Last week, I announced my upcoming Summer Road Trip — a season-long journey through iRacing’s road series, working my way up the GT and open-wheel racing ladders one week at a time.
Some might say it’s crazy to drive a different car each week. So do I.
Others might say jumping from one car to another is dangerous to my competitors and detrimental to my own iRating and safety rating. And that could be true, although I’ll try to prepare as best as possible with every car I drive.
If nothing else, though, this trip is sure to be exhausting.
In the past, even when I’ve run the same car over a full iRacing season, I’ve felt overworked and lacking in motivation by the end of the season. iRacing burnout is a real thing, and I’m not talking about the skidmarks left on the road while celebrating.
I think that speaks to the realism of the simulation. Aside from physically traveling from venue to venue and fulfilling obligations to teams and sponsors, the week-in, week-out grind of practicing, preparing setups, and racing isn’t far from the commitment that drivers face in the real world.
And just as those drivers often spend their offseasons far from the rigors of racing, it would make sense for me to spend the weeks leading up to the road trip away from sim racing, right?
Well, not exactly.
The field navigates Laguna Seca’s first turn in the Porsche.
Back in the Saddle
In fact, I spent the past two weeks behind the wheel getting ready for the season. It has been months since I’ve had any close on-track competition, so I’ve been worried about being rusty with my racecraft.
For my first warm-up act, I took to the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car around Laguna Seca in the final week of its season 2 schedule. That series and its short races would let me practice in several areas, including standing starts, door-to-door battling, and facing the pressure of chasing — or being chased by — another driver.
In my first race of the week, spins by the top three drivers in the first few corners eliminated most of the competition I expected, so the rest of the race became an exercise in hot-lapping — not exactly what I hoped for to help prepare for the upcoming road trip.
The field spreads out through the Corkscrew.
However, my next few races featured plenty of the stressful situations I expected, and things didn’t exactly go to plan.
In one, I found myself three-wide entering turn one and pinballed off two other cars. In the next race, I made it a few laps before spinning at the tricky Corkscrew corner and being hit from behind. And in another, I spun out of a close battle for position, succumbing to the pressure around me.
While I was happy with my qualifying efforts, I couldn’t hold it all together in the races — the exact sort of rustiness I needed to shed.
I did salvage some semblance of sensible driving by the end of the week. First, in a highly competitive race, I started and finished ninth but made no major mistakes along the way. And in my final race, it wasn’t me but the cars around me who made contact early on, letting me sneak through to take third place.
I sneak past the sliding car ahead of me in the Andretti Hairpin.
With that, I felt like I had sufficiently warmed up for the season ahead and I’d be content to take a week off, just turning a few test laps in iRacing’s newly released GTE Ford and Ferrari to remain relatively fresh for the first week of the road trip.
But that wasn’t in the cards, either.
The Replacement
Last weekend, iRacing held its 24 Hours of Le Mans race, and several of my SRN Motorsports teammates organized an entry in the Ferrari and put in hours of diligent practice and setup work in the days leading up to the race.
My own schedule didn’t allow for much practice time and I wasn’t even going to be around for the first part of the race, so I planned on skipping it and following the rest of the team’s efforts through their live stream.
On Saturday night, I was listening in as one team member had an emergency come up that would make him miss his double stint coming up in just a few hours. While the other drivers could shuffle their schedules to cover it, they would also miss out on rest time that’s hard to come by in these long races.
Traffic on the Mulsanne straightaway.
So I jumped on the computer, told my team I was available, fired up iRacing, and put in as much practice as I could — about 8 laps’ worth around the long Le Mans circuit.
That last-minute cram session certainly couldn’t get me on par with the level of practice my teammates had put in throughout the week, but since our car already had a half-lap lead, I didn’t necessarily need to ace this test. I just needed to keep the car on track and off the walls while running decent lap times and avoiding the slowdown penalties that are so common at Le Mans.
In my first few laps, I took it easy. On full fuel, the Ferrari wasn’t the most maneuverable, and the track conditions were transitioning from greasy and slick to rubbered-in and grippy.
Negotiating the rubbered-in esses at Le Mans.
As the fuel burned off and I became more comfortable, my pace improved, but was still about two seconds off the team’s fastest drivers. Fortunately, the driver in the second-place car was running similar times, so our lead remained largely intact.
During my second stint, while I still ran adequate lap times and kept the car running straight, that team chasing us had a problem and lost several laps. That gave us a lead of nearly a full lap, so my final laps were spent saving a bit of fuel before handing off to the next driver.
From there, the rest of the team brought the car home without a scratch on it to take the class win. My role in it all was admittedly not very large, but given the circumstances of this race and the efforts my teammates had put in, it thankfully didn’t need to be. It was simply another chance to drive before the new season begins.
Our car crosses the finish line in first place.
Room for Improvement
Although driving off-pace, mostly alone, and with little pressure from behind may not do much to help prepare me for the road trip, in these two warm-up weeks, I did learn something useful about my own driving, specifically one area where it falls short.
While following some of the top drivers in the Porsche, I noticed that they pulled away in the middle of the corners. And my slow pace in the Ferrari also seemed due to my lack of mid-corner speed; at times, I was running 5 mph or more slower than my teammates through the Mulsanne chicanes.
The Summer Road Trip Porsche, ready for action this season.
As I prepare for races especially in high-downforce cars, this overslowing — and not rusty racecraft or dealing with burnout — is likely to be my main area for improvement.
Much of this comes down to trusting in the extra grip provided by higher downforce. As I covered in part of my recent Driving Styles series, driving with downforce has never been my strong suit, but it’s unavoidable in my upcoming road trip.
The off-season rest is over, the warm-up has wrapped up, and the journey begins soon!