On the Attack

I have always considered endurance racing one of my strong suits because it doesn’t always reward the fastest driver, but the one with the best patience, consistency, and — as the name implies — endurance.

The beginning of iRacing’s new endurance season last month brought another reminder of those qualities needed to succeed, along with my own role within our KRT Motorsport team as an endurance driver.

In the past two years, I have built an awesome working relationship with my teammate Karl Modig, and we have both found our niche in these longer races.  Karl is often a bit quicker and able to go on offense, and while I don’t consider myself a slouch behind the wheel, I usually manage consistent driving to hold our position during my stints.

But this season has provided more competition than we’ve seen before, which has forced me to balance that role as a defensive driver with one as an attacker.

A GT Fight in Georgia

The officially sanctioned Blancpain Endurance Series began with unprecedented popularity, as more than 400 teams entered the season-opening race at Road Atlanta with hopes of finishing in the top 40 in points and qualifying for next year’s pro GT3 series.

These three-hour races are enduros in name only.  The close competition and talent level even in the third split, where we have raced so far, has required a sprint-race mentality and pushing every lap.

As our team’s resident McLaren expert, Karl has spearheaded our efforts in this series, qualifying and running two stints in each race so we can maximize his time in the car and on the attack.  That was again the case at Road Atlanta.

Karl drove two strong stints and left the car in my hands to finish.  I found myself in fifth place with a full 30-second gap to the next car behind me, so I knew my job was first to finish and second to chase down the cars ahead.

Not everyone managed that first job so successfully.  With just 30 minutes remaining, the race-leading car crashed out, moving me up to fourth.  In the closing laps, I was gaining on the third-place car by half a second per lap, but my attack ultimately came up just short and I finished less than a second behind him.

However, our strong finish still earned us good points and put us 65th out of 420 teams in the standings.

A Fuel-Proof Plan?

The following weekend, the NEO Endurance Series began its second season with an eight-hour race at Sebring.  But unlike the first season when our team spent all summer practicing and racing the Ruf C-Spec, we started this season with little preparation and little confidence in the Ford GT.

That showed when practice began.  We were slow and struggling with our setup.  With just five days left until the race, I finally stumbled on some adjustments that helped with overall speed and falloff throughout a run, but I was still worried that we wouldn’t match the pace of our competitors, let alone finish an eight-hour race.

Those concerns only grew after qualifying, when we qualified 10th out of 11 cars on the grid.  Karl and I practiced more that afternoon and made some final tweaks, but we clearly had an uphill battle for the race.

That hill grew even steeper before the green flag ever flew.  A family emergency required Karl to miss the start, and our other teammate, Tuomas, couldn’t join our team in the server.  That meant I had to start the race — a position I dislike in enduros since it’s so tough to get into a consistent rhythm.  By the end of my first stint, I was sitting dead last in the GT2 class, still concerned about even completing the full distance.

But as the race went on, Karl and I both found a new comfort with the car.  I was even able to go on the attack.  Early in my middle stint, I came out of the pits right beside another car, but by the end of that stint, I was 13 seconds ahead of him.  And as that triple stint ended and the race crossed the halfway point, I was chasing down the next car up the road.

Karl found even more speed when he got back in the car, but we soon realized that we had a dilemma.  In our pre-race calculations, we figured everyone would need to make nine pit stops, so we drove accordingly, even pitting a few laps early one stint.  But the warm weather was letting some teams stretch their fuel mileage and potentially make just eight stops.

We could have either backed off our pace and stretched our fuel or continued attacking and stopped for a splash at the end.  Given the comfort we both had in the car, we agreed to attack and try to increase our gap over the next car as much as possible.

After several stints of hard driving by both of us, I pitted with less than 10 minutes to go for a splash of fuel.  I exited the pits just three seconds ahead of the car behind and pulled away in the closing laps to secure the fifth-place finish.

Ironically, that’s the same position we finished last season at Sebring when we had lots of confidence and preparation.  While we still have more work to do in the Ford GT to find some extra pace, that good finish — and even making it to the finish — was a great start to the season.

Ten Laps of Hard Driving

The Blancpain Endurance Series resumed the following weekend with its second round of the season at Brands Hatch.  It’s a track I like, but with so many fast corners, it wasn’t the best circuit for the McLaren.

In our first race, Karl struggled in dirty air during the opening stint, and while I was able to gain a position in the middle stint, we finished in tenth, earning about 30 fewer points than we had at Road Atlanta.

So we tried again that afternoon, and this time, Karl started better and again put the car in my hands for the second stint.  I was on my own for most of that hour, but near the end, the two cars behind were closing quickly.

To defend against them, I had to put in ten laps of hard driving before I pitted.  It required a ton of focus and pushing the McLaren harder than I had in months to run my fastest laps of the week.

Ultimately, I kept those cars behind me and handed the car back to Karl, who made an attack of his own in the final stint to finish sixth and secure another solid points haul, moving us up to 63rd in the standings.

Based on the competition level we’ve seen so far this season, similar efforts may be required during the rest of this season to finish well.  For me, it will be a continued learning experience in becoming in an attacker during these endurance events.