iRacing

VW Jetta TDi

After a so-so first race at Road Atlanta (short) I was looking to improve in all aspects in race 2. 

A clean race with no incidents, an improvment in my iRating and more points than the previous outing was the aim. I nearly got there.

With 24 drivers registered we got a split and I was 4th on the grid of 12 drivers in the lower split and ranked the #4 driver so I had to get a good finish.

The start of the race went really well, I got a great start and was able to grab 3rd place going into T1. I can’t remember the last time I actually gained a place at the start of a race!

The driver in 4th started to pile on the pressure immediately though and I went slightly wide into T5 which gave him the opportunity to get on the inside  heading down the long straight to the chicane. Being off-line I decided to concede the spot rather than risk disaster on lap 1.

We’d pulled out a decent gap to the remaining cars so I was able to concentrate on being smooth and being error free.

I was slowly losing touch to the top 3 when, on lap 4, the driver who’s started 12th was storming through the field and catching me pretty rapidly. Coming into the chicane I made the only serious mistake of the race, locking up and sliding through the turn, which let him through very easily.

I was slowly pulling away from 6th place for the remainder of the race, finishing a fairly comfortable 5th.

I got +16 irating (1597), +0.11 SR (4.35) but due to the low Strength-of Field (1412) only 56 points.

iRacing member Jeroen Ganzeveld has produced this awesome tutorial video for the VW Jetta TDi at Road Atlanta short.

I’ll definitely be getting some laps in after watching this to see if I can shave a few more tenths off my PB.

The basic structure of my tutorial is as follows:

- The first part is a segmented lap at a decent pace with commentary at every significant part of the track. The entries and exits in this type of lap should be relatively easy to replicate for a wide variety of members.

- The second part is a full lap of the track at qualifying pace (generally, my pb at the time, if it is clean) this is to show the difference between driving on pace, and driving maximum attack, I do not give commentary for this lap.

VW Jetta TDi

I really enjoyed this track last season in the Riley Daytona Prototype but tackling it in the Jetta is a whole different challenge. The short version of the track offers very few genuine overtaking opportunities but lots of chances for the unwary to chuck the car off track!

Practice went pretty well and I was lapping consistently in the high 1:08’s so I was really chuffed to put in a PB in qualifying of 1:08.3. Not an earth shattering time but fairly respectable all the same.

With 22 drivers on the grid, my time was good enough for 8th on the grid and as I was the 18th ranked driver this was a pretty good opportunity.

The start of the race was pretty clean, I started on the outside and lost a place as 9th got inside me into T1, I stayed with the pack as we came round the last turn into the start/finish straight.

There must have been some contact up at the front as 2 cars were spinning into the barriers just after the finish line. I had plenty of time to react but made a terrible decision which resulted in me going head-on into one of the cars involved in the earlier incident, picking up a 4x incident,  and leaving my orange Jetta in a sorry shape. I hit ‘reset’ but to make matters worse, as I was just over the finish line I had a 60 second plus tow back to the pits to endure and drop down the standings to 19th place.

Although things were looking pretty hopeless I needed to finish the race to offset some of the impact of that 4x incident and to minimise the loss of iRating. Fortunately, it seemed there had been a lot of problems on that first lap so there were still a number of drivers who hadn’t lapped me despite my lengthy delay.

I picked up a couple of spots fairly quickly from the slower drivers and as the race progressed drivers seemed to be consistently making mistakes for me to pick up places.

I had a couple of hairy moments into T1 as my tyres became more worn and I did well to catch one particularly horrendous slide so the last 5 laps or so were pretty tentative. I was still picking up places though and ended the race in 11th, considerably better than my 18th ranking suggested before the race.

I got +17 irating (1581), -0.16 SR (4.24) and 63 points.

I’ll probably try another race at the weekend to try to improve on this weeks points.

To help celebrate the new VW Jetta TDi series, here’s my fastest lap around Road Atlanta (short) which will be the venue for week 1.

Passing is going to be incredibly difficult here, I hope drivers have the patience to hold off until they have a clear opportunity. Getting a good qualifying time is going to be paramount, that’s for sure. 

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Riley Daytona Prototype

After last weeks bumper points haul at Road America it put me within striking distance of the top spot in division 8 so there’s plenty of motivation for the rest of the season.

I was coming to Road Atlanta as a complete rookie having never driven there before and I struggled somewhat to get and speed or consistency to begin with. Learning new tracks has never been a strong point of mine so I knew I had to just continue slogging through the laps until I started feeling comfortable. This is one tough track!

After a couple of attempts I managed a reasonable qualifying time, I seem to be unable to do much better than 75% down the qualifying times in this series and I was thereabouts again this week.

Joining the race I found myself 11th on a grid of 17 drivers rated as the #9 car so I knew I needed to pick up a few places to increase my iRating and pick up those valuable championship points.

The driver ahead decided to start from the pits so I was immediately up to 10th and altough I lost my traditional place at the start that driver slid off onto the grass in T1 leaving me a nice gap to the car in front to exercise a bit of caution going into the difficult T2-T3 section over the hill.

On lap 4 that section claimed it’s first victims finding 2 drivers stranded off-track which moved me up to 8th with 36 laps to go. At that stage I fully expected to be picking up a couple more places if I could run a mistake free race.

I was slowly pulling away from Tom Cabral and Umberto Perrotta who seemed to be having a ding-dong battle behind me and I was slowly gaining on Patrick Kluiters ahead. Coming up to half way I was only 3s behind Patrick and I was still steadily pulling back a few tenths per lap when we came across the first back-marker. I completely misread the situation when lapping which nearly ended in disaster which I narrowly avoided but lost 3s in the process. I think I lost a bit of confidence at this point as my lap times slowed and Patrick started to pull away again.

The traffic continued through the 2nd half of the race, being lapped and lapping the slower drivers. I didn’t do a great job in traffic and seemed to be losing loads of time, combined with my tyres starting to wear I was driving defensively but this was allowing Tom and Umberto to close all too quickly!

With 6 laps to go the gap was down to 5s but I knew I was  safe at that point as long as I didn’t make any mistakes which I managed and kept the 8th place over the finish line.

The result was 78 points, +28 iRating (1771) and +0.18 SR (4.42)

That takes me to 527 championship points and to the top of division 8! That’s my pre-season target of 500 points smashed as I still have another 2 races to add to the total and maybe another good result to replace the poor start to the season at Daytona where I only scored 63.

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