There’s Daytona 500 rookie sensation Trevor Bayne, contrasting with Dale Earnhardt and his 20 years of trying.

The pack of four-time Indy 500 winners – Foyt, Unser, Mears, and Castroneves – have enjoyed a wealth of riches in the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, while the Andretti family is a collective 1-for-78 behind the wheel.

And Formula 1 world champions such as Nigel Mansell, Jim Clark, and Nelson Piquet never celebrated on the top step of the podium in Monaco, even as underdogs Jean-Pierre Beltoise, Olivier Panis, and Jarno Trulli earned their only career wins in the marquee event.

I have experienced a bit of each in my sim racing career. I won the Indy 500 and 24 Hours of the Nürburgring in my first attempts, and earned victories in the early years of the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring.

But one endurance race has proven much more elusive than the rest, not just to find victory, but any semblance of success. And it’s at my favorite track in the world.

Our Bathurst Background

The Bathurst 12 Hours is contested over the undulating straightaways and menacingly quick roads carved into Australia’s Mount Panorama. It’s a brilliant circuit, and one on which I’ve done well in other events, getting my road iRating above 5,000 in official races and taking an unexpected podium in the Bathurst 1000 with my longtime teammate, Karl Modig.

However, our past efforts in the 12-hour race have been a struggle.

Our first try in 2019 ended on the first lap when I clipped the wall at Forrest’s Elbow and badly damaged our Mercedes. 

Last year, we lasted less than two hours before tangling with a fellow Lamborghini team, still trying to recover from my poor qualifying effort – another characteristic of my disappointing history in the event.

Our only time reaching the finish was in 2022, but in that event, we finished five laps down after being caught up in another early crash deep in the field. The rest of the race was just a matter of running laps, staying out of the way of faster cars, and scavenging positions as teams fell out.

Karl and I were yet to finish without any unscheduled pit stops or prolonged repairs, so we set a modest target for this year’s race: a top ten with a clean car would feel like an accomplishment.

We practiced for almost a month leading up to the race, testing each car before settling on the Ferrari 296 GT3 for its overall stability even in the hottest conditions that could make the mountain much more treacherous on a simulated sun-soaked summer afternoon down under.

We both logged hundreds of practice laps, studied the telemetry to identify areas for improvement, and made minor setup tweaks since even small changes that made the car faster or more consistent would add up over 12 hours.

A Rocky Start

When race day arrived on Saturday, we were better prepared than ever before, and armed with a plan to reverse our early-race misfortunes. This time, Karl would qualify the car, with hopes of giving us a better starting position than I had previously earned.

That part worked – he lined up 26th on the grid, compared to my starts of 34th and 35th in the previous two years – but accidents in front of us dropped us back to that familiar position, and just ten laps into the race, contact while racing side-by-side with a BMW sent our car into the wall and out of the race.

We both remembered the helpless feeling after our early exit last year, knowing we’d have to wait a full year for a shot at redemption. But in this case, our next opportunity was only a few hours away, during the final timeslot of the day.

We took out one click of wing to help the power-starved Ferrari better keep up on the straightaways, and just hoped to survive any chaos at the start and wait for the hotter weather that we expected would favor our car, our setup, and our preparations.

But when the registration for this less-popular timeslot ended, we realized that we might be in for more than we bargained for. We had barely made it into the top split with the fastest teams, among which the racing is often ruthless in a full field of closely matched GT3 cars.

In this situation, all of our past concerns – poor qualifying results, first-hour incidents, and moving up through the field – would be magnified. Frankly, I couldn’t help but feel like another early exit was in the cards, as we would face a literal uphill battle on the mountain.

His confidence shaken by the previous race, Karl nominated me to qualify and start again. This time, our starting position wasn’t much better than I was used to – 33rd – so I hoped for mere survival in my opening stint.

Moving On Up

The start was clean, but almost frustratingly so, with little attrition in the first hour and only three positions gained by the time I made our first pit stop.

As Karl settled into a double stint, he was met by unflinching lapped traffic ahead that cost us almost ten seconds to the next pack of competitors farther up the road.

He eventually found clearer track and better pace, moving up to the 24th position, but by then almost a full lap down to the race leaders. While we had no sights on winning this race, the big gaps ahead of us just three hours in were already daunting, and the track had been slow to warm up until that point.

That all changed during my double stint that followed, which was both one of the most surreal and the most fun I’ve ever driven. By myself on track and able to log laps with metronomic consistency, I listened to Karl’s commentary over our team radio as if it was a battlefield news report.

Oh my, the number 21 car has major damage and they’re in for repairs.

The team in ninth place has crashed now and they’ve fallen out of the race.

Watch out for this Ferrari going slowly; he’s been in the wall and is limping back to the pits.

Over that two hours of driving, we climbed up to 12th place, benefitting from the crashes around us and also gaining ground on other teams as they cycled slower drivers into their cars.

Not quite at the halfway point, and the hottest part of the day, it seemed like a top ten finish was not only possible, but probable if we could keep our car on track as other teams continued to run into trouble.

The Battle Begins

By lap 163 – just past the 1000-kilometer mark over which we’d previously found success in the V8 Supercars – Karl put us into the top ten for the first time with an on-track pass of the #11 SimVision Ferrari.

I took over the car in the same position, and with that same team breathing down my neck with a new and faster driver in their car. While he eventually got past me, we picked up a position over a slower Ferrari during that stint, which was one of the best I’ve ever driven in an endurance race.

With track temperatures at their warmest, I was running laps in the 2:05s – times I’d struggled to hit in testing on worn tires – and never put a wheel wrong on a slick track, all while facing pressure from a faster car around us.

Everything I’d practiced, studied, and refined in recent weeks – braking points, speed optimization in the downhill slalom through Skyline, tire management – was being tested, and it felt like I was passing that test, even if I wasn’t the best in the class. 

As Karl and I continued alternating single stints, we traded positions with the #11 car and kept tabs on the even faster #211 Ferrari, which started 14th and had been steadily closing in from behind while recovering from a second-hour collision.

When I got back in the car for a race-ending double stint, I was 12 seconds behind the #11 and 12 seconds ahead of the #211. Catching one, or holding off the other, would be a huge challenge, but I couldn’t help but try.

Pushing as hard as I ever have in this race or on this track, I again managed remarkably consistent lap times, and even cut into the gap ahead. The only blemish was a scrape of the wall at Forrest’s Elbow that caused minor left-side damage but didn’t seem to hurt our car’s performance.

Unfortunately, the pace of the car behind was just too much, and by the end of the stint, they were only 2 seconds back.

Despite physical and mental fatigue more than 16 hours after our first race effort began that morning, I prepared myself to dig in and defend our tenth-place position over the final hour.

But that battle was never to be.

A Dark Cloud, and Silver Linings

After making our final pit stop with what we thought would be a shorter fuel fill than our opponents, they cycled out 3 seconds ahead of us – a five-second swing that we could only assume was from a combination of fuel saving in their previous stint, a faster in lap while I struggled to get my tires up to temperature on my own out lap, and their overall speed advantage.

Back to eleventh place, our only hope was for one car ahead to have an issue in the final hour.

“I hate to wish bad luck on anyone this far into the race,” I told Karl, “but I’m wishing for it.”

Despite all the attrition earlier in the race, the top teams were too fast and too resilient, and none dropped out over the final five hours. As our closest competitors pulled away in front of us, I held together my fractured focus and aching fingers to bring our car across the finish line in eleventh.

For Karl and I, it was a bittersweet result. In a perhaps undeserved second chance at this year’s race, we had finally reached the finish with no crashes and no unscheduled pit service or repairs, but came up one spot shy of our goal.

Each driving to our limits, we had a solid pace – and, as one of our opponents reminded us about after the race, an impressive 22 positions gained – but couldn’t quite match the fastest top-split talent.

Our all-time mark at the Bathurst 12 Hours now pushes to 0-for-5 without a top ten finish, and this year’s races are a microcosm of our history in the event: one with an early crash, and another with a nice improvement from a deep starting position that came up just short.

We can take some solace from this race, of course.

We finished just one lap down to the winners, who were driving the BMW that got the better of the pre-race Balance of Performance adjustments.

We both reminded ourselves that survival, especially early on, is possible, and often the only option when mired in the midfield.

And as teams dropped out all around us while we kept motoring on, we saw that good things come to those who wait.

We can only hope the same is true as our wait for success in Bathurst’s longest race stretches on another year.

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.

I’ve spent the better part of the past two summers seeking to right some past wrongs in cars such as the Skip Barber, the Lotus 79, and the V8 Supercar, not once but twice.

Those multiple attempts to tame a single car at a single track highlight the compelling thing about redemption: how elusive it often is. After all, if it was easy enough to do something in the first place, you wouldn’t need more than one chance to get it right.

In fact, the most satisfying flavor of redemption, I’d venture, comes from conquering the greatest challenges.

With that in mind, the redemption I sought entering last weekend was particularly elusive both because of how long I had waited for it and how much that eventual triumph over a lofty challenge would mean.

Getting it right would literally mean climbing a mountain.

Back to Bathurst

The two great endurance races in Australian motorsports weren’t ones I grew up watching. Bathurst in New South Wales is half a world away from Daytona and Le Mans, so I spent years ignorant to the gem of a race track tucked away in the land down under.

When I first learned about the Mount Panorama Circuit, I was intrigued. When I drove it for the first time on iRacing, I was hooked. As an endurance-minded driver, I felt like I had found my home.

Mistakes and miscalculations are punished swiftly and irrevocably by the ever-present walls surrounding the twisting tarmac on the mountain. It requires the sort of 90%-on-the-limit driving style that I was praised for in one of my first sim racing broadcast appearances. (I’m still waiting for those women.)

Despite running plenty of sprint races at the track — including a dozen in a single week that saw my iRating climb higher than ever before — my opportunities for endurance racing on the mountain have been limited.

While iRacing has held its own running of the Bathurst 1000 each fall and began to hold a Bathurst 12 Hour race each winter beginning last year, those races always seem to fall on a NEO Endurance Series weekend.

My only past enduro at the track came just months after iRacing’s team racing feature was released. In early 2015, the now-defunct Masters of Endurance Series held its six-hour season finale at Bathurst.

While my KRT Motorsport team was out of contention for a high finish in the standings or any other notoriety, I was still particularly excited about that race as it would be my first endurance test on the mountain.

It turned into a much greater test than I could have imagined. My teammate Karl planned to join me early in the race, but the iRacing Daytona 500 being held at the same time meant slow and unresponsive servers, which kept him from joining the session.

I wound up driving the first three hours solo but quite successfully, moving from 36th on the grid to the verge of the top ten.

However, when Karl took over, a small mistake on the mountain ended with our car in the wall and ultimately 20 laps down. We finished as an also-ran, which was perhaps a fitting end for our team in that ultra-competitive series.

That failure left us both wanting to taste success at Bathurst, so we decided to tackle this year’s 12-hour race and seek a bit of redemption nearly four years after our first try.

An Unexpected Outcome

This year’s race again fell on a NEO weekend, so to avoid the same feeling of unpreparedness as my attempt at double duty in December, I started practicing early for both races. However, I was clearly more excited about one race than the other, which certainly had an effect on my motivation and mindset.

After Karl and I wound up near the top of the timesheets during a midweek practice at Bathurst, I felt comfortable, confident, and happy driving my favorite combination on iRacing, all the while daydreaming about how sweet it would feel to finish well.

Meanwhile, I entered the NEO weekend frustrated as I often have in the past, let down by my own pace compared to my teammates and the drivers around me.

The prospect of driving for six-or-so hours on Saturday at Bathurst felt like a vacation on the beach, while the NEO Spa race on Sunday felt more like a trip to the dentist.

When you’re one of the slowest drivers in the slowest class on track, a successful race is usually one in which nothing noteworthy happens. Crashes are like cavities and the ire of your opponents is like the dentist’s nagging demand to floss more.

My vacation was first, though, and on Saturday morning, I was up early to practice for that day’s big race. While I usually leave the starts to Karl, we figured that for the truest shot at redemption on the mountain, I should qualify and start like I did in the Masters of Endurance race so many years ago.

The dark track didn’t worry me — I could see just fine in the practice I’d done — nor did having other cars around me after starting in 12th. If I could make a clean start in a typical GT3 sprint race at Bathurst, surely an enduro would be no problem.

When the green flag flew, the field settled into a single-file line by the first time up the mountain, and I was content to ride and not to push too hard.

On the final mountain turn — the steep downhill Forrest’s Elbow — I went for the same apex I had hit routinely in practice without a problem. But this time was different.

Maybe I turned in too early. Maybe the car rotated more than I expected. Maybe my nerves got the best of me. In any case, I brushed the inside wall and caved in the left front of the car. The hood was damaged and, more pressingly, the steering wheel was about 20 degrees off-center.

I limped back to the pits and thankfully didn’t collect any other cars. The repairs didn’t fix the problem, so less than two minutes into a 12-hour race, we were done.

I was frustrated. Embarrassed. Humbled.

Karl called it uncharacteristic of me. He could have called it a lot worse than that, but he understood; he’d been in that position the last time we raced here, although after showing more endurance than I had in my first-lap blunder. Regardless of when our crashes happened, it’s an unforgiving track, and mistakes can happen to anyone.

Redemption would have to wait a few more months, I told him. Maybe we can make a run at this fall’s Bathurst 1000.

The weekend, however, felt like a total loss. There’s no redeeming that sort of letdown, right?

Consolation Round

Unlike Bathurst, a track where I’ve always felt at home, the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps has never felt quite comfortable to me, and it often hasn’t been too accommodating in long races either.

It was the site of my greatest endurance racing failure: crashing out of the lead deep into a 24-hour race with Karl a few years ago. In other races, I’ve often seemed to lag behind my teammates on pace and struggled to find the finesse required for classic corners such as Les Combes, Pouhon, and Fagnes.

Prior to last year’s NEO race at the track, I finally felt reasonably quick, but intermittent Internet issues on race day kept me out of the car.

Despite my early start to practice, I still felt underprepared and off-pace — usually at least a half-second off of my teammates. In a class with top GT talent, I likened myself to a gentleman driver.

My goals were fairly straightforward: keep the car off of any walls, off of any other cars, on the racing circuit as there would be penalties for excessive off-tracks, and running some semblance of a respectable pace.

When I got in the car for my mid-race double stint, we were in fifteenth place and within five seconds of the two cars ahead. Although I imagined they might drive off into the distance, to my surprise, I started catching them.

Within a few laps, I was on the rear bumper of the car in front and engaged in a fierce battle for position. My pulse was racing. My adrenaline was rushing. I was entering the red mist — he’s not giving me any room, I complained after a door-to-door fight through Les Combes.

And I was having a blast.

A few laps later, I drafted past him and set my sights on the next car. We were nearly equal on pace, but his eventual spin in Pouhon gave me that position and cleared the track ahead.

My next challenge began at the pit stop. In order to avoid losing time changing tires, I would need to double-stint them — something I had attempted in practice with mixed results — and try not to sacrifice too much time per lap or incur too many off-track incidents on the worn old rubber.

I was fairly successful on both counts. Good tire management during my first stint paid off, and my falloff on old tires was small enough to make double-stinting the correct call. And despite a few lazy off-tracks late in my second stint, I finished my two stints with 12 total — just shy of the 13 we’d allocated for each two-hour block of the race.

Problems for two of the other cars ahead meant I ended my stint with a net gain of four positions, in eleventh place. Two hours later, that’s where we finished.

It might not have fully exonerated me of my previous problems at the track, but a position-gaining, crash-free drive in which I actually got behind the wheel was an improvement over a few past races at Spa.

Although my search for success at Bathurst is ongoing, my weekend with a crushing start did finish with a decent result, a bit of respect gained, and a few new memories to show for it. That made for a taste of redemption in an unexpected place.

Because of its ominpresence, iRating has become something of a legend with plenty of myths and misconceptions surrounding it.  And in my more than 600 official races on iRacing, I’ve heard some doozies.

“If you start from the back in a race, you’ll gain more iRating than if you qualify.”

Wrong.

“If you get wrecked out, just submit a protest and you’ll get some iRating refunded.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

“If you have a clean race, you’ll get a small boost in your iRating.”

Wro — oh, wait.  Although that’s not how the calculation works, there may actually be truth to this one.  In my latest iRacing quest, I set out to prove it.

Setting the Stage

For the past three years, my road iRating has remained fairly stagnant, generally within a couple hundred points of 4,500.  Part of that is because I haven’t done too many official races — more on how participation affects iRating a bit later — but it also seemed like any time I chained a few good races together, they’d be followed by a bad one that cost me everything I’d gained.

After being tantalizingly close to 5,000 iRating for so long, I decided last week that it was finally time to grind it out.  I started the week at 4,819 — 181 points away.  Even averaging a gain of 20 points per race, it would take 10 races with no setbacks along the way, and that was far from a guarantee given the combo I would be running.

My series of choice was the Blancpain Sprint Series at Bathurst.  It was admittedly a risky pick since that series is somewhat infamous for its occasionally low driving standards, and a single mistake — by you or someone ahead of you — on the winding mountain roads tends to end your race.

Three years’ worth of road iRating, stuck in the doldrums between 4k and 5k.

My car of choice was the Ferrari 488 GT3.  This was also a risky choice since I’d never driven it before and it’s not the fastest GT3 car at the moment; the Audi seems to take that honor.  But after a few practice laps, I thought the Ferrari was fun to drive, so I decided to go with it.

I never adjusted the setup too much, and I found that a high-downforce, high-rake configuration worked best to optimize handling and lap times.  Of course, that meant I’d be sacrificing straight-line speed and making passes much more difficult, especially against the more well-balanced Audis and BMWs.

I would have my work cut out for me against some strong fields all week.  Many world championship-level drivers used BSS as a testing ground in preparation for their six-hour Bathurst race on Saturday.  Because iRating is a zero-sum system, in order to reach 5k iRating for myself, I’d need to steal some points from other 5k drivers along the way.

However, I didn’t mind the challenge.  I figured that if I could still reach my iRating goal, I could dispel another myth that only the fastest drivers in the quickest cars with the best setups can find consistent success.

A familiar sight on Bathurst grids: a lone Ferrari amid a sea of Audis.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

In my first two races on Tuesday night, I mainly hoped to get a better feel for the Ferrari over a full race distance; any iRating gains would be a bonus.

I had a few scary moments along the way, including tail-slapping the wall in my first race when I overdrive the Skyline corner, and narrowly missing a multi-car crash exiting the Chase in race 2.  But by making it to the finish in both races, I managed a solid gain of 76 iRating points.  At that rate, I started thinking that 5k might come sooner rather than later.

Running wide and tapping the wall coming down the mountain.

Just when things were looking up, though, the third race of the week happened.  It was a disaster from the start.  I had to take to the grass in turn 1 to avoid a spin ahead of me, and while I made it through without damage, it cost me five positions.

On lap 2, that extra traffic ahead proved fatal.  The cars battling in front of me crashed entering Skyline, and as is often the case at Bathurst, what started as a two-car crash blocked the track and collected several others.  This time, I was one of them.

That one bad result cost me 107 iRating — everything I’d gained the day before and then some.  Reaching 5k was starting to seem impossible — a Sisyphean task that, appropriately, was taking place on a mountain.

Wrecked and in the pits after two laps: not the recipe for iRating gains.

Crisis Averted

My road to recovery began later that night, and it would be a make-or-break race, as another bad result would have effectively ended my quest.  Fortunately, I managed a solid — and much less eventful — race, finishing fifth and regaining about half of what I’d lost.

My first race the next day had a frustratingly similar start to the previous day.  Entering turn 1, I was spun out and my car nosed into the wall.  As the rest of the field drove by, I saw another major iRating loss in my future.

Once I got going again, I realized that the car was driving fine.  However, I was slightly down on top speed, which meant passing would be nearly impossible, at least on the track.  That’s where my biggest strategy call of the week came in.

An ominous start to race 5: spun out while the field sped past.

On lap five — about as early as I could have possibly pitted to make it on fuel — I made a pit stop to get away from the traffic slowing me down.  In clean air, I logged laps, and once the cycle of pit stops was completed, I was up to 12th place.

I figured that was as high as I could finish, but the last lap brought even more surprises.  One car had to pit for a splash of fuel.  Another slowed down the backstretch, apparently out of fuel.  And a third spun in the Chase.

Suddenly, I went from limiting my iRating losses to managing a modest gain of 25 points.  I followed that up with another solid race, and by the end of Thursday night, I was at exactly 4,900 iRating.

Gaining Confidence

With each successive race, I was getting more and more comfortable with the car and the track.  Instead of a sheer fight for survival, I felt like I could actually race and even make passes.

Granted, my only real passing opportunity was down the backstretch and into the Chase since the Audi and BMW seemed to have better acceleration out of the first and last corners, but I became adept at taking advantage of others’ mistakes on the mountain to pass them coming off of it.

Passing an Audi with an inside move entering the Chase.

In my seventh and eighth races of the week, I honed this strategy and gained several positions through on-track passes. Some of them were a bit risky since the bumpy right-hand kink before the Chase can unsettle the a car and make a side-by-side battle difficult, but a bit of white-knuckle driving and cooperation from both drivers was generally enough to avoid disaster.

My biggest problem of the day happened at the other end of the circuit.  In my second race of the night, I exited the pits beside another car and we drag-raced to turn 2.  Under braking, our cars drifted into each other, which sent mine skidding into the outside wall.

I expected it would be a race-ender, but I hit the left side square and was able to keep going with only minor damage. Although it did cost me a position, I still escaped from that race with a seventh-place finish.

Hitting the turn-2 wall after a close battle ended in contact.

Weekend Warrior

Heading into the weekend, I was just 40 iRating points away from 5,000.  Despite my own confidence, I knew that Saturday’s races would likely have stronger fields and put me further back on the grid, in a potentially dangerous mid-pack position where unavoidable accidents can claim many innocent victims.

My first race of the day was indeed a tough one, and I qualified in 13th.  However, I avoided some first-lap carnage to move into the top ten, and I picked off a couple more positions the rest of the way to finish eighth.  I was then just 17 iRating away from 5k, so barring a complete disaster in the following race, I’d hit my goal.

From sixth on the grid, the first half of the race went well enough, and after the pit stops were completed, I was up to third place with the second-place Audi in my sights.  With just three laps to go, though, I saw my race — and my iRating — flash before my eyes.

The Audi ahead of me got loose on the way up the mountain and bounced off the inside wall.  It’s the sort of incident that challenges a driver’s instincts: Do you slam on the brakes or nail the gas?  Do you hold your line or swerve to avoid it?

A close call on the mountain sealed my best finish of the week.

I first hit the brakes, but as I saw his car careening right into my path, I steered as far to the left as I could and hoped for the best.  This time, luck was on my side.  I avoided his car by a few inches and held on to finish second and score 201 championship points, which was my best result of the week.

More importantly, I picked up 54 iRating to cross the 5,000 mark for the first time ever.  It took 10 races, which is what I predicted given steady gains each time.  Of course, I hadn’t factored in that one bad result, so still hitting 5k on target was a bonus.  However, I knew that another bad race could drop me below that threshold, so I decided that I needed a buffer.

I ran two more races, putting all my knowledge gained during the week to the test.  I made passes entering the Chase.  I calculated my fuel mileage to pinpoint precision and gained spots in the pits.  And I raced smart, backing out of several tight positions that could have resulted in a crash, even if it kept me from gaining a spot or two along the way.

After 12 races, I reached an iRating of 5,109.  It’s more than I ever imagined I might accumulate when the week started, and I did it in a car that clearly wasn’t the fastest or most popular choice.

By the end of the week, I was passing Audis around the outside.

A Skill Score?

The global rankings show that my iRating is ranked 630th out of a little more than 50,000 drivers.  So does that mean I’m among the best 0.2% of iRacers as the number suggests?

Certainly not, which brings me to some of the limitations of iRating.

Because it requires many races for your iRating to calibrate itself, I’m sure that some of the drivers ranked below me haven’t raced enough to meet their potential.  Likewise, it only factors in official races, so anyone who runs mostly leagues effectively misses out on potential gains from those performances.  This is the case for several of my teammates, who are consistently quicker than me but have iRatings a few hundred points lower.

One frequent criticism of iRating is that it lumps all cars within a discipline into a single number.  Per-car iRating has often been suggested so that a top-level Mazda MX-5 driver won’t be expected to perform as well in a GT3 car, and someone can’t farm overall iRating in a single series, especially a low-level one like the Mazda Cup.

I would also argue that iRating isn’t as much of a measure of driver skill as it is of driver fitness.  Put another way, over the course of a season, a team owner may be better off choosing a slightly slower driver with a higher iRating because they can more consistently finish races, even if they might not win as many.

One key to iRacing improvement: taking advantage of faster drivers making mistakes.

I witnessed this at Bathurst.  Several drivers with lower iRatings than mine were consistently much quicker, yet I tended to beat them more often than not because they made mistakes.

With that interpretation in mind, iRating as it’s structured now does a quite good job of predicting the finishing order of races.  Sure, there will always be outliers, but once that calibration period has elapsed, better drivers tend to come out on top.

What does that mean for me?

Statistically, not a whole lot, as the difference between 4,800 and 5,100 isn’t much.  But reaching that 5k milestone carries an expectation for speed, safety, and success, both in my mind and to my competitors.

It’s not exactly the da Vinci code, but like the Mona Lisa, there are some hidden complexities to iRating, and sometimes, you just have to look at them from the right angle.