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Coming up on Saturday 4/15 at 2 PM, Tom Smith and I are teaming up for a 4 hour iRacing endurance race at virtual Summit Point being hosted by ChampCar iRacing Series.

Here is a link to their channel: https://www.youtube.com/@HughJass/featured I will update this with an event specific link when/if it is posted.

The car is the Toyota GR86 which is free in iRacing content. We can modify the setup to our liking. The car cannot go 2 hrs on a tank of fuel so there will be some stops to top off and a driver change at the 2 hr mark.

In practice race I was over a second slower than the leaders - but not too bad considering its only like my second time in the car.

We can change drivers from our remote locations, so we will each use our own rig for our stints in the race. Goals are to get some experience with the mechanics of endurance sim racing and not finish last.

actual video link for the 4 hr enduro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUvO21V4u7k

On Wednesday 5/17 I'll be at virtual Watkins Glen to race with the ChampCar iRacing series. The car will be the ND MX-5 which is the same car I'm using in the other series

Broadcast will start at 9:20 PM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ll5wswZO-Y

Wins in iRacing season 2 of 2023:

MX-5 ND at Daytona Road Course
MX-5 ND at Nordschleife
Legends car at Charlotte on the mini oval
Dirt street stock at USA International Speedway

Had 0 wins in iRacing before this season

iRating on paved road courses is up from 1390 to 1619. These numbers may not mean much to you, but presently my iRating is better than 73% of the participants on iRacing.

(iRacing does 4 seasons of 12 racing weeks in each calendar year)

On Saturday 7/8 Tom and I will be trying another iRacing endurance race with CCiS. Race starts at 2 PM I trust the broadcast will start at 1:45 PM

Race will be broadcast live here: https://youtu.be/jpT9bHH25Zw
Live timing can be found online during the race at: https://hjbc.live/

We'll be running the Mustang FR500S at Charlotte. Charlotte Roval is very unforgiving as there a concrete walls everywhere so if we can finish this race without needing more than our two fast repairs that will be a good accomplishment. The other goal is to not finish last!

Looks like the race can be done on two stops. We will likely do three stops to balance out the seat time.

We ended up P9 which sounds OK except that was also last place.

In practice I was like 1.5 seconds/lap off the leaders, not slowest for sure, but Tom was another 2 seconds slower than me. I still think a mistake free race would have netted P9 or P8 but that is not what happened.

I had Tom qualify as I wanted everyone to see our pace so as to not run over Tom throughout the race. I really could only have gained us one spot in qualifying as it was.

I took the first stint. One team decided to start from the pits so I was 8th at the green flag. It took a while but I got my bearings and it soon became obvious I was catching the guy in front of me. Well he was maybe .3 to .5 slower than me so I was content for a little while to just ride back there and save some fuel and kinda see if he would make a mistake. After 4-5 laps of this I decided I was going to make a pass attempt. Tried a few times but could never get the exit speed, so I decided I would ride as close as I could to put on pressure and reduce the run I needed. It took about a lap but finally I got a good run out of the last chicane and made an inside pass at T1. He didn't fight me too hard for the position, but he did try to keep pace which cost him at the next trip through the bus stop and he spun out. Didn't hit anything but he slowly lost time to me every lap after that.

The rest of the stint was just putting in laps. A couple teams pitted early (damage, a network disconnect) and so I brought the car in after about 50 minutes in P5.

Tom was next. He took a while to get dialed in but then he was running high 1:32 which was decent pace. Then the wheels started coming off. First issue was Tom's mouse fell and when he picked it up it minimized the window for iRacing making him effectively blind which resulted in car going into the wall. First FCY. Engine is not running we need a tow. First fast repair puts us back in the game after not too long. Then he is in line during the yellow and the guy two cars ahead has a hardware malfunction which slams on his brakes collecting one car and Tom tries to avoid but cannot and the car is damaged. Well we already used one fast repair and there is no meatball flag so I figure we need to fix this now, so he brings it in and in 2 1/2 minutes the crew has fixed it and we are racing again.

After another 15-20 minutes Tom makes his first driving mistake on the infield part of the course - carrying wide out of T4 - gets the car sideways and it noses into the wall. Once again the engine is blown up and we need a tow. The walls are hard but it's not that fast in that section this car has a glass jaw. Anyway 4+ minute tow and our second fast repair and he is back on track. It has not been an hour yet and so I can't get into the car (per rules). After a relatively short time Tom is coming into T1 and there is an incident there. He does not handle it well, again the back end comes around and nose into the wall. Again engine is smoking and not running. This time no more fast repairs. So 5+ minute tow and 40+ minutes of repair before we can continue.

At this point I should have gone into the booth to talk with the broadcasters but instead I went outside and did a few little things. I came back in and was ready to go when the repairs were done. My speeds and lap times were good so the bodywork wasn't even that bent up. This was fortunate as I could run the car to the best of my ability and enjoy some time making laps. I figured if someone crashed out by 5:15 I would still have a chance to catch them. I did make a couple mistakes which they of course caught on camera. As the stint wore on I realized the race was not ending at 6:10 not 6:00 so I was going to be short on fuel. Being like 32 laps down it was not going to have a material effect on the outcome, so I came in and added a few gallons of digital gasoline. With a little tire cooling from the pit I was able to just make a 1:29.8 for my only sub 1:30 lap in this combo.

Anyway the broadcasters and some of the drivers were happy to see we finished.

This endurance series so far is not bringing out many casual sim racers. I was expecting a bit more mistakes and associated chaos. Hoping they can attract wider range of skill level so we can have more chances to race against other teams, even if we're not having a great race.

As usual I hated the car/track combo at first, but after I made some setup adjustments and put some time in, it was a good combo to drive.

Tom said he need to put a little more time in and set up a dedicated space if he wants to keep running this series.

Even though it wasn't a good result, I didn't have a car to fix or stuff to pack up at the end! Also, running longer stints as you can here I find I like better than the 45 minute and 1 hr races with mandatory pit stop.

Up next for the endurance series is Mid-Ohio on Aug 19.

Today I'm doing the 4.5 hour enduro at Mid Ohio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYSTZHmETnw Coverage starts at 1:45 PM, race should start just after 2. Expecting low car counts similar to last two of these.

For this race Ken will be my co-driver so I'll definitely be the slow guy in the car, and we have a new paint scheme.

My race is canceled for today.

I had invited Ken to my team but he had not accepted it yet. Since he accepted after I registered the team iRacing would not allow him to participate in the event.

So that is the lesson learned here today. Grrr.

https://youtu.be/FgZI8DBdmb4

I'm going to hop in and run a ChampCar iRacing event at Sebring with the Mustang FR500s on Wed 12/13 at 9:30 PM.

That one looks like fun.

-BP

So this race was pretty good. Qualified P9 out of 19 cars. As it turned out the leaders were not particularly close so the group I was racing with had a fair amount of screen time.

I was able to use pit strategy to get ahead of one car, and another had multiple spins in the second last lap and ended up right behind me on the last lap. I was able to drive sufficiently defensive to hold that spot and end up P7.

Last night I ended up racing with another league (XSLR) in the MX5 at Summit Point that was also broadcast. I got some camera time in practice and qualifying but not so much during the race. Good race up front for this race. https://www.youtube.com/live/oDGt9FSwQJ ... r7kr_lGmFF

Spoiler alert - race summary below:



Short notice so I didn't get it posted in advance. Qualified P9 of 13, lap 2 I got a slowdown which moved me back to P11, then on lap 5 I got flat out punted - which ended up requiring an extra pit stop. Also ended up by myself for a big part of the race, though I had a good race with Jake in the closing laps which got me an extra spot. This league is very lightly attended mostly because they run a broad range of tracks and cars and I don't have interest in many of them.

Racing Monza Combined with no chicanes with MX5 in XSLR league.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsuayCzoqz8

Starts now

XSLR is like a decathlon running races on dirt and paved both oval and road course.

This was race 3 of the road course part of the season. The league is lightly attended so we only had 6 cars for the Monza race. Lost of camera time in this one. It evolved into three groups of two for a bit but then there was an accident with one group and it caught the other guy in my group as well. This netted me a P3 finish and my first iRacing post race interview.

I'll continue discussion on this league's season in a new thread for 2024.

That's an odd version of Monza I've never seen. IMO, it should be with higher powered cars. No chicanes AND banked turns? The MX5 would be a boring car to drive there. Looks like all drafting all the time. I only watched a couple laps, just to get the lay of the land.

-BP

If you can stay in the draft it’s like NASCAR Talladega - big pack and anyone can lead. It’s insane the speed differential in the draft. With small car counts it’s not the best but if you get 20-30 cars it can be interesting