One year ago, I embarked on what I expected would either become a great success or an utter disaster. For 12 consecutive weeks, I would drive a different iRacing road car and series as part of a Summer Road Trip up both the GT and open-wheel racing ladders.
Going in, there were no guarantees and no safety net. If I screwed up my chance at a series, I couldn’t fudge the results or simply skip a week. And the chances of that happening at some point seemed high given that I would be driving several cars for the first time in many years, or even for the first time ever.
While I did have some bumps along the way — including a literal one with my teammate Karl in the Skip Barber series — the road trip was an overall success. I got a chance to sample many of iRacing’s series that I never would have driven otherwise, and despite jumping from car to car each week, I actually gained 145 road iRating over the 12 weeks and 27 races I ran.
However, even a full season wasn’t enough to try everything that iRacing has to offer. With more than two dozen current road series, it would take at least three more months to drive in most of them. Fortunately, I have another season on my hands to embark on my second Summer Road Trip, which begins this week.
I don’t expect it to be any easier than last year. In fact, as I dive deeper into iRacing’s catalog of content, I will be faced with even more unfamiliar and challenging cars, including the new-for-2018 Indy car that I have purposefully avoided driving up until now so that I can assess it with no prior experience or preconceptions.
The tricky streets of Belle Isle make their Summer Road Trip debut this season.
This summer, I will also take a closer look at several multiclass series with major participation imbalances between the classes. As I drive both popular and less-popular cars, I hope to figure out why those disparities exist and whether anything can be done to solve them.
Last summer’s road trip included a fair share of second chances in cars that had previously plagued me with bad races or heartbreaking losses as a less-experienced driver. While I mostly came away satisfied with my performances, I also left the summer with a new set of “what ifs”.
In particular, I found myself wanting another shot at the V8 Supercar — where I had good pace but butchered the start in both of my races last year — and the Formula 1 car, where I never found a competitive, well-populated race to see how I stacked up.
The V8 Supercar has proven to be fun to drive but frustrating to race.
I intend to revisit both of those, as well as a few other cars from earlier in my iRacing career that left me wanting redemption, in the coming weeks.
As an extra challenge this summer, I hope to maintain the 5k iRating that I grinded so hard for earlier this year. That will require not only keeping up with, but also defeating my peers on a consistent basis in cars that they may have hundreds of hours more experience driving than I do.
It may not always be fun in the sun. In fact, I’m sure it will take a lot of work and probably some frustration. But like any road trip, the reward always comes in having completed it with lots of memories — both good and bad — to show for it.
Now let’s hit the road!