As both a driver and a writer, there’s something particularly fulfilling about redemption. Perhaps it’s the satisfaction of achieving goals within a convenient story arc and coming away with something to show for it, whether it’s a good result, the respect of teammates, or the memories made along the way.
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.