It’s been said that the only differences between sim racing and real racing are the lack of G forces and the burden of crash damage on one’s wallet. In the past, I might have added one other item to that list: the rigors of being on the road each week for a different event. However, the past seven weeks of racing even managed to simulate that for me.
In a previous post, I covered the start of the NEO Endurance Series and Blancpain Endurance Series seasons and how I needed to go on the attack in the season-opening events.
When the BES season resumed at Zolder, I was neither attacking nor defending. My biggest competition that race, it seemed, was myself, as I struggled at times to keep the car on track and was well off my teammate Karl’s speed in the race, even though my pace in practice was fine.
Despite my best efforts to ruin our race, Karl carried the team to a 4th-place finish and we tied our season-best points total from Road Atlanta.
The next week, NEO resumed with a six-hour race at Circuit of the Americas. We felt more confident in our pace here than we did at Sebring, and Karl qualified in 6th. However, the challenges of multi-class competition bit us during the race.
Karl and I were both penalized for avoidable contact with other cars in one of the slowest and tightest sections of the track. And coincidentally, our race eventually ended after another car punted us in the same section but received no penalty.
As a result of that contact and plenty of frustration for both of us, we retired our car before the end of the race. It was our first retirement in the seven NEO events we’d done to that point.
The next three weeks, we were back in the McLaren to finish out the six-round BES season. We first visited Silverstone and ran two races there. In both, I ran the final stint of the race, and in both, I faced pressure from fast BMWs behind me that wound up right on my bumper. However, I withstood the pressure in both cases, preserving our position and a solid points total.
The following weekend, we went to the super-fast track in Monza. Since this was Thanksgiving weekend, I drove the Saturday morning race at my parents’ house. That certainly gave the feeling of traveling to a new venue for a race weekend, even if I didn’t venture all the way to Italy.
In this race, Karl spent the first two stints inside the top five while conserving enough fuel to make just two pit stops instead of three. When I took the wheel for the final stint, I was in the race lead, but only by a few seconds. Two faster cars eventually passed me, but I still finished in third, and we took what turned out to be our only podium result of the season.
The BES season wrapped up at Spa — the same track where I crashed from the lead in a 24-hour race over the summer. This time, I was determined to get some revenge.
Although I needed to tiptoe through the Blanchimont corner where I crashed in that 24-hour race, we survived to the finish of this three-hour event and capitalized on the incidents of other top-running cars to finish in 7th. That didn’t make up for losing the 24-hour race, but it was a good result to end the season.
It also put us 62nd in the point standings. While we missed the top 40 cutoff to qualify for next spring’s GT pro series, I was still proud of our performance in a series that more than 400 teams entered.
The following week, iRacing released its new build highlighted by the Nurburgring circuit and the 2015 McLaren MP4-30 Formula 1 car. I quickly took a liking to the new car, and throughout the week, I ran a few fun races at the Nurburgring Grand Prix circuit. In one of them, I passed the leader when he slipped on the final lap, handing me the victory.
This past week, iRacing’s official Grand Prix Series visited Road America, so I also joined a few races there. Although I’m still trying to come to grips (quite literally) with this car, I’m finding it to be one of the most fun cars to drive, especially with the range of electronic gadgetry that makes the races more dynamic and unpredictable than ever.
Plus, it seems that I’m not my perennial half-second slower than Karl in this car, which gives me even more motivation to drive it. Indeed, whether it’s in real racing or sim racing, there’s nothing like a little competitive rivalry between teammates.
Our stretch of seven straight weeks of racing finished with the NEO race at Watkins Glen. Since that is one of my favorite tracks, I was determined to be competitive there, but all week, we struggled to find the pace of even the mid-pack teams.
However, our endurance mindset paid off during the race. As most of the other Ford GT teams had problems, we moved up from 10th to as high as second place. We eventually slipped back to third but still had a podium finish seemingly in the bag, as our advantage over 4th place was more than a lap.
But in this race, a new gremlin struck us. Karl’s screen froze with less than 45 minutes remaining and the car went hard into the wall. Our race-long patience and persistence was wiped away by a half-second stutter, sending us from the podium to the paddock in our second retirement in a row.
Our seven weeks of racing didn’t end on the best note, but the experience during that time — practicing and strategizing, attacking and defending, surviving and even retiring — should make us a better team and make me a better driver.
And fortunately, unlike in real racing, there is no damage bill to repair our wrecked virtual cars.
Corey's Idea Quarry 