder to ‘go easy’ here and still maintain a competitive laptime. In order to maximize the yield for the 8 minutes you’ll be watching this video (I hope!) I have focused on what you can do to improve your laptime the most, with the least amount of effort/time.

In order to achieve this, I’ve split the track up into 3 imaginary zones of priority:

1. This is usually one corner and the following straight, there are 3 of these in the track and they can all gain or lose you 0.5 seconds easily on a good, or sloppy exit, and cost you a position in a fight.
2. This is the area from T3 up until halfway into the carousel (the long swooping right-hander before the kink) you can gain a lot of time here, but there are a lot of corners to master – I spend less time explaining this area of the track because the yield of practicing it is significantly less than that of the priority 1 zones.
3. These areas (there are 2; T1 and T12+13) give the least yield, but of course don’t go blowing these corners every lap and blame me for it

I’ve identified these zones to help prioritise what you need to practice in order to rapidly improve laptimes (some people won’t have hours upon hours to practice a large track like this) It doesn’t mean that you should neglect parts of the track, but if you can consistently hit your marks into the priority 1 zones, you might gain as much as 1.5s/lap consistently, which is huge!

To highlight and enjoy your easily gained time, I play music at every priority 1 straight – there’s a bit of an in-joke going on here, but don’t mind the silliness too much. All you need to know, is that when Mister Kenny Rogers starts singing about a Gambler, you’ll be gaining precious time if you’ve nailed the previous corner

One final note is that I took the liberty of using a fairly quick lap for this tutorial, one reason is that I hit my marks well for the priority 1 zones (aka: Kenny zones) and it would make for a horrible tutorial if I didn’t follow my own advice and another is that it gives a good view at what a ‘competitive’ lap looks like. It’s not a reference time however, so if you’re more comfortable driving 2.40.0 and this tutorial shaves off 1 second (I’d be pleased!) then that’s your current pace and you can be very competitive still. I’m just trying to reach an audience that is as broad as it can be.

This also means that I use brake-markers and entry-speeds that you might not be comfortable with – don’t worry about this, and don’t start overdriving the car to match speeds, just downtune (or uptune if you’re particularly fast) your brake-points and cornering speeds and make sure that you hit your marks right! A good example is the quick right-hander and the kink: I take these flat out (actually, I give them the “kind of lift only me and God know about” – Carl Lopez, Going Faster! Page 79 ;D) if you can’t take these turns consistently at full throttle, give them a little lift and build up confidence gradually. During the course of a race, your tyres might not allow for full-throttle in these corners anymore, so also take that into consideration.

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In his first appearance in a ‘real world’ racer, iRacer John Prather finished 23rd out of 26 in his guest seat in the VW Jetta TDi at Road America yesterday.

The race was marred by too many laps under caution but in the end John finished on the lead lap, 40s behind the eventual winner, series leader Timmy Megenbier. Kerstin Smutney finished in 18th place in the other iRacing sposored car.

iRacing’s Steve Myers was at the event and summed it up for us;

John did a terrific job today and most importantly he we beaming ear to ear after the qual session and race. He had an absolute blast which I am sure he will tell you all about in the coming days.

All the instructors and drivers I talked with spoke so highly of John and what he accomplished this weekend and how quickly he got up to speed compared to other guest drivers they have had, almost all of which had some “racing” experience.

The actual race tonight was not terribly exciting due to the late start and limited green flag laps. It would have been terrific if it had gone green longer because none of the drivers really got a chance to get onto a rhythm. They actually had to run with their lights on because it was getting pretty dark although that really did not seem to bother them.

Personally I think this weekend was a huge success on a number of levels one of which was seeing how active the community was dialoguing about their beliefs on what this meant to sim racing. Having been on the ground and witnessed first hand what John accomplished I can honestly tell you that we could not have picked a better candidate to represent us and VW felt the same way.

I hope you never forget this fantastic weekend John. I won’t.

iRacing member Zach Rupcic was on hand to take some great shots of the action which he’s kindly agreed to let me post;

Close-up of John Prather

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iRacing Jetta TDi

iRacer John Prather came through the first practice session safely in his VW Jetta TDi yesterday at Road America.

I was able to follow the live timing on the SCCA website and watched him improve his times, lap after lap. He finished with a creditable 1:53.018 which placed him 27 of the 28 drivers in the session, finishing ahead of one of the other guest drivers.

Steve Myers gave us an update on how he saw practice go;

John did exactly what he needed to do today. He had brand new brakes on the car and was told that he needed to take a few laps to bed them in right off the bat. He basically had 6 laps at speed in the car and he did what everyone asked him to do which was gradually increase his speed as he became more comfortable. If he waded up a car today or tomorrow morning his weekend is done.

I think John’s going to pick up the pace in qualifying and hopefully put some pressure on a few drivers.

It was really disappointing to see some negative comments about John’s performance in the iRacing forums. If we can’t come together as simracers and support “”one of our own” who’s getting an experience most of us can only dream of then that’s very, very sad. Thankfully the vast majority of us are happy for John and very supportive.

The schedule for the rest of the weekend is as follows;
Saturday August 15
- Qualifying, 8:00-8:30 AM CDT (13:00 GMT)
- Race (30 min), 7:10-7:40 PM CDT (0010 GMT Sunday)

You can follow the live timings here;

http://www.livetiming.net/SCCA/VW/livetiming.asp

iRacing Jetta TDi

This weekend, John Prather, one of iRacings top North American road racers will get a shot at real-world racing as he has a guest seat in the SCCA Pro Racing Volkswagen Jetta TDI Cup at Road America.

The guest seat was arranged by iRacing’s Steve Myers who descibed the opportunity as a “dream come true”

Fellow iRacer and last year’s TDi cup champion, Josh Hurley, has been coaching John for the weekend and ss well as extensive preparation in the Jetta TDi in iRacing, John has also been getting ready for the challenge with a trip to the  Skip Barber racing school at Laguna Seca where he impressed the instructors with his abilities;

“I have more than six years of competitive experience in various racing simulation environments, but this will be my first taste of real-world racing, so this is an opportunity of a lifetime for me,” Prather said. “When I tested at Laguna Seca, I was amazed how well that iRacing prepared me for the nuances of the cars and tracks right down to the undulations and pavement transitions in corners. The instructors were surprised that I grasped the lines and car control as quickly as I did, and at the end of the day, I was less than three seconds from the track record. I grew up in Chicago, and my first memories of racing are at Road America. I’ve also competed on the track many times on iRacing, so I hope that these experiences will help me to run competitively with the rest of the drivers.”

 John will have onboard cameras for the weekend and it will be facinating to see some footage and compare to iRacing.

I think it’s safe to say that all the iRacing members are rooting for John this weekend, we wish you the very best of luck, stay safe, have fun and get a great result!

iRacing member David Sirois put this fabulous video together of a Riley Daytona Prototype race at Road America.

What’s pretty cool is that I was in this race and had my best finish of the season (7th and 131 points)

Riley Daytona Prototype

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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After finishing 12th at Daytona and 11th at Silverstone I was still hunting for my first top 10 finish of the season in the Radical when we headed to Wisconsin and Road America.

With a trip to Budapest planned this week I had to get a race much earlier in the week than usual. I managed to front-load my practice time for once and set a 2:04.5 qualifying time.

This put me 9th on the grid, my highest start of the season but being early in the week I guessed a few guys behind would be quick.

On front of me on the grid was team-mate Don so I had an extra incentive to race hard. Turned out I raced a little too hard on lap 1…

The start went well, I managed not to lose any places which is unusual and quickly realised the guys in front were a little tentative so I wasn’t feeling too comfortable being forced to brake earlier than I wanted to try to give them room.

I got a great run on Don out of the Kink and was pulling alongside coming up to Canada Corner. I didn’t quite have enough speed to pass so started to ease off a little early intending to tuck in behind Don and follow him through. Turns out I left full braking way too late and horrified, ploughed straight past Don, tyres smoking trying to stop. Unfortunately, he clipped my rear and damaged his car while I was undamaged but re-joining back down in 18th.

I quickly picked up a few places in the next couple of laps passing the slower guys and suddenly jumped up to 10th after, what I assume, was  a big accident.

Picking up the pace with a clear track I started to gain on the cars in front. I then had a titanic battle over the next 8-9 laps to move up to 7th and right on the tail of 6th. I was about a second quicker but just could not pass. For 10 laps I was within a second but just couldn’t manufacture an opening. That was probably the most rewarding session I’ve had in iRacing, fighting tooth and nail.

Coming up with 2 laps to go I was considering my options when we quickly caught and passed the guy in 5th who was clearly having problems. 6th would be  great finish so I decided to not try anything too silly and was fairly content to finish there although I pushed as hard as I dared finishing just 0.8s behind.

So, that was my best finish – 6th, highest points – 85 and a +49 on my iRating so a gratifying result but my spirits were severely dampened by seein Don only finish 10th after he was forced to reset after my mistake.

I haven’t mentioned the Formula Mazda much yet as my SR is too low to race it at my current license level (‘D’) but I’m pretty close and I have the car in the garage!

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On-board video showing the Radical in action at Road America.

I’m looking forward to this track!