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iRacing Spec5 World Tour - Round 4

I was able to catch the MostMint #50 Miata in action.
It was at road Atlanta for their 4th round.
#50 qualified 21 in a field of 22. #50 finished 19th.

Spec5 is similar to ChampCar but they race every Thursday and for only 45 minutes.

Something new for Mostmint Racing.

This series is a blast.

Video from tonight's race: https://youtu.be/4zv-mGAChT8

The average iRating from the last race was over 2800, I'm at 1390. Obviously I'm running in the back. I can hang with the guys in the back and had some great clean racing with them.

So far my approach has been "no prep". Like I don't even attempt to drive the car and track until the night of the race - which affects my speed I'm sure.

I've learned a lot about how an iRacing league should be run and I definitely like how they are handling it. For instance they have documented rules, and review incidents and assign penalties if needed after every race. I've only been in it for four races but the net effect seems to be everyone is paying attention and trying to drive clean.

Last night was race 5 of the 10 race/10 week season and it was at Imola. One of the drivers actually lives adjacent to the track in Italy.

This was yet another track I had never run before. I put in maybe an extra 30 minutes practice on Tuesday, but didn't have high expectations for this race. 24 cars started and I qualified P23 - the slowest car to record a qualifying time. Well the race was kinda busy since several guys had errors early and I found myself up to P16. I had a pack a solid 4.5 seconds back, but they were faster and eventually caught me.

After that got settled and I did my pit stop I came out around P20. Getting to the closing stages of the race I was catching P19 and we went back and forth a couple times, til I finally prevailed and opened up a decent gap. Well there was some attrition in the last 2 laps - including a guy who was like top 5 til he ran out of gas and someone was pushing him down the front straight. I managed to cross the finish about 9 seconds ahead of that and ended up P16. At 70 seconds behind the leader it was not my best performance on track though P16 ties my best in this league and P4 in Open class is my best to date.

Here is the video: https://youtu.be/uzwk9sw2sgg - the broadcasters had a new computer and new producer definitely caused some problems with the coverage. The view they were using was only rendering 20 cars closest to P1 which meant there were 4 of us at the back that didn't show up in the coverage of the race start, and their position tracker was also confused showing like 4-5 cars as out of the race (all near the back but it kept changing which cars were out) which left us in gray font and it was quite confusing to watch. I pinged them after and they shared their troubles. I expect it will get better next week.

Race 6 was at Phillip Island. This is an amazing track - very high speed and smooth with just two significant braking zones - very reminiscent of Nelson Ledges.

With an off week in the ChampCar iRacing series I put some time into learning this new track. Well this paid dividends as I qualified P13 at just .7 second off P1, which is my best so far in this league.

The draft with this track and this car was amazing. This combo made for some fantastic racing. I had a lot of side by side racing and went back and forth with a couple different drivers and a big challenge to gain a position at the checkered flag - short clip of race end is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb3CeXko_aE

I finished 28 seconds behind the leader, which is also my best in this league.

I lost a lot of time due to not pitting to stay in draft, and adding too much fuel. Will make adjustments for the next draft heavy track.

Some other video:
Race coverage (which was not great this week): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxTIelPhphg
Rundown through the field - starting from the back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au11OCprWpY

Last night was race 10 of season 9. This was the final race and held at Road America.

https://youtu.be/ZugyMuOGRko?t=201

I chose not to mess with it until after the other league's Laguna Seca race was over. I entered the race sitting 5th in points for open class, with 3rd and 4th less than 5 points ahead. Well my prep work was OK but not great. To make a long story short, I qualified P21 of 24, through attrition I finished P14, and was unable to make any ground on the guys ahead.

I unfortunately hit a guy going into T5 and cost him and me some time, then during pit cycle the defacto leader misjudged closing distance and hit me from behind, causing us both to spin.

We did a night race at Daytona. Practice race so we started 10 cars. Several drivers had problems and dropped out. On the last lap the top 2 guys wrecked in turn 1. The rest of us finished like this:
The guy who finished 5th was 1st when we exited the bus stop.

Road course with a draft - so much fun.

Here is the schedule for season 10:

R1 – 8/4 – Daytona Road Sunset
R2 – 8/11 – Sebring International
R3 – 8/18 – VIR Full Course
R4 – 8/25 – Circuit De SPA Grand Prix
R5 – 9/8 – Monza Grand Prix
R6 – 9/15 – Road Atlanta Full Course
R7 – 9/22 – Silverstone Legacy Grand Prix
R8 – 9/29 – Watkins Glen Boot
R9 – 10/6 – Suzuka Grand Prix
R10 – 10/13 – Road America Full

I am only doing a partial season this time:

Season 11 round 3 - Philip Island: https://youtu.be/Y32p0MGv1Us
Season 11 round 4 - Mosport: https://youtu.be/Ex5laVv7-do

Coming up:
Season 11 round 5 - Mid Ohio:
Season 11 round 7 - Indy Road course:

You can access Slow Motion Broadcasting: https://www.youtube.com/@SlowMotionBroadcasting

Last Thursday's race at Mid-Ohio: https://youtu.be/sII1Pyt5R2U

The broadcasters had technical problems, so they did a make up broadcast on Friday using the replay from race night. They had not seen it in advance, but this allowed the drivers to get in the YouTube chat, and we had a Discord voice chat going on during the race. It was a lot of fun, and I had a good result.

season 11 finale is 12/15/22 - at Indy Road Course. Race start at 9:30 PM, coverage about 9:15

https://youtu.be/wrGXf5YsTV0

I'm not expecting to be very fast at this one, but the current car setup and this track are going to be a handful, so maybe I can move up through attrition.

Tomorrow is race 1 of season 12 at Road Atlanta

https://youtu.be/V-m40of0sK0

If we are racing it should be the first video in the list at this link: https://www.youtube.com/@SlowMotionBroadcasting/streams

This week we are racing at Monza on the combined circuit which uses the road course and speedway sections. The MX5 is a great car for drafting and we'll be wide open for about 1:30 of a 3:30 lap. The link for this weeks race: which should start about 9:20 on Thursday 1/26.

https://youtu.be/Hxc8fwU647I

tonight's race at Suzuka

https://www.youtube.com/live/F1cvL4X6I38?feature=share

A pretty go result for #50, finished much better than it qualified.

Suzuka is still a new track to me. Only did one league race there before and for that one I literally got on the track for the first time four hours before the race. I qualified 3.0 seconds behind the leaders. This time I I put in extra time to improve my lap times and was able to narrow the gap to the leaders to 1.8 seconds in qualifying. An 11 year old joined our league and unfortunately he and I have been glued together for most races. At Monza I could not break the draft with him and we were never any faster than my solo qualifying time, and I gave him the win with a bad defense of the final corner - not realizing we were racing for the class win at the moment. For this race we ended up together and while we did not swap places I could not get away. At the pitstop I gained about 7 seconds which I thought was the end of it, until a couple laps later I went off when I got a bit distracted when someone rejoined from the pits as I was going into turn 1. My fault. Anyway I went back and forth with the 11 year old until the second last lap when I made a mistake in the hairpin and got really loose. He didn't manage it well and ran into me. We both proceeded to finish but he got ahead of me there again.

Season 12 race 5 is Mosport. I've done this one quite a few times with ChampCar iRacing and this league so I am a lot more comfortable here
https://www.youtube.com/live/YGBKzX_wHH0?feature=share It's very fast and light on brakes so we'll see if the kid can handle it. Right now he is P! in open and I am P2 but there is another guy named Ken who is much faster than us and other than some misfortune in a couple races would be leading the points.