It’s true for race fans, who often long for the way things once were while ignoring the fact that across the world of motorsports, the racing is closer and more competitive now than it has ever been.

To a lesser extent, it can even be true for sim racers. While the constant advancements in technology, graphics, and content mean racing games keep getting better, there can also be a sense of wonder with remembering the old days, like your first race, your first win, and your best strategy moves from years past.

This weekend was a perfect storm of nostalgia on iRacing as they hosted the Road America 500: an endurance race with the IMSA sports cars from the late 1980s. It’s one of those bygone generations that racing fans remember fondly, between the power-packed GTP prototypes and the diverse GTO class, with cars like the Audi 90 – an all-wheel drive crossover from the rally world that dominated sports car racing on debut in 1989.

Both cars are difficult to drive, no doubt. I discovered that during my Summer Road Trip in 2018, when a week driving the Audi featured missed shifts, off-track excursions, and collisions with out-of-control prototypes.

Because of that challenge, this event wasn’t met with the same popular acclaim as iRacing’s other featured events. Rather than the thousands of teams that the Daytona 24 and Sebring 12 Hour races attract, just a few hundred brave souls – many running solo – tried to tame these classic cars during the weekend.

Among them were me and my longtime teammate Karl Modig, with whom I’ve enjoyed a number of successes in our endurance racing history together. When we first teamed up eight years ago, iRacing was still a somewhat niche sim, and a long way from its post-pandemic boom.

In those days, it wasn’t uncommon for us to end up in the top split of big events, competing alongside the fastest drivers on the service. While we’ve since been relegated, often in the fourth or fifth split against drivers very much our own speed, a chance to return to the top split would be a throwback of its own, and a chance to see how far we’ve come over all these years.

And so it was. With a lower turnout for this event, even in the most popular Saturday morning timeslot, our car took to the virtual racetrack against the top-split talent. We had to wonder: would we be totally outmatched, or would our years of experience in endurance racing – despite our combined lack of experience in the Audi 90 GTO – offer the secrets to success?

A Weary Warm-Up

In the week before the race, Karl and I had put in some practice together, but as I learned the hard way in my last time driving this old and unforgiving car, there’s no substitute for actual race experience.

During those moments when a close battle heats up, or prototypes pass on all sides, or fatigue sets in, it’s easy to lose focus and make mistakes. So it was better, I thought, to get those mistakes out of the way in a one-off sprint race than wait until the 500-mile, nearly four-hour enduro, when the pressure would surely be even greater, top split or not.

On Wednesday night, I joined a well-populated Kamel GT race session, filled with both that series’ small group of passionate regulars along with moonlighters like myself who wanted some extra reps before the main event over the weekend.

The first step was qualifying, where I’ve had tough luck lately. In the Bathurst 12 Hour races over the past two years, mistakes on my qualifying laps left our team starting deep in the field. Last year, it put us in the path of a mountaintop track blockage, although we soldiered home many laps down. This year, an erratic mid-pack Lamborghini forced me off the road and out of the race in the second hour.

That qualifying carelessness carried over into this race as well. A missed shift at the end of my first lap ruined both laps and put me tenth out of 16 cars, and right in the middle of the pack, where any mistakes – by me or others – would be magnified.

Fortunately, this race had a clean start among the Audi field, and I settled into ninth, at the back of a five-way battle for position. Occasional missed shifts kept me from making much forward progress, but I was able to save fuel while riding behind other cars, which I hoped would save me time in the pits later on.

By the midway point of the one-hour race, the cars in my pack began to make their pit stops, and eventually, it was just me with clear track ahead and only occasional prototype traffic zipping by from behind.

In those less stressful conditions, the mistakes seemed to vanish, and after I made my stop, I was two seconds ahead of the cars that led my group earlier. But the race wasn’t over yet – no, not by any means.

As those quick cars closed in on me, the mistakes returned, threatening to throw away my advantage earned in the pits. The costliest was a missed shift with two laps to go that let another Audi get alongside into the turn 5 braking zone.

But instead of folding, I focused. I held strong around the outside over the next two corners and got back in front by the turn-7 kink. After a side-by-side battle for position, all while Nissan traffic filled my mirrors, I had come out ahead with a top-five finish to show for it.

As if a switch had flipped, I had proven to myself that I could handle the pressure of those hectic situations. If this spur-of-the-moment race was a pop quiz, it had given me a cheat sheet to use for the weekend’s final exam.

A Promising Start

When race day arrived, I felt a sense of calm and confidence, even after we discovered our top-split fate. While we certainly didn’t expect to win, a top five felt within reach if everything went our way.

And if that sounds like overconfidence, then it may be because we also had a secret strategy in mind. While it was a 500-mile or 124-lap race, only the Nissan prototypes would cover that distance. I calculated that the top Audis would likely do no more than 108 laps, which could be evenly divided into four 27-lap stints.

As I learned during my midweek warm-up race, 27 laps was possible, but only with some disciplined fuel saving throughout a run. However, Karl and I were committed to saving fuel and cutting out a late-race pit stop, and we hoped for a repeat of our last big endurance race success in the 2021 Petit Le Mans, when our GT competitors seemed to miss the obvious strategy and gave us the upper hand en route to a second-place finish.

Of course, before we ever had to worry about executing our race strategy, we had to qualify, and I was eager to put my Bathurst blunders and misshift missteps behind me. An off-track at the Kink on my first lap felt like history repeating itself, but my second lap was within a tenth of my fastest practice lap of the week, and it was good enough for 12th on the grid of 24 Audis.

Thanks to some contact in front of me on the first two laps of the race, I found myself inside the top ten, and from there, I settled into a rhythm in my first stint, not overly concerned about my pace as long as I could hit our fuel number.

As our competitors made their first pit stops a lap or two before us, Karl and I remained quietly confident, while also confused at how so many teams had miscalculated – or, perhaps, not calculated – the quickest way to the finish.

No matter, I continued through my second stint climbing up to sixth place and riding just behind a couple of cars that we knew would have to make an extra stop at the end.

But as the race neared the halfway point, I was rudely met by a throwback I had hoped would stay in the past: a Nissan gone wild.

Entering the final corner on lap 48, I hugged the inside of the track, hoping to discourage the prototype behind me from passing there, or at least forcing him to take the long way around.

However, he seemingly expected me to fade to the outside and forced his car into a gap that didn’t exist, spinning us both into the gravel trap. (His status as a prominent league steward who typically hands down punishments for avoidable contact was an irony not lost on the race’s broadcasters.)

Our car was damaged and slightly down on top speed, but the handling was still okay, so I completed the final few laps of my stint before pitting for some quick repairs and handing off to Karl.

Fighting From Behind

In his first ever racing experience with this car, he got off to a hesitant start, prompted in part by me telling him about all the slippery corners on the hot track.

But after ten laps or so, he was consistently running lap times in the 2:07s, just as I had in my previous stint, and on par with the cars around us.

Although we had lost time during my spin, we were still running a solid seventh and thinking a top five was in reach as long as our strategy played out as expected. Later in Karl’s stint, an Audi ahead of us crashed out – also at the hands of a wayward Nissan – which only boosted our once-shaken confidence about our potential result.

During our final pit stop, I got back in the car and settled into one of the most unusual battles a racer can experience.

I wasn’t bumper-to-bumper with anybody. In fact, the next closest cars were more than 20 seconds ahead of me. But knowing they would have to pit one more time, it was a fight for positioning that we hoped would play out in our favor.

Even though I couldn’t see them on track, I still felt the pressure, and as Karl shared the gaps between us – growing by a second every few laps with faster drivers behind the wheels of our opponents’ cars – I began driving even closer to my own limits, pushing the car deeper into the braking zones and getting back to the throttle sooner to pick up the pace.

It’s the sort of situation that would have almost certainly forced a mistake out of me earlier in the week, but this time, I stayed cool and consistent.

That approach was rewarded when the first car ahead of us made their final stop and emerged more than five seconds behind. Our top five was in hand, but could we do even better than that?

Karl and I both figured it was unlikely, as the fourth-place car had built a nearly 30-second gap that seemed safe given the scant splash of fuel they’d need. But when they pitted with three laps to go, Karl narrated their slow trek down the pit lane… all the way until we passed them.

They also came back on track several seconds behind us, and in this race, I didn’t have to worry about those faster cars bridging the gap to my back bumper in the closing laps.

Our strategy and clean driving – that one mid-race incident aside – had elevated us to an impressive fourth-place result. Karl and I estimated we missed maybe three shifts each all race, which was a huge improvement from where we started earlier in the week, unpracticed and rough around the edges.

While it wasn’t our best ever result together, I told Karl on the cooldown lap that it was one of my favorite races we’ve done, right up there with our surprise podium in the Bathurst 1000 and our lone GoT Endurance Series victory in which we also used a sneaky strategy play to get up front.

The nice thing about nostalgia is that as time goes by, we tend to forget the negatives and preserve the positives of those memorable moments. A few years from now, we might not even remember our spin in this Road America 500, and instead celebrate our strategy and speed in a return to top-split endurance racing.

Who knows if and when we’ll be on such a big stage again, but for now, I’m happy to keep a rosy remembrance of this week and this race when old cars became new again and, at least for a while, my own mistakes became a thing of the past.

They teased the mid-season release of a previously unannounced car, which sent imaginations racing. Whether rationally or not, many people assumed it was the car they most wanted, be it a Ferrari, a Porsche, or a modern LMP1.

It was later revealed to be the Audi 90 GTO, which was on pretty much nobody’s radar. To make matters worse, they couldn’t even pull off a seamless unveiling, as some clever sleuths discovered the car’s image assets on iRacing’s website before it was officially announced.

Because so many people hoped for so many different things, pretty much everyone was left disappointed, especially since few racers were clamoring for an historical GT car.

The Audi GTO and Nissan GTP — iRacing’s latest classic car releases.

One week later, they doubled down with another surprise announcement that wound up being the Audi’s cousin in history, the Nissan GTP ZX-T. That car was received slightly more favorably, either because a sleek prototype is sexier than a boxy Audi or because the first announcement had brought everyone’s expectations back down to earth.

In any case, both cars attracted some interest for a few weeks before their newness — if such a thing exists for a pair of nearly 30-year-old cars — wore off and participation dwindled.

Some disappointed drivers never gave them a first chance and few gave them a second one, which is really too bad since these two cars represent one of the greatest eras in endurance racing.

The all-wheel drive Audi made headlines for its innovation — driver Hans Stuck discovered that leaving his foot on the throttle while braking kept the turbocharger spooled up and gave him an incredible launch off of some corners. The Nissan and its fellow Group C cars also made headlines, usually for breaking speed and lap records around the world.

Tough Customers

Perhaps it’s an example of millennials ruining yet another once-popular thing, but the Audi and Nissan running together in iRacing’s Kamel GT Championship quickly fell to Lotus levels of popularity.

As I prepared to travel back in time to race amongst these motorsports legends, I was impressed to see just how passionate and well-organized their small community is on iRacing. Similar to the Lotus 49 drivers, they’ve set up their series like a league, designating a few set race times throughout the week while hosting and coordinating practice sessions ahead of time.

Setups are shared, tips are offered, and conversations are generally friendly and constructive. They’ve fostered the sort of environment that should make their series accessible to interested new drivers.

Two packs of cars accelerate down the frontstretch at the start of a race.

For me and, I imagine, others in such a position, the biggest barrier to entry may be the cars themselves. The Audi and Nissan aren’t exactly modern GT cars or prototypes, and without creature comforts such as tons of downforce, traction control, and anti-lock brakes, they’re certainly not as easy to drive.

And for those who shun shifting and clutch aids, the transmissions on both cars can be another hurdle to overcome. Going from my familiar paddle shifters back to an H-pattern gearbox would take some getting used to. Sure, I used it in the Solstice earlier this season, but I was only shifting a couple of times per lap in that car.

For the 60-minute Kamel GT races last week at Summit Point, I would be shifting 14 times per lap and more than 700 times in the entire race. That was 700 chances to screw up from shifting alone.

Audis snake through the esses at Summit Point.

The Comeback Trail

The first of four pre-arranged official time slots came on Thursday night, so I joined that race with hopes of adjusting to the car and traffic in a low-participation environment — just 6 Nissans and 5 Audis were in the field.

Of course, that posed a different risk. As the #1 car in a small field, anything less than a win would likely result in an iRating loss. After qualifying in third, that seemed like a very real possibility.

Those chances only went up in the opening laps. Maybe it was from nerves due to being in a race situation. Maybe it was stress from driving around other cars for the first time. Or maybe it was due to the weather or track conditions, which were considerably cooler and cloudier than anything I practiced in.

Regardless of the cause, at the start of the race, I was out of my element. On lap 2, I missed a shift exiting the first turn and lost a position. The following lap, I clipped a kerb and spun in a place where I hadn’t had any issues in practice. Those two mistakes cost me more than 15 seconds to the race leader. Fortunately, I still had plenty of time to turn things around.

Even all-wheel-drive couldn’t save me from a spin in the Audi.

With clear track ahead of me, I started getting into a rhythm and clawing back the second- and third-place cars. The first round of lapping Nissans briefly disrupted my concentration, but the two cars ahead of me seemed to get the worst of the traffic, so I closed in even more.

By the midway point of the race, they were just a few seconds ahead. They both made their pit stops before I caught them, which I thought was an ideal chance to run some quick laps with a low fuel load and exit the pits ahead of them.

But I didn’t. Nissans caught me in some bad places and I started overdriving while trying to make up time. In addition to the traffic and having to manage more than a dozen perfect shifts per lap, I had an extra distraction. I hadn’t been closely tracking my fuel usage, so I had to do some mental math to figure out how much I should take on my pit stop.

I waited as late as possible to stop, mainly to buy myself some extra time to run the numbers in my head. After my stop, I came back on track right behind the second-place car but I was catching him, so the race was still on.

However, my chase lasted all of one lap. With 10 laps to go, a Nissan spun just ahead of me in turn 1 and I couldn’t avoid him. I hit the side of his car, which didn’t seem to affect mine. It did cost me several seconds, though, and with the laps winding down, I would need a miracle to make up that much lost ground.

Colliding with a spinning Nissan while my opponent gets away.

With three laps to go, something happened that turned the battle in my favor, although I’m not sure whether it was divine intervention or a mortal miscalculation.

Entering Summit Point’s tricky back section, the car ahead of me stayed on the right entering a fast kink to let a Nissan pass on his left. However, the Audi touched the grass and darted off the track, clipping the Nissan in the process. I was able to sneak past both of their spinning cars and take second place.

It certainly wasn’t a satisfying way to end the race, and given my early issues, it wasn’t a result I particularly deserved, especially with the winner more than 30 seconds ahead of me at the finish. Without sharpening my skills, I knew I’d be in trouble against a larger and likely stronger field the next day.

Kamel GT Championship - Race 1

Crash Course

After studying some onboard laps from the race winner, I discovered a few areas where I could improve, both to find more speed and to be more consistent. Those changes seemed to make a difference, as I qualified fourth in an impressive field of 11 Audis for the Friday afternoon race.

I lost a position at the start because the leader’s lane, including the fifth-place car behind me, got a better jump at the green flag. But I was still prepared to settle into a top-five run and hopefully gain a few positions through better traffic management and making fewer mistakes than the drivers in front of me.

Instead, though, I had to fight back from yet another mistake of my own early in the race. Entering the slow turn 5, the cars ahead of me jumped on the brakes earlier than I anticipated. I could have either run into them or run off the track, so I chose the latter and drove through the dirt outside of that corner.

Off the road after making a miscalculation behind other cars.

It cost me three positions and a few seconds to the frontrunners, but it could have gone worse. Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time before it did.

Until then, though, I was actually enjoying myself. I found myself in another battle with my star-crossed opponent from the previous night, and this time, I got to pass him fair and square with a clever if slightly daring move following a Nissan through the same kink that ended his chances in our last race.

But the Nissan that opened the door for me to make that pass was about to close it right in my face. A few turns later, he spun and his car was sitting sideways in the middle of the road. I began to veer onto the grass, but instead of holding the brake, he rolled forward directly into my path.

A hard hit on lap 9 between a Nissan and my Audi.

It was the sort of hit that would have left a driver severely injured or worse back in 1990. The only pain I felt was disappointment from a race ended so soon and dread about the iRating hemorrhage I knew was coming.

After the car was towed to the pits and repairs were completed, I decided to get back on track since I needed to complete only four more laps to gain a position on another fallen Audi. When I rejoined the race, I found the car surprisingly drivable but obviously down on top speed, and my lap times were nearly two seconds off of my earlier pace.

For the rest of the race, I mainly tried to stay out of the way, and I managed to do so accumulating only one additional off-track, although that was little consolation as the damage to my iRating and safety rating were already done.

Kamel GT Championship - Race 2

Since I wouldn’t be able to race in the broadcasted Saturday afternoon time slot with the week’s largest field, I would have to end my stint in the time machine that is the Kamel GT Championship after two races wondering what could have been.

It’s not the first time I’ve had such a rueful introduction to a car. Last summer, my two races in the V8 Supercar were plagued by botched starts, missed opportunities, and a frustrating inability to drive around other cars. Like the V8, the Audi is a car I now want so badly to be good at — a feeling that’s only amplified by my experiences this week.

Series Status

I certainly can’t let my own mistakes affect my view of this series as a whole. Despite its limited number of drivers, the Kamel GT Championship’s longevity is a credit to its community. They’ve seemingly embraced their niche, and thanks to the organization and openness among the regulars, the series is outwardly positive and inviting to newcomers, even if the cars are a bit intimidating.

For anyone accustomed to more current cars, the Audi 90 GTO will offer some challenges, but with some practice and patience, they can be overcome. Although it’s hard to call any part of this car forgiving given its pedigree, the Audi’s behavior is at least fairly predictable, which makes it a decent option for anyone jumping into an historical race car for the first time.

To the credit of both the car and its drivers, the other Audi competitors I encountered this week mostly seemed well-practiced, capable of controlling their cars, and aware enough to know their own limits.

The same can’t be said for some of the Nissan drivers. While I understand that it’s a difficult car to drive — hence why I didn’t choose it for my debut in the series — even some of the frontrunners seemed to have trouble keeping their cars on track.

The race leader hops across the berm just ahead of me.

Worst of all, their mistakes affected others, including me. A pair of spinning Nissans effectively ended my building battle in one race and altogether ended my chances of contending in another.

It’s a harsh criticism but a fair one, I think, especially after some of the comments I heard from a couple Nissan drivers.

”I told you I would crash,” one said.

”I should have never signed up for this race,” admitted another.

That puts a series like the Kamel GT Championship in a tough position. With such limited popularity, it’s hard to turn down drivers, but if they can’t control their own cars and jeopardize others, are they really contributing anything?

Put another way, if a car spins on an empty racetrack and someone is around to hit it, does it make either one of them any more likely to drive in that series again?

Those are questions I will have to ponder at another time. For now, a different series and another stop on my Summer Road Trip awaits. It’s too bad iRacing doesn’t have a DeLorean, because after a week of driving cars from the past, it’s time for me to get back to the future.