After several years of running multiple wintertime endurance series, often on back-to-back weekends, I resolved that this year, I would scale back my involvement to one car — the Ford GT GTE — and one league — the NEO Endurance Series.
With five NEO events plus iRacing’s 24 Hours of Daytona now in the books, I have participated in exactly one of those races.
To the racing gods: if you’re listening, that’s not exactly the reduced participation I had in mind.
Downhill from Here
The season started on such a positive note. My double-stint at Sebring in the NEO opener was one of my best ever performances in an endurance race. I had solid pace with few mistakes, and I was able to hang with some faster cars for most of my stint.
The issues began a month later in the season’s second race at Road America. I was well-practiced and confident about my potential at one of my favorite tracks, but on race day morning, my computer failed to boot up.
I later diagnosed the issue as a bad cable plugged into my hard drive that only manifest itself hours before a big race. It was an innocuous problem for sure, but still a frustration. And it forced my two teammates in the race to pick up the slack.
The next NEO race was the least ill-fated of the lot for me. With a busy travel schedule between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I didn’t have much time to practice. Since each of the four drivers on our team agreed to sit out for one event, that race was my bye.
Steve navigates through the night in NEO race #3 at Motegi.
Instead of driving, I played the role of race strategist, calculating our fuel mileage and planning our pit stops. It was again a successful performance as our team came home a season-best eighth place, although admittedly, it was tough to not be competing in it myself.
After that, I was determined to race something — anything — so I ran some one-off races in the Mercedes AMG GT3 at Bathurst, the Porsche GT3 Cup at Road America, and in iRacing’s new rallycross series.
While I found victories in each of those, none were as satisfying as putting in a solid performance for my team. An endurance racer cannot live on sprint races alone.
New Year, New Disappointments
Needless to say, when the holidays were finished, I was eager to race again. The next event up was the fourth NEO round at the Nurburgring.
Out of all the tracks on the schedule, it was the only one on which I had experience driving the Ford during last year’s Summer Road Trip, and as practice began, my previous experience substantially reduced my learning curve and let me focus on finding speed.
My lap times were consistently within a tenth or two of my teammates, and I was going to be trusted as our team’s closer, driving the final two stints of the race.
But our race never made it that far. It didn’t even make it to the first pit stop. An incident-filled first few laps claimed our car and others as victims, and I saw my hopes go tumbling as our car did an acrobatic flip onto its roof through the arena section.
Our Nurburgring race was turned upside down after just three laps.
Fortunately, there was little time to dwell on that race with the next one just a week later. It was the 24 Hours of Daytona: a race I’ve won once but faced setbacks in during my two other tries, as my team was knocked out in the opening hours by cars crashing around — and into — our’s.
This year, a new issue emerged that effectively ended our race before it even started. Four of the 17 race splits wound up on a flaky server, and as luck would have it, we were in one of those splits. Most drivers were dropped from the server during warmup, gridding, and the first hour of the race.
Our team wasn’t immune, and after we missed the start and much of the field fell out in the early laps, we decided to save ourselves further frustration and end our efforts.
Cursed Again
It’s worth mentioning that after this many missed opportunities in a row, even practicing for races starts to feel futile. It’s tough to get motivated to drive when, in the back of your mind, you’re wondering what the next issue will be to put you back on the sidelines.
Alas, as preparations began for the latest NEO round at Spa, I had to put those worries aside. If nothing else, I knew I needed the practice. Even after thousands of laps turned around the Belgian circuit, I have far from mastered it. And in the most competitive NEO GT class ever assembled, I would need to give my best effort even to have a chance at keeping up.
This time, we made it past the first three laps and successfully through the first two hours, moving up nine spots on the strength of Steve’s driving. Karl was in the car next, and we remained on the edge of the top ten throughout his double stint.
Karl bolts through Blanchimont during his double stint at Spa.
Just 30 minutes before I was set to get in the car, I lost connection to the server. This time, it wasn’t an iRacing issue, but a problem with my own Internet. I can’t remember the last time I had such a problem, and yet on the eve of my double stint, I was disconnected twice. We opted to put Steve back in the car, and it’s a good thing that we did. Just after he got in, my connection dropped again.
While I’m sure my pace couldn’t have matched what Steve was running and our team was probably better off with him behind the wheel, it was disappointing that I never even had an opportunity to show what I could do.
This assortment of issues might be comical if they hadn’t become so common. Even in our two prior NEO seasons together, Karl and I were hampered by similar problems — from Internet issues to crashing computers to crashing cars around us — so often that we deemed it our NEO curse.
After rejoining NEO this season with a new team, our curse — or mine, at least — apparently persists.
The Silver Lining
While most of my season is a wash, at least it’s been a fairly successful one for the rest of my team. Our entry remains in contention for a top-12 position in points that would ensure automatic qualification into next year’s series. That seemed like a lofty goal to start the season, but it’s now within reach.
Unfortunately, it’s no thanks to me. Coming into the season, I just hoped I wouldn’t be a liability due to my pace. Ironically, my main liability to the team has been not being on track to begin with.
Unlike many of my Driver Diary posts in which I offer some advice based on my experiences, such as how to recover from a sim racing slump, I don’t have much help to offer amid my current endurance racing drought. Even looking ahead to the next race seems somewhat fruitless at this stage.
For the second straight year, I’ll be competing in the NEO 24 Hours of Le Mans. At least I hope!
Nevertheless, the season isn’t over so I still have hope — however diminishing it may seem — to turn things around. Between next month’s 12 Hours of Sebring and NEO 24 Hours of Le Mans, I have two chances to exorcise my demons and plenty of hours available in the car, assuming computers and connections cooperate.
Perhaps it’s also a chance to make peace with those racing gods. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were trying to send me a message.
But I’m sure that’s not the case. After all, when you’re sitting on the sidelines and out of a car, you tend to hear things loud and clear.