No, I’m not the first person to piece together a fantasy racetrack from existing elements. Formula 1 drivers including Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo have endeavored this exercise, collectively combining many of the same components, including Eau Rouge at Spa, the Esses at Suzuka, and the uphill first turn in Austin.

There are even a few real-world circuits that took inspiration from – or directly copied – corners from other tracks. Pocono Raceway designed its three turns after Trenton, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee. Circuit of the Americas has sections modeled after Silverstone, Interlagos, Hockenheim, and Istanbul. And the never-raced Hanoi street circuit drew inspiration from the Nürburgring, Monaco, Sepang and Suzuka.

My own design takes pieces from some of these famous F1 venues, but also pulls from classic North American road courses and global endurance circuits. And ultimately, if someone ever constructed this track either in the real world or the sim world, I’d imagine that sports car and endurance racing — not high-level open-wheeled competition — would be its calling.

The Circuit Stats

This circuit combines 14 sections from different tracks, ranging from straightaways to corners to the elevation changes that make them unique.

The total length adds up to 5.05 miles or 8.13 kilometers. That makes it 16% longer than Spa, the longest current F1 track, and on par with Thunderhill Raceway Park in California, where the nearly 5-mile combined circuit hosts a 25-hour endurance race each December.

From the highest point in turn 8 to the lowest point entering turn 17, the circuit features 124 feet or 38 meters of elevation change. But elevation isn’t all it offers.

Despite its patchwork nature, each of the three sectors includes some similar elements. The first is mostly flat, with corners progressively getting tighter and slower through the stadium-style turn 5. The second sector features most of the undulation, initially climbing and then falling through separate sets of high-speed esses. And the final sector is all about speed, with five separate straightaways that each terminate in a passing zone.

That variability would demand a compromise in car setup and would challenge drivers through the full range of their skill sets, along with their physical conditioning.

It’s a mental test as well, since unlike modern circuits, you won’t find acres of paved runoff surrounding this track. Instead, errant cars may grind to a halt in gravel traps, or be punished even worse by the barriers that border many corners. 

That makes aggression a risk while patience and consistency are rewarded. And given my own measured driving style and strength in endurance events, I don’t think my dream circuit could have it any other way.

Start/Finish to Turn 1 – from Road America

Section Length: 0.38 miles/0.60 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: -2 feet

A lap starts on my favorite frontstretch in motorsports. While we don’t make the gravity-defying uphill climb to the start/finish line at Road America, we begin at the crest of the hill and make a nearly 2,000-foot run down to the first corner.

Its trickiness stems from its simplicity. There are no kinks in the road, bumps in the braking zone, or Tilke-esque widening of the track to enable divebombs up the inside. Instead, it’s a straight shot into a bottleneck corner, and you can see it coming from nearly half a mile away.

That acts to build anticipation, whether you’re on a hot lap preparing for the first make-or-break corner, or in a side-by-side battle waiting to see who brakes later.

My own experience at Road America includes draft battles and breakaways in the Spec Racer Ford. The high speeds down the frontstretch at my circuit would promote a similar sort of tactical racing, culminating with the flat but fast entry to turn 1.

Turn 1 Apex to Exit – from Montreal turn 7

Section Length: 0.28 miles/0.45 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +11 feet

While turn 1 at Road America opens up a bit on exit, at my track, it keeps getting tighter. To enable that, I have stamped it with the exit of the second chicane at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

It’s a deceivingly long, winding corner, and for over-eager drivers who track out too early, they’ll find an unpleasant surprise awaiting them just past the exit kerbing, as described by former F1 driver and current Sky Sports commentator Anthony Davidson:

“But a driver must still be careful here because there’s a wall on the outside of Seven and we’ve seen in the past how running wide… can have the knock-on effect of putting a car either close to or into the wall.”

For dueling drivers, this turn creates an obvious pressure point and potentially for excitement. Holding the outside line puts you closer to the wall on exit but could help carry more speed down the following waterfront short chute.

Meanwhile, going fast enough up the inside could help you complete a pass by mid-corner, but if you’re not fully in front, you’ll have to check your speed and watch for wheelspin as a side-by-side fight continues into the next section.

Turns 2 and 3 – from Sebring turns 12 and 13 (Tower)

Section Length: 0.36 miles/0.57 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: -5 feet

Moving out of the claustrophobic armco-lined straight, the track now opens up in my favorite sequence of corners from one of my favorite endurance racing circuits, the Sebring International Raceway.

We begin with the wide, fast turn-12 kink. Given the lack of braking required here, it barely qualifies as a corner, and yet in some situations, it can be even more important than the turn that follows.

When defending a position, holding a middle to inside line can cut off any passing opportunities for the driver behind by forcing them on the longer, marble-littered outside line.

When attempting a pass, making an early move up the inside of Sebring’s turn 12 can set up a braking-zone dive into turn 13.

And when faster-class traffic approaches through this section, the same car positioning rules apply to averting or facilitating a pass.

Turn 13, or Tower corner, has the sort of uninspiring blueprint you’d expect of a 90-degree turn plucked from a flat airport circuit, but in practice, it’s a great challenge behind the wheel.

The raised inside kerbing limits how much you can cut the corner. Its profile and the straight that follows demand a later apex, which means driving in deep and turning in late. And the flat outside exit kerbs are flanked by grass and dirt, which gives limited room for running wide.

Turn 4 – from old Silverstone turn 13 (Bridge)

Section Length: 0.19 miles/0.31 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +5 feet

Consider this corner an act of altruism, righting a wrong in the recent history of race track renovation. When Silverstone was reconfigured in 2010, the technical new infield layout bypassed one of the circuit’s most iconic sections at Bridge corner.

At this airfield circuit, it was a rare corner with elevation, as the track exited the Abbey chicane, then dove downhill under the namesake roadway bridge before climbing on exit.

For bold drivers, it presented a passing opportunity, as I found during a three-hour Blancpain Endurance Series race in 2015. On the final lap, I made a move through Bridge to get by a fuel-starved BMW and steal a twelfth-place finish in our highly competitive split.

Perhaps that sort of move was a fulfillment of Martin Brundle’s prophesy about the corner when it was added to the circuit in 1991:

“It looks like an enormously quick corner, slightly banked as well; that’s where I’m going to buy a ticket for when I come and watch! There’ll be a few brave souls trying to overtake on the way in, which will be interesting, and if you get it right on the way out you should be able to overtake into the next left-hander.”

While Bridge’s place on the Silverstone grand prix layout lasted only two decades, it will live on at my circuit. And Brundle would be proud, as my Bridge replica exits into a grandstand-lined section where fans can watch those overtakes happen.

Turn 5 – from Hockenheim turn 12 (Sachs-Kurve)

Section Length: 0.15 miles/0.24 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +3 feet

The Hockenheimring has seen its own changes over the years, notably neutering the long straightways that ran through the forests and replacing them with much slower chicanes and hairpins.

But one element of the old circuit remains: the stadium section near the end of the lap that wraps around the unique turn 12.

Even driving old F1 video games as a kid, it was a corner in which I felt at home. As a slightly banked left-hander, it could have been taken from the short tracks at Martinsville or Hickory, rather than resting in the Rhineland thousands of miles away.

When Hockenheim landed on iRacing last year, I found equal comfort in this corner. Searching for my first official-series victory in more than two years, I used a last-lap pass through turn 12 to take the lead and the win in a Porsche Cup race.

In that case, it was a corner of opportunity, but it can also be a corner of misfortune. It’s tempting to overdrive the entry and take advantage of the banking support, but pushing too hard can still send your car wide, as Sebastian Vettel found while leading the 2018 German Grand Prix.

Add in the expectant gazes from thousands of fans seated around the hairpin, and it’s simply a must-have on my own dream circuit.

Turns 6 and 7 – from the Nürburgring turns 9 and 10 (Michael-Schumacher-S)

Section Length: 0.26 miles/0.42 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +91 feet

As the first sector ends and the second begins, we start our uphill climb with a copy of the Nürburgring’s Schumacher S.

The quick left-right sequence may be trivially flat-out for modern Formula 1 machinery, but in a GT car, it’s still a daring thrill that requires minimal braking, precise turning, and a bit of bravery even in a sim to carry speed over the kerbs as the track crests 91 feet higher than where this section began.

Along with the excitement of these climbing corners, I include this section because I’ve always been pretty good at it. When my teammate Karl and I were preparing for a league endurance race in the temperamental Ruf C-Spec a few years ago, I was a half-tenth or more faster in this section, even if I lost time elsewhere in the lap.

In that case, I was braking earlier but getting back to the throttle sooner and carrying up to 4.4 km/hr more speed off the corner and down the short straightaway that followed.

It’s an approach that required confidence in throttle application and a steady wheel, since accelerating too soon could send the back wheels sliding or the car careening off the road entirely.

But for a complex named after the legendary Michael Schumacher, would you expect it should require anything but precision?

Turn 8 – from VIR turn 10 (South Bend)

Section Length: 0.16 miles/0.26 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: -7 feet

This is the lone corner on my dream circuit that I’ve actually driven in real life, and I can confirm that it does drive like a dream.

The final turn of the Climbing Esses sequence, the road rises to a crest – and my circuit’s highest point – mid-corner before falling away on exit. Driving in too deep or tracking out too wide is almost always punished with a trip through the grass.

My first encounter with this corner came at the Bertil Roos Racing School, which my dad and I attended in June 2007. Our instructors had advised making a moderate lift on entry here, and while watching early groups of drivers on track, I saw several run wide, which gave me a healthy respect for this challenging corner.

After taking to the track myself, I quickly got the hang of it, and by our second session of the day, I was attacking it full-throttle almost every lap. While that’s probably no great feat in those underpowered cars, for my first time driving any car on a real racing circuit, it felt like a nice accomplishment to muster the courage to keep my foot to the floorboard through that fairly blind corner.

My dad and I returned to VIR nine years later, this time for charity laps in my Honda S2000. As I previously wrote, that paced session felt more like an open track for hot-lapping, and my sports car felt especially at home through the Climbing Esses.

I’ll take those experiences as a sign of confidence and a stamp of approval. South Bend, welcome to my fantasy circuit.

Turn 9 – from the Nordschleife (Aremberg)

Section Length: 0.27 miles/0.44 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: -51 feet

We’re back to Germany for the next corner, and this time, it’s taken from the longest circuit of them all: the Green Hell, or the Nürburgring Nordschleife.

Simply learning that track and its 154 corners took me several weeks, and while initially orienting myself, Aremberg corner – at the northwestern edge of the circuit – served as a useful reference point.

It was also one of the first corners through which I felt comfortable driving. Like Hockenheim’s stadium hairpin, perhaps the camber to the road suited my oval-racing background, even if Aremberg is turning right instead of left.

It’s a tricky turn for sure, with the road falling away throughout the corner, and any excess speed not easily scrubbed off without running into the gravel trap or the outside wall.

My approach has always been to take a wider entry, then fade to the inside while letting the banking support the car and guide it through to the downhill exit.

With a Nürburgring 24 Hour class win to my name, it seems I’ve done something right at Aremberg, and this fun corner deserves a spot on my circuit.

Turns 10 and 11 – from Road Atlanta turns 4 and 5 (The Esses)

Section Length: 0.42 miles/0.68 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +9 feet

Exiting my Aremberg copy, the descent continues through Road Atlanta’s Esses. The overall Road Atlanta circuit may just surpass Sebring as my favorite for multi-class racing, and one big reason is this section, where well-timed passes are possible, but patience is often a virtue for faster cars.

This is a roller coaster-like set of corners that I’d love to try in real life sometime. Each turn is tighter than the one before it, beginning with a gentle left-hander, followed by a plunging reversal to the right, then a subtle left-right slither as the road begins to rise up again.

Negotiating this sequence so far is generally possible full-throttle, assuming you adhere to the optimal line and don’t get guided astray by an over-optimistic prototype or – as I found during the closing hours of last year’s Petit Le Mans – a lack of illumination that sent me a few feet off line.

But the hardest part of this section awaits at the very end: a sudden, uphill jog to the left that demands carrying as much speed as possible to connect the esses with the straightaway that follows. The ample exit kerbing is tempting to use, but it can easily cause a car to bottom out and go sliding into the outside wall, or back across the track in front of traffic.

Because of that risk, successfully getting through this corner hundreds of times in an endurance race often requires a bit of caution, or pushing to only 90 or 95% of the limit. But qualifying here means leaving nothing on the table, and that makes this section especially exciting.

In fact, my self-described best drive ever was during a qualifying session for the NEO Endurance Series’ season-one finale. During my final run, with a bit of extra downforce onboard to better negotiate these snaking corners, I gained time through The Esses and carried it through the rest of the lap to land in fifth place on the starting grid.

It’s the only time I can remember trembling after getting out of a virtual car, having pushed as hard as I could to log a fast lap. Including this section from Road Atlanta on my own circuit will make sure that lap, and that feeling, will never be forgotten.

Turn 12 – from Belle Isle turn 3

Section Length: 0.35 miles/0.57 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: 0 feet

Having completed the undulating second sector, hopefully with the car still in one piece, we now begin the track’s long, fast final sector. It starts with a street circuit feeling, taken from Detroit’s Belle Isle course.

The bumpy, wall-lined exit of Belle Isle’s turn 2 has caught plenty of drivers – even in pace cars – by surprise over the years. Forgivingly, my circuit will join just past that trouble spot on the straightaway down to turn 3. But the bumps aren’t finished yet.

They pick up again on the approach to turn 3, and picking the right braking point using the markerboards on the fence can be challenging while your car is bouncing over the bumps.

In addition, the ideal entry to this corner requires keeping your car as far left as possible, often millimeters away from brushing the concrete wall.

Getting through the turn means taking a generous amount of the inside kerbing and using the narrow exit kerbs without running too wide into the grass – or the wall.

The long straightaway leading up to it also makes this turn a passing opportunity, but spotting your braking point while racing side-by-side with another car adds to the challenge.

My iRacing career includes two visits to this venue: first in the Formula Renault 2.0, then in the Porsche Cup series, which included a pass around the outside of turn 3. Both of those experiences left me wanting more from Belle Isle, so I’ll take a piece of it – bumps, walls, and all – for my dream circuit.

Turn 13 – from Le Mans (Arnage)

Section Length: 0.58 miles/0.93 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: -10 feet

The Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans, France, is famous for its long straightaways and fast, sweeping corners. But for my circuit, I chose one of Le Mans’ slowest turns, which is also one of the most important, both on the original circuit and on mine.

The section including Indianapolis and Arnage contains three corners, each slower than the one before it. First, there’s the high-speed kink leading into a braking zone. Then comes the banked Indianapolis corner. Finally is the tight right-hander called Arnage.

It’s one of the oldest corners at Le Mans, dating back to the 1921 layout with few changes since then. One big reason for its historical stability is the presence of a house just outside the corner that has limited any modifications, such as adding runoff areas.

That changed slightly in 2012, when a gravel trap was added and the outside wall was pushed back by a few feet, but Arnage still leaves little room for error. Take it from five-time Le Mans class winner Oliver Gavin:

“Arnage is the most frustrating corner on the circuit. It’s very slippery, very slow, and you feel that the car has almost come to a stop because you’ve been going so fast on the rest of the track. You can lose a lot of time in Arnage, and drivers frequently go off there. Unless you maintain 100 percent concentration, it’s very easy to make a big mistake in Arnage at some point in the race.”

Adding to the demands of Arnage is the long straightaway that follows, taking public roads all the way to the Porsche Curves. My circuit will detour before that point, but getting a good run off this slow, slippery turn will still be imperative.

Turns 14 to 16 – from Bathurst turn 20 to 22 (The Chase)

Section Length: 0.53 miles/0.85 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: -64 feet

My perfect circuit wouldn’t be complete without taking a piece of my favorite real-world track, the Mount Panorama Circuit in Bathurst, Australia. It’s probably no surprise that my own design shares several similarities with Bathurst, including its straightaways connected by slow corners, wall-lined sections with little runoff, and hilltop esses.

Frankly, I could have included almost any of Bathurst’s turns and had them fit with my circuit’s character, but I eventually settled on the section called The Chase, largely to serve a similar purpose on my own track: to break up a long straightaway with something more exciting than a basic chicane.

Funny enough, The Chase was viewed as exactly that when it was first added in 1987: “As for the chicane – if you want to call it that,” said Formula 1 champion Denny Hulme, “I wished it was never there.”

In the 35 years since then, it has proven its worth as a test of skill, as a passing opportunity, and even as a launching ramp for some incredible crashes.

While carnage on the mountain is often unavoidable when racing at Bathurst, I’ve always prided myself in being consistent and clean through The Chase, whether that was grinding to 5,000 road iRating using passes around the outside, pushing the limits in an eighth-place qualifying run for the 2019 Bathurst 1000, or clawing back lost positions in this year’s Bathurst 12 Hour.

And it’s one corner that neither Karl nor I can brag about being faster than the other. During our extended final practice session for this year’s 12-hour race, our average fast laps were exactly tied through The Chase section, down to the thousandth of a second.

That’s surely a sign of a couple of well-practiced and well-acquainted drivers with Australia’s fastest chicane.

Turn 17 – from Watkins Glen turn 10

Section Length: 0.23 miles/0.37 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +10 feet

I often describe Watkins Glen as my first favorite road course, since in the early NASCAR Racing games, it’s the first one I took the time to learn and love.

While tracks like Montreal, Road Atlanta, and Bathurst later supplanted it atop my list, Watkins Glen is still a special circuit to me.

In part, that’s because of my own sim racing success there, including five wins in six POWER Series events. During those league races over the years, Watkins Glen became the only track where I was disappointed by anything less than a win.

In addition, it’s a fast track with a great flow, even for downforce-limited stock cars and sports cars. Patrick Long notes that in a GT3 Porsche, you need to keep some throttle application throughout the entire corner.

The penultimate corner on my own circuit is also the next-to-last in a lap around Watkins Glen. The fast left-hander at turn 10 includes a bit of camber mid-corner that flattens out on exit.

While the modern Watkins Glen circuit has generous paved runoff beyond the kerbing, a tidy exit here is important for the short straightway – and the final corner – that follows.

Turn 18 – from Monza’s turn 11 (Parabolica)

Section Length: 0.90 miles/1.45 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +10 feet

Closing out my fast final sector is a clone of Monza’s Parabolica – a seemingly never-ending right-hander that unwinds onto my track’s longest straightaway.

As with many of my selections, one reason for choosing this corner was my own success here. In a Jetta draft battle against a faster opponent, it was the one corner where I had an advantage, helping me set up a late pass for the win and defend my position on the final lap.

It’s also a great way to end a lap: with a final legitimate passing opportunity that turns into a chance for a crossover on corner exit. It’s no coincidence that the closest finish in Formula 1 history happened at Monza. That 1971 result was facilitated by Peter Gethin’s pass into – and defense out of – Parabolica.

On my circuit, Parabolica is only the start of this final section. It continues down most of the Monza frontstretch, followed by the second half of Road America’s main straightaway. All together, that’s nearly a mile of flat-out driving from the final corner all the way to turn 1.

When locked in a battle, that would present plenty of time to draft, pass, and potentially defend against a re-pass attempt by an opponent. And for multi-class racing, it would give a Daytona-like run of on-throttle time to let faster cars pass en masse.

One thing is for sure, though: you better get Parabolica right, or you’ll have a long time to think about your mistake, probably while watching other cars speed past you down the frontstretch.

A Lap Around

A simulated onboard lap shows each of these 14 sections in their native habitats, but with a bit of editing magic, you can see how they might flow together, from the flat first sector through the rolling hills that follow to the high-speed ending.

A typical lap in a GT3 car would time in at around 2 minutes 50 seconds, with an average speed of about 107 miles per hour or 172 kilometers per hour.  That’s somewhere in between the chicane-punctuated lap around Montreal and a speedier circuit of Road America – a fitting balance given the nature of my circuit, and the inspiration behind its design.

I’m sure I’ll never have the money or resources to literally move a mountain and build this track in the real world, and barring the release of a user-friendly track editor for iRacing, I doubt I’ll ever try it in the virtual world either.

But with many laps of experience through each of its sections, and plenty of great memories associated with them, I can imagine what it might be like to drive my perfect circuit — if only in my dreams.

An offhand remark that hurts a friend’s feelings. A secret revealed that breaks someone’s trust. Or in the sim racing world, a slight miscalculation that shatters your own confidence.

For my teammate Karl and me, we’ve each dealt with the latter, and at the same track, no less. Mount Panorama in Bathurst, Australia, is known around the world as one of the most difficult circuits due to its extreme elevation changes and blind corners, all surrounded by unforgiving walls that punish even minor mistakes.

If hotlapping around the mountain is madness, then running an endurance race there must border on insanity. And on multiple occasions, we’ve been crazy enough to try – and human enough to fail.

My big mistake happened three years ago during our first attempt at the Bathurst 12 Hours. After a top-twelve qualifying run, I threw away a promising start on the first lap, clipping the inside wall at Forrest’s Elbow on the way down the mountain. That 12-hour attempt lasted barely one minute.

Karl’s Bathurst bobble dates back even further, to the Masters of Endurance Series’ six-hour finale in 2015. After taking over the car halfway through the race, a moment of oversteer exiting the tricky turn 9 sent him sliding sideways and into the inside wall, ending our best run of the season with a crumpled car.

We’ve also found success together at Bathurst, finishing on the podium in the 2019 Bathurst 1000. However, success – and survival – in a GT3 car during a longer endurance race remained elusive. Entering last weekend’s Bathurst 12 Hours, we set out to change that and soften the sting of past mistakes.

In our previous endurance race, we earned a surprising second place in October’s Petit Le Mans with limited practice and setup work ahead of time. But such a casual approach wouldn’t work well at Bathurst, which requires inch-perfect precision committed to muscle memory and an acute awareness of the likely trouble spots.

It’s why we failed in our previous endurance attempts, getting overconfident and overaggressive on the savage slopes. And it’s why we succeeded in the V8 Supercar, treating that unfamiliar equipment with extra care around the punishing Mount Panorama circuit.

In the lead-up to this year’s race, we focused on finding both speed and stability, decreeing that we were racing the track rather than any particular team.

We identified the corners most likely to cause problems, including the high-speed turns 9 and 10 atop the mountain, where the outside kerbs can easily send a car spinning; the downhill descent through Skyline, where getting behind on braking is almost a guaranteed crash; and the wall-lined Forrest’s Elbow, where cutting too much or tracking out too wide can be a race ender. I should know.

I promised Karl I wouldn’t hit that inside wall again. But despite all of our preparations, I couldn’t promise much else entering the race.

This time, qualifying was a struggle, and I managed only 34th in the pre-dawn session. That would put me in a precarious position at the start, as any accidents ahead would likely lead to an unavoidable pile-up.

With a shot at redemption driving a starting stint at Bathurst again, I had a low bar to clear. Just completing the first lap would be better than I managed last time. Even that was a challenge, as multiple spins and crashes ahead partially blocked the track on the narrow road over the mountain.

At times, I had to slow to a stop and wait for a lane to open. In the process, I dropped back ten positions to 44th. By completing the first lap with no damage, though, our calculated caution was already paying off.

Between dodging other spins and methodically passing cars ahead, I had already recovered to my original starting spot within the first half-hour. The rest of the first stint brought more gains, and after the first pit stop, I found a comfortable position to run in and log laps as darkness gave way to morning.

Unfortunately, then came an obstacle for which we had no plan. Midway through my second stint, a car just ahead of me spun at the Dipper and blocked the road.

As I arrived on the scene, even slamming on the brakes wasn’t enough to mitigate my momentum. I center-punched a fellow Lamborghini in the door, which flattened our front bumper and ripped off our hood.

The extent of the damage was slow to reveal itself thanks to the draft that initially buoyed my lap times. However, after being passed and facing clear track ahead with a snow-plow front end, our top speed disadvantage became clear.

Karl and I resigned ourselves to making repairs, but hoped a new hood would at least curb any aerodynamic disadvantages. After falling two laps down during our next pit stop, Karl rejoined the track, only to find the car was still off pace.

With any hopes of a high finish gone, we resolved to take the full 5 minutes of remaining repairs and try to claw back positions from attrition alone as some of our competitors inevitably crashed short of the finish.

Four laps down and in 29th, the thought of driving nine more hours out of contention made climbing the mountain feel like a truly Sisyphean task. But while success would again elude us on this day, we could still manage survival and exorcise those bygone Bathurst blunders.

Through the hottest part of the race, our slow advance continued. A Porsche in the wall at Skyline? That’s a position. A BMW with suspension damage? That’s a position. A Ferrari face-planting at the final corner? After a few clean laps to claw back lost time while they made repairs, that too was a position.

By the six-hour mark, we were up to 23rd. With less than four hours to go, we entered the top 20. We picked up our final position with an hour and a half left, when a collision on the mountain sent a highly placed Ferrari into the wall and back to the garage.

As darkness again fell over the mountain in the final hour, we had no sneaky strategy plays to gain another spot, nor any fears about being caught in the closing laps. We just kept driving and eventually came home in seventeenth – five laps adrift of the leader, more than a lap behind the next finisher, and four laps in front of the car behind.

In total, 25 teams, or exactly half of the starting field, finished the race. On this day, being part of that group would be our only achievement, but it’s one we had waited years to finally realize.

While we each had a couple of brushes with the barriers, we had no additional repair time after the first two hours. Our cautious approach had paid off to the point that neither of us worried about the other person crashing at those potential trouble spots we identified before the race.

It wasn’t our best result – far from it, actually – but we could still be proud of completing 336 laps in 12 hours around Bathurst with no self-inflicted damage, and not giving up even after our early setback.

Of course, that also left us wondering what if that loopy Lambo hadn’t blocked our path in the second hour. Perhaps we would have continued our climb all the way into the top ten. Or maybe the pressure of close competition would have gotten the better of us, tempting us to eschew our more measured mindset in favor of a faster but riskier one.

We can only hope to have that opportunity next year. As for this time, despite a less-than-stellar result, I kept my pre-race promise. I never touched the Elbow wall all race, and in the process, I made that years-old mistake a distant memory.

A crash at the hands of a wayward prototype ended our Sebring 12 Hours attempt in March within the first hour, while my own crash in the Daytona 24 Hours this January meant we were dead by daylight.

Add in an early crash in last summer’s Spa 24 Hours to make it three strikes, and it truly felt like we were out of touch with the survival skills that once made us such a dependable duo in endurance events.

With both of us taking a summer break from iRacing and the short Road Atlanta circuit promising to test — or taunt — our rusty racecraft, the Petit Le Mans event threatened to extend our streak of failure unless we changed something drastic.

So that’s exactly what we did. It didn’t necessarily happen on purpose, but as the week played out, we realized that we were taking a wildly different approach for this race than in those others that ended much too early.

Our preparations were informal, brief, and untechnical. And oddly, that didn’t seem like a bad thing. Taking a page from the Seinfeld sitcom scripts, “if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.”

A Race Week Reversal

It started with practice — or a lack thereof. Unlike this year’s Daytona race, for which we started testing more than a month in advance, we ran our first Road Atlanta practice exactly six days before the race.

Since each of our work schedules made it tough to find time during the week, our joint practice was limited to a couple of hours each on Sunday, Monday, and Friday afternoons, and whatever warm-up we could manage on Saturday morning.

Of course, that left little time for setup tweaks, so we initially downloaded a race setup from Virtual Racing School and left it untouched all week. That’s also a sharp contrast from our typical approach, repeatedly tweaking the most minor setup components in search of any extra speed.

All that fine-tuning tends to inspire confidence, and entering the recent Spa and Daytona races, we truly expected to contend for the victory, or at least a strong result, only to be disappointed when we started deeper in the field and lacked the pace to match the top teams.

With time not exactly on our sides, we also took the complete opposite approach to setting expectations for Petit Le Mans. This time, we figured that just finishing would be a success.

Our recent races also left us frustrated by an inability to craft the correct strategy. Whenever we assumed tire wear would be too harsh to double-stint, half the field would use that strategy and force us to either adapt or absorb a time loss to take fresh tires every other pit stop.

Those failed strategies and early exits were particularly embarrassing because of the hard work I put into crafting detailed spreadsheets for each race outlining a planned driving schedule with the projected pace and fuel usage throughout the race.

So for this race, we kept it simple. With a bit of fuel saving, we could stretch our stints to about an hour each, and we’d run five double stints to cover the ten-hour length. Our most exotic adjustment was doing a driver swap after Karl’s opening stint, just so we’d each have the same amount of driving time.

With that plan, there was no need, nor want, for some advanced spreadsheet, which had begun to carry a curse for our races. Earlier this year as our struggles were still growing, Karl and I had joked that creating a new spreadsheet was the first true sign of doom for an endurance race.

I even avoided creating a custom paint scheme for us, mostly due to time limits but also because crashing a sharp-looking car race after race made me wonder if the hours spent designing a livery would have been better used by squeezing in some additional practice.

And a final decision that truly exemplified the “do the complete opposite” approach was perhaps the most important any team makes for a race like this: what to drive. Among the GT3 class, the BMW and Porsche clearly seemed like the top choices, leaving the little-loved Lamborghini Huracán mostly on the sidelines.

But after my season-opening IMSA win at Homestead and with Karl’s own affinity for the Lambo, we decided to go with the least-popular option for the fun factor alone and accept whatever competitive disadvantage it carried, sticking with our casual approach to this race.

The qualifying session offered the first signs that despite our choice of car and lack of preparations, we were better off than we expected. Karl’s clutch second lap landed us ninth — dead center in the seventeen-car GT3 field in our split, the fifth of 20 for our timeslot. With the race’s other Lambo starting just behind us, it seemed that our expectations for being off-pace could have been incorrect.

All According to Plan

As the race began, it also seemed to take the opposite progression from our usual fate.

The opening stint promised to be our first hurdle, as it’s when our most recent Spa and Sebring races ended before I ever even had the opportunity to get behind the wheel. But my trust in Karl’s abilities in heavy traffic, at least more than my own, has never wavered, and he guided us through the first hour while protecting our position, and more importantly, our car.

Sticking with our strategy, I took over at the pit stop, inheriting his slightly used tires and our undamaged car. At this point in a race, we often find ourselves scrapping for positions and slowly crawling up the running order. But this time, a combination of our double-stinting strategy and attrition throughout the field seemed to suddenly vault us inside the top five during the second hour.

In fact, in my opening stint, I only passed one car on track — a BMW that was a bit too hard on its tires — but we were still up to third place by the end, unexpectedly in podium contention with a car and a pace that we assumed would be confined to the rear of the field.

As the race played out, we were also shocked not only that our strategy was working, but that other teams hadn’t used the same simple approach. Some changed tires at every pit stop, losing nearly 30 seconds while we double-stinted. Others cut their stints short, forcing them to add an extra pit stop later in the race.

Regardless of strategies, at some point in every race, I inevitably end up locked in battle with another team or driver of similar pace. In last year’s Sebring race, for instance, I seemed to have a magnetic attraction to another Mercedes team, and we spent the better part of six hours chasing each other and fighting for position.

This time, though, the gaps opened all around us, and we rarely saw another GT3 car for the rest of the race. The two early leaders had exceptional pace and pulled away, while Karl and I found unexpected consistency and rediscovered our time-tested skills in managing traffic to slowly drive away from the cars behind us.

Many of our races have at least one dramatic moment, like a brush with destruction that leaves us damaged or displeased. But this race was mostly drama-free. During my first double stint, a prototype drove me off the road entering the esses, and Karl had a later spin after bouncing off a kerb at turn five, but neither incident was particularly damaging or time-consuming.

As a result of our steady driving, along with a slower driver on the erstwhile second-place team who also accrued at least two drive-through penalties for exceeding track limits, we found ourselves in second place by the midway point.

The challenges that we usually expect around us never came, as we held a 40+ second gap to our next-closest competitor through the final hours. A rendezvous with the tire wall, à la Daytona, never happened as nighttime fell on the track. And we saw the checkered flag in an endurance race for the first time in 18 months, securing a solid second-place finish in our return to the podium.

Karl and I agreed that it was our best endurance result in at least two years, since an unexpected third-place result in the Bathurst 1000 back in September 2019. We also entered that race with lowered expectations amid a field of drivers more familiar with the car than us, so perhaps the pressure we apply to ourselves is the ultimate jinx in an endurance event.

Both races had something else in common as well, though. In terms of pace, our team had no weak link or clearly slower driver in either race. And in that respect, yesterday’s Petit Le Mans affirms a change in how I perceive my own driving, which may be my biggest takeaway from the weekend.

The Search for Speed

For many years, I naturally compared myself against Karl, and our light-hearted observation that he was always a half-second quicker than me began to feel less like an overcomeable deficit and more like my inescapable destiny. Continually unable to match my teammate, I felt like a drag on our team’s performance, even if Karl would never admit as much.

Throughout our practice for this race, Karl may have still had an advantage, but it was much smaller, measured in hundredths or even thousandths of a second. We were close enough to be considered even, although I still had something to prove under race conditions.

While the changing time of day, track temperature, and traffic can make it tough to compare drivers’ pace in a long race like this, the iRacing results simplify it into one statistic: the fastest (clean) lap.

In Karl’s second stint on fresh tires and low fuel, he managed a quick lap of a 1:19.461 that stood as our team’s fastest time for most of the race.

As night fell over the virtual track and I was the last driver in the car, I knew I’d have a chance to eclipse that lap time, but it wouldn’t be easy.

First, I’d have to burn through most of the fuel weight so I wasn’t losing time down the long backstretch. And over a limited stretch of laps late in that run, I’d need the cars around me to cooperate, along with my own driving to be aggressive enough to be fast but not careless enough to ruin our race in the closing hours.

Eventually, I had an opportunity. Two prototypes passed me at the beginning of the straightaway, and with their draft, I was on a flying lap. But an over-eager entry to the final chicane yielded a plume of dust into the air, an off-track incident, and invalidated that otherwise fast lap of a 1:19.291 from being our team best.

With the stint winding down, I conceded defeat to Karl in our good-natured fast lap rivalry, but I’d soon be given a second chance. The GT3 class leader exited the pits just in front of me, albeit a lap ahead in the standings. While their overall pace was much stronger than mine, on low fuel, I could barely keep up with them.

With just five laps remaining in my first stint, I nailed the start of the lap and lined up in the leader’s slipstream down the backstretch. This time, I took a slightly more conservative approach to the chicane but still finished with a 1:19.305, which was good enough to set a personal and team lap record for the race.

I’m certainly not prideful enough to suggest that one lap means I’m now the faster driver on our team. Quite the opposite, I’m always learning speed secrets from Karl’s driving lines and telemetry whenever we prepare for a race, even as haphazardly as this one.

Data crunched by Torque Freak Racing shows that by all major metrics — median lap time, best 20 lap times, and top 50% lap times — Karl still had a slight edge in this race. But that gap was close, at no more than four hundredths of a second for any statistic. And we were both among the top half of the GT3 field in our split for all categories.

In races like this, I no longer feel like a liability to our team, and that makes our pairing even stronger — effectively a one-two punch that punishes the weaknesses among our competitors with relentless consistency, no matter which one of us is driving.

Perhaps that’s one of the biggest reasons why this race was so anticlimactic en route to a straightforward second-place finish. Despite our recent frustrations and time away from sim racing, Karl and I are still experienced enough to know how to drive and manage an endurance race.

When I add in a bit of confidence — but not overconfidence — in my driving, remove the pressure to achieve a specific result, and stop micromanaging strategies while executing a simple race plan, it’s easy to see why the opposite approach may be the optimal approach.

With our string of bad luck now behind us and a newfound way to get ready for endurance races tested and approved, the dependable duo may be even stronger in all aspects.

And we don’t need some spreadsheet to tell us that.

My sabbatical was borne mostly out of real-life relief, with Covid restrictions lifted and a long-awaited return to quasi-normalcy after a year of lockdown. This spring and summer, I attended in-person hockey games, vacationed with family at the beach, and generally enjoyed time away from my three monitors that double (triple?) as a windshield.

But I’d be lying if I said my iRacing break also wasn’t partially fueled by frustration. In my most recent endurance races, I crashed out of the Daytona 24h race all by myself, had a shorter IMSA race at Daytona end after one-too-many incidents at the hands of LMP2 drivers, and never even got in our car at the Sebring 12h since that time, my teammate Karl absorbed the KO from an over-eager LMP2 in the race’s first hour.

Those experiences had made me question my own abilities, and those of other drivers on the service. But a long enough time away brought a craving to drive once again, and after testing the latest round of updates that improved the handling and responsiveness of the GT cars, it was time to get back behind the wheel.

The series was an inauspicious one: IMSA, complete with those LMP2 torpedoes, not to mention the potential for off-pace GTE drivers who blend in with the GT3 field about as well as water and motor oil.

The track was an unusual one: the Homestead-Miami Speedway roval, combining the straightaways and north turn of the oval with a start-stop infield road course, not too dissimilar to Daytona.

And my car of choice was an unexpected one: the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO, built on the same chassis as the Audi R8, for which I’ve never been able to get a grip. But the Lambo has its own character, and the recent updates made it feel like a brand new car.

In the sundown qualifying session, my second-place starting spot came as a relief, both for being that far up the field and for not being first and forced to pace our GT3 class to the green flag, unpracticed as I am at race starts and on a new track, no less.

The first lap brought the sort of calamity I expected from this series, with spun-out Porsches littering the sides of the track through the infield section as if they were searching for curbside parking spots in nearby Miami Beach.

As GT3 leaders, we carved through the carnage as best as we could, and I managed to stay within drafting range of the polesitting BMW, who seemed to have the pace to pull away if not for the traffic we continued to hit.

On lap 7, though, that traffic hit me. A GTE who was one of the first-lap castaways was moving back through the field, and in the final infield corner, he braked inexplicably late, skidded sideways from a second behind me, and clobbered the back of my car with his Big Boi BMW passenger-side door.

After waiting for a half-dozen cars to drive past our accident scene, I managed to get going again, and to my surprise, the car felt mostly undamaged — something a passing LMP2 confirmed for me a few laps later.

But in fifth place and a dozen seconds behind the leader, my shot at the win was surely over. Instead, I focused on clawing back as many spots as possible, which was made easier when a few GT3s spun off course at the tricky turn two, and seemingly capped off by a pass on the banking to take second place on lap 18.

The leader remained about 12 seconds ahead before the pit stop, so while I could match his pace, I wasn’t catching up. Just finishing the race cleanly would feel like a success, I thought, and I’d have to settle for dreams of battling for the win and what could have been.

After the pit stops were completed, though, I got an unexpected call from my robo-spotter: You are the leader! I didn’t think much of it since I was among the last GT3s to pit, so I assumed the lineup just hadn’t cycled through yet.

Besides, I had a battle on my hands, and it wasn’t the sort I’d hoped for entering the race. A GTE backmarker who was running GT3 lap times was right behind me, and frustratingly, he was trying every sort of ill-advised move to get around me.

There were divebombs under braking, for which I simply drove a wider line to stay ahead.

There was a scary side-by-side run into the high-speed first turn — a left-hand flick off the oval that’s hardly a passing zone — with an LMP2 darting between us.

And there was his final attempt: a late-braking, too-deep lunge into the same hairpin where I was clobbered earlier in the race. This time, though, I gave him room up the inside, watched him predictably spin at the apex, and gave a sarcastic “nice move!” on the radio as I drove past.

At that point, I finally had time to process the reality of the race. I truly was first in class, and the polesitter and erstwhile leader was now nine seconds behind. After the race, he told me that a black flag for an unsafe pit exit forced him to pit a second time, and that one mistake proved much costlier than my torments in traffic.

The final laps were thankfully cleaner for me, with only occasional passing LMP2s around me. In my mirrors, I could see a battle between off-pace GTEs who were now mixing in with the second- and third-place GT3s. I feel your pain, I thought, but after my own experiences earlier in the race, my sympathies ended there.

After 45 minutes, 36 laps, two GTEs spinning in my vicinity at the same corner, and one unfortunate penalty for my closest opponent, my race for redemption was completed with a victory.

It’s not a result I would have expected in my first race since returning, and certainly not one I could repeat in a stronger field. But as my first — and best — race since March, I can only hope that this comeback performance is a sign of things to come.