I finally got myself a credit card and renewed my subscription to iRacing a couple of weeks ago. I initially bought a month with Dad’s credit card last summer, after the first round of invites. I’ve been hitting it hard and steadily moving up the standings in my Rookie Solstice.
Hope to be a contender for the championship but it’s alot of hard work! I managed about 14 hours over the last 3 days.
I have entered the competition to see if I can win myself $100. It seems the prize fund of $1000 will be split 10 ways across the competition giving the fast and the not-so-fast a chance to win some money. I’m currently 11th out of the 72 who have posted race times for each of the 5 circuits. There are 200 entrants total, and I expect to fall down the leaderboard somewhat as the times are posted. There’s always a chance to improve however and I’ll keep practicing!
The 3rd annual NYOC was held on the Brianza Classic circuit, including the full oval & road circuit, racing the 1995 Formula One mod.
The event was held over 2 races. One a short oval only sprint race and the 2nd a feature race held on the full circuit.
I qualified a pretty poor 13th for the oval race, not knowing the fastest line around was the high line. Despite this I drafted my way upto the front of the field and passed Denis Pampagnin for the lead on the last turn of the final lap.
Qualifying from race one also made up the grid for race two. I had similar success in reaching the head of the field early on and pulled away to take my second race victory of the day. I waited all year for a league victory and got 2 in one event with just 3 days of 2008 left!
It was my first league victory since I won at Zandvoort in Grand Prix Legends back in 2001.
This is a race report from Round 7 of the Autumn’08 TWF1 Legends League Div 1 Championship, the French GP at Rouen.
I had my best online race in a very long time! After smashing my PB in qualifying (1:42.407), mainly thanks to the MoTeC plugin (which is awesome) I lined up a magnificent 8th on the grid. The start was fantastic, everyone was well behaved and just by keeping my nose clean I picked up a few places – I was 3rd by lap 5!
That’s where I stayed for the entire race. The pressure I felt from Rik was huge, and I’m very happy that lap after lap I stayed very consistent, fast and made no mistakes. Until the very last lap, when Rik got a run on me on the back straight. I braked as late as I dared in to the penultimate corner, but Rik just out-dragged me through the last turn. Great bit of driving, very clean and I’m happy to have come home with the best result of my Legends-League career.
Honestly, my sim racing career to date is hardly a picture of success and glory. To date I have won 1 online championship race, and that was way back in 2001 when I raced in the Atlas Legends League with the legendary sim from Papyrus; Grand Prix Legends. That was at Zandvoort and the race was short, probably just over half an hour, but it was my victory and I’m very proud of it!
I mention this now because, frankly to write a blog about a particular subject has no pre-requisites about qualifications or experience or success in the field. You just sign up to WordPress and start spouting shite and sometimes people read it. Sometimes.
This blog was inspired by the brilliant F1fanatic.co.uk blog. A fantastically well written blog about the sport of grand prix racing. I encourage you to read the articles there.
