Admittedly, it was with a small sample size, but good results in my two events still made it a month to remember. 

It began with pre-qualifying for the new NEO-sanctioned 24H SERIES ESPORTS season. I was back behind the wheel for the first time in months, but using a dedicated practice regiment with my teammate Karl and in the comfortable confines of the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car, I was up to speed and performing under pressure once again.

We finished tenth, solidly within the top thirteen that would advance out of pre-qualifying in the 991 class. With our spot on the grid secured, our NEO preparations paused as Karl and I turned our attention to a completely different sort of challenge.

Instead of 10 hotlaps around Donington, we would try to tame the famous Mount Panorama circuit over 1000 kilometers.

Mountain Men

In our previous endurance races at Bathurst, we had a checkered past that often ended well before the checkered flag. In the Masters of Endurance series, Karl hit the wall while in top-ten contention just after the halfway point of a six-hour race in 2015. And this February, I crashed our car on the first lap of the 12-hour race — one of my most embarrassing sim racing moments ever.

But Bathurst is my favorite track, and I wasn’t about to let a bad race or two scare me away from trying again. Furthermore, competing in the Bathurst 1000 has been on my sim racing bucket list for years, but it always seemed to conflict with the start of the winter endurance racing season.

This year, that date was open on Karl’s and my calendars, so we set out to right our past wrongs at Mount Panorama. But we knew from the outset that it would be an uphill battle — literally.

In my first few test laps, I tried to drive the right-hand drive V8 Supercar just like I drove the left-hand drive Mercedes AMG GT3 car earlier this year, and it ended with similar results: Clipping the walls in the tightest parts of the track coming over the mountain.

Even after adjusting to the car and its down-under cockpit orientation, it was a struggle to complete a full 23-lap fuel run in practice without brushing a wall or spinning the notorious bucking bronco of a car.

I confessed to Karl that I wasn’t feeling too confident entering the race, and we agreed that we’d almost certainly have to make damage repairs at some point. After all, negotiating a torque-happy torpedo up and down a mountain for 161 laps seemed destined to cross the margin of error at some point.

My only defense was an extra-cautious strategy of leaving an extra foot of space to all of the walls coming up the mountain, and even if I inevitably cut it a little too close, maybe I would avoid hitting anything.

Race day began with a promising start in qualifying. I had put some work into making a setup the night before, so we opted to have me set our time. My first lap was a decent banker — I overdrove turn 1 and played it safe coming over the mountain, but my time would have still landed us around twelfth or thirteenth.

Hoping to get out of the midfield, I made another run and hit turn one correctly while cutting it closer in the fast, wall-surrounded sections of the mountaintop.

Those improvements were worth four tenths in laptime, and I jumped up to eighth on the starting grid.

Not willing to risk another first-lap crash, we put Karl in for the start. He avoided the wall at Forrest’s Elbow on lap one — and I sheepishly reminded him that he had made it farther than I had — and he put in a clean and smart stint, distancing us from the midfield where we might have otherwise ended up if not for the late improvement in qualifying.

We were managing our tires better than our closest opponents, and by the end of the first stint, Karl had moved us up to sixth with the next few positions well within reach.

After exiting the pits, I quickly gained one of those spots to a team who had put in their slower second driver. A few laps later, I picked up another when the car ahead ran wide at turn 1. Before the end of the stint, they had crashed out while we were still motoring along in fourth.

Attrition had started to take a toll, but not as much as expected. The opening laps saw the likes of Nicki Thiim drop out, but crashes weren’t very common after that. Everyone seemed to respect the difficulty of the car and the circuit, and in the hot afternoon conditions that saw track temperatures peak at 53°C, or 127°F, no one wanted to push too hard and risk an almost certain DNF.

Through the middle of the race, Karl and I continued our strategy of changing drivers at every pit stop, and we began running faster as the track cooled off and we each found a safe but consistent pace.

At the start of my second stint, we gained another spot and were in line for a podium. But the team behind us was effectively mirroring our lap times, so we knew it wouldn’t be easy to stay there with more than half of the race remaining.

Our better tire wear was our main advantage, and we slowly extended our advantage to around 30 seconds in the final hour. At that point, I was in the car for a double stint to the finish, and I was running quick laps at a very manageable pace.

There was one car getting closer on my relative screen, though. The race leader was catching me, and in a hurry, which made me realize my own quick laps were nothing compared to what experienced pros in the V8s are capable of.

After a lap of beating down my bumper over the mountain, they passed me on the Conrod straight, but I probably gave them a scare two turns later when I nearly rear-ended them in the final corner and had to lock the brakes and drift behind them to avoid a collision.

It was my closest call of the race, and neither Karl or me hit anything all day. While we weren’t in the same league as the leader, finishing in third place, only one lap down with no damage, was the sort of result we could have never dreamed of.

We ended up as the highest-placed non-Australian team in Saturday’s top split, which felt like a win given our history at the Mount Panorama Circuit and my own mixed results in the V8 Supercar.

Even if we were only the best of the rest, redemption tasted sweet after years of what-ifs at Bathurst.

Sniped at Spa

As the calendar turned to October, we didn’t expect to match our performance from the previous month — after all, our main event would be the much-more-competitive NEO season opener at Spa — but compared to previous seasons, I had more confidence in my own driving.

Whether it was a matter of overconfidence, underpreparation, or underestimating our competition, Spa was mostly a struggle.

It began in qualifying. In my practice runs, I had found that even with higher starting tire pressures, my fastest times always seemed to come on the third lap, and in a 15-minute session, I’d probably only have time for one three-lap attempt.

In my first try, I exited the pits with the Porsche pack and found a gap starting my first lap, which I knew would largely be a throwaway while the tires came up to temperature. Sure enough, it was a clean but slow lap: a 2:23.180.

My second lap was going well but was invalidated by an off-track. And on my third, I pushed too hard into Stavelot and spun into the gravel, costing me my only chance at a three-lap run.

I had enough time to get back on track and run two more laps, and the second of those was on a decent pace, but at the end of the lap, the desire to extract every ounce of performance from the car caused me to overdrive the bus stop and lose several tenths.

The result was a small improvement to a 2:22.939, but we were only thirteenth on the grid.

Expecting we’d have better pace in the race, a top-ten seemed like a reasonable goal, and with Karl again driving the start, it didn’t seem unreasonable that he might get there within his early double stint.

But our best-laid plans were doomed almost from the beginning. On lap two, the driver behind us took a defensive line into La Source but missed his braking point. Unable to slow down, he speared the car ahead of us and Karl had nowhere to go but through the wreck.

While it initially appeared that we avoided major damage, one lap later in the same corner, the engine suddenly exploded, apparently from a radiator punctured in the collision.

Karl coasted back to the pits, and together with our third teammate Ryan Huff, we assessed the damage while our virtual crew went about fixing it over the next 40 minutes.

In my previous NEO races, most of my team’s early crashes have mercifully been race-enders, keeping us from having to limp around for hours with nothing much to gain.

But in this case, the car was completely fine after the repairs, so we decided to keep going and hope to scrounge up a position — and a point — or two if other teams fell out.

While Karl started our comeback effort, I fulfilled part of my in-race reporter duties by talking with the RaceSpot commentators. We discussed the response to the new NEO season — mostly good — my team’s race — mostly bad — and the GT3 crash-marred start at Spa — a bit ugly.

They also invited an opportunity for reflection about how far NEO has come in just six years, from fledgling endurance championship to the official esports partner of the 24H SERIES.

“That speaks to the level of simulator that iRacing has become. Whenever that team endurance racing feature came online, everyone was eager to be a part of that, and I think NEO had already established at that point it was doing a great job with sanctioning events and managing race control. So I think all those things combined to make that interest level so high,” I said, thinking back to the beginnings of the NEO Endurance Series.

“Even then, when registrations for the first season filled up in 15 minutes, I don’t think anyone expected that would lead to a partnership like this a few years down the line.”

From thinking about the past to preparing for the present, it was soon time for me to get in the car. While I had been scheduled for a double stint, but the damage repair time had effectively cut our race short, so I would have just one stint behind the wheel. Before that, I laid out my vision to Karl and Ryan.

“My goal is to be nice to everyone, to not make anyone mad at me, and to not ruin anyone’s race.”

It was tougher than it sounded, not because I’m a particularly aggressive driver in traffic, but because it’s almost impossible to stay out of the way while being in the middle of three classes.

I just tried to let faster GT3 and 991 cars past on straightaways to avoid any tight situations in corners, and stuck to passing TCRs on the straights instead of out-braking them or going side-by-side into any corners.

My lap times suffered as a result, which the statistics assembled by David Barraclough and Sascha Lamp reveal. I was the seventh-slowest Porsche driver based on my median lap time, and the fourth slowest based on the average of my fastest 20 laps.

When I wasn’t laying over for traffic, though, I was generally able to keep pace with a number of the midfield runners, which made me think that we could have been in that fight if not for the early crash. It was both inspiring and frustrating to keep pace with my opponents despite being 20 laps behind them.

Our five hours of cruising around did at least gain us one position when the third-place team had a steering failure at one of the fastest parts of the track.

Finishing in fifteenth, we earned a single point. It was better than nothing, but still a difficult way to start a new season, especially after our September success.

From our performance peak at Mount Panorama to the depths of frustration at Spa, maybe it just goes to show that even sim racing obeys the laws of physics.

What goes up must come down.

Midway through the last NEO season, I decided that it would be my last as a driver. Both writing about and competing in the series proved to be a bigger time commitment than I could make, and when forced to choose, I figured I was a more successful writer than racer.

If I needed any more convincing, the Interlagos race was the final nail in the coffin. I came out of the pits and immediately into the fire, swamped by faster drivers behind me. I couldn’t match their pace, and the unrelenting rush of prototype traffic left me exasperated and venting over the team radio.

After just one of my two scheduled stints, I bailed out, handing the car back over to my teammate Karl and insisting that having him — or anyone else besides me — was our best hope for a decent finish.

My final two appearances of the season at Spa and Le Mans went better, but I had still made up my mind. My driving duties in NEO would end at the checkered flag in La Sarthe.

After barely driving this summer, I was even more convinced. NEO is a young driver’s game, I told myself, or at least one for someone faster and better practiced than me.

When Niel Hekkens, the series director, told me about his meeting with 24H SERIES representatives and that NEO could be moving to a different format, I was intrigued, but mainly as a journalist. New classes, different cars, and an esports partnership would give me plenty to write about.

When one of those cars wound up being the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup — my favorite on iRacing — I felt that competitor’s craving return, but only briefly. Driving and writing about the same series could create perceptions of a conflict of interest, and it was better to do one of them well than risk doing both of them poorly.

As my SRN Motorsports teammates began dividing into pre-qualifying entries — one in the GT3 class and another in the TCR — I wished them well with no regrets about sitting out.

But as a spot in the fast-filling, talent-loaded TCR class began to feel unlikely for them, they called an audible and changed to the 991 class.

And that’s how I got in this position.

Now It Counts

This wasn’t the first season our team faced the gauntlet of pre-qualifying to make the NEO grid. Two years ago, when SRN expanded from one car to two, our GTE team had to find September speed around Silverstone in the Ford GT.

But in that case, I was the slowest of our four drivers and didn’t expect the team would need me. While they did give me a chance to make a 10-lap run, they waved it off midway through when it was clear I didn’t have enough pace to be one of our two fastest drivers.

It was the right decision and I was just happy they gave me a chance.

This season was different, though. Karl and I were our 991 team’s quickest drivers in practice, so I would either have to get up to speed after months of driving nothing, or I’d spend the season on the sidelines as I originally planned, although it wouldn’t be on my own terms.

While the Porsche has always felt like a natural match for my driving style, which was honed in heavy stock cars free from most downforce, the change of venue for this season’s pre-qualifying event gave me a new challenge.

The last time I drove Donington was in my short stint as an iRacing beta tester, when driver swaps were in development and a new circuit was the least interesting feature to be found.

I knew the circuit layout, but learning its intricacies in the Porsche — how much to lift for turn 3 to set up the turn-4 braking zone, or how to carry the most speed through the backstretch chicane without taking a run-ending off-track, or which angle of attack worked best in the two hairpins — was another matter.

And given our team’s late class change, I had less than two weeks to figure it out.

Getting to that point is one of the things I love about racing, though. I saw steady progress as practice paid off. Early on, my fastest laps were in the 1:31.4s. Breaking into the 1:30.9s was a big accomplishment. A cram session with Karl helped us both hit the 1:30.7s, and later, the 1:30.4s.

We both felt like being one of the top 13 teams in class was achievable, but it would take a solid effort — one that we couldn’t second-guess, lest we withdraw one of our times and try again in a later session.

Those scenarios had floated through my mind, but on qualifying day, it was time to face the truth.

Truth in Ten Laps

I woke up early to join the first session, mainly to see what track conditions and traffic were like. Twice, I started a run but had to abandon it after running up on slower cars. Neither time was the fault of the other team, but my frustration was borne out of desperation, with the clock ticking and opportunities to get in a good run potentially few and far between.

I managed a 10-lap run averaging a 1:30.931, but knowing I was capable of better, it was a no brainer to go out again in the second session.

In that one, Karl led off with a strong run averaging a 1:30.696. Earlier in the week, we had discussed our target time, and anything under a 1:30.7 felt like it might be good enough to stand on.

Now, it was my turn to back that up.

My first attempt started with laps mostly in the 1:30.8s. I finished it anyway, mainly as a banker run and to build some speed and confidence. After ten laps, Karl’s voice broke the radio silence, telling me my average. 1:30.856…

My second attempt started better but had two slow laps midway through. A car exiting the pits ahead of me hadn’t impeded me but was enough of a distraction to make me miss a few corners. 1:30.775…

In my third run, I managed a rare lap in the 1:30.4s early on — something I’d only done once before then — but fell off too much toward the end. 1:30.786…

By then, I knew I had the speed over a single lap. I just needed to put ten of them together.

The start of my fourth run was the best yet. Lap 2 was a 1:30.396 — my fastest ever.

After a moment of excitement and disbelief that I’d run such a quick lap, my next emotion was… concern?!

All week, I had been driving against the same split times for my previous best lap, in the 1:30.4s. I knew where that lap was strong — from turn 6 through the chicane — and where I could consistently improve, like in turn 4 and the final two hairpins.

Setting a new best lap erased those reference points, and having to adjust to the new ones could have thrown off my entire rhythm and left me pushing too hard in places where I was no longer making up time.

It caused a brief moment of panic, but I had no time to worry. Instead, I backed it up with another quick lap — a 1:30.499 — and three more laps in the 1:30.6s and 7s.

Just finish the run, I told myself. You don’t need to be perfect. Just don’t screw up.

My times did fall off, mainly out of caution, but one mistake on the final lap was the result of unneeded aggression, perhaps from the excitement of having such a good run going or from the eagerness to finish it.

Entering the chicane for the last time, I braked too late. I missed the first apex and by mid-corner expected I might blow through the second. Visions of that horrible green “Off Track (1x)” text flashed through my mind, but fortunately, not across my screen.

It cost me time — that lap was my slowest at a 1:30.984 — but not the entire run. My 10-lap average of a 1:30.688 was marginally quicker than Karl’s. It’s a fact I’m not keen to let him forget after years of struggling to match his pace.

But on that day, a bit of kind-hearted teasing was secondary to our accomplishment. As I watched the lap times continue to roll in and realized during the final session that our team’s average time was safely inside the top 13 — ranked tenth, after all was said and done — I felt like I belonged in NEO.

Out of practice and seemingly out of hope for continuing my NEO career as recently as a month ago, the irresistible call of my favorite car and a pre-qualifying performance under pressure mean I’ll be pulling NEO double duty once again.

I’m not planning to drive in every race since I still want to devote time to coverage of the series, and I know I’ll never be the fastest Porsche driver on the track. But I do hope being behind the wheel will give me insights about the competition and strategy in the new 24H SERIES ESPORTS season, and I plan to share my first-hand perspective as an in-race reporter.

Look for these posts after my race appearances all season, and perhaps you’ll even hear me on the broadcasts from time to time.

If I’m going to be in an unexpected position, I might as well bring you along for the ride!

It can be your best friend or your worst enemy, and sometimes both within the same race.

It can make or break a strategy. It can show how nail-bitingly close or frustratingly far you came from that next position or, in a championship series, a few more valuable points.

And unlike even the closest opponent or fastest prototype coming up to lap you, time is always there. Always ticking. Always simultaneously staring you right in the face and breathing down your neck.

The best endurance drivers are those who can withstand the test of time, being patient enough, fast enough, and consistent enough to survive and succeed.

Drivers who fail often fall victim to their own mistakes — pushing too hard, for too long, or in the wrong places — or are unwittingly caught up in the mistakes of others. Over time, that sort of bad luck is bound to plague everyone.

In my first endurance racing season, though, it seemed that bad luck was unfairly targeting me and my KRT Motorsport team. In the first four races of the NEO Endurance Series, we gave up positions and points due to computer problems, software glitches in iRacing’s then-nascent driver swap code, and penalties. Our frustrations could have been measured by the time lost to those issues.

Despite having a decent pace and comfort behind the wheel of our Ruf C-Spec, we didn’t have the results to show for it. Our best finish was fifth in the season opener at Sebring, and that came after a faulty modem caused me to lose connection to the server on the first lap of my first stint.

Entering the final race of the season, we were outside the top eight in points — a critical cutoff that determined whether teams would automatically qualify for the following season or have to endure the difficult pre-qualifying format — and quickly running out of time to do anything about it.

My teammate Karl and I knew it would practically take an all-or-nothing effort in the finale at Road Atlanta, with at least a podium as well as some bad luck for our closest competitors.

Determined to uphold our part of that equation and let the rest of the chips fall where they may, we made the most of our last chance and finished with a result better than we ever expected.

Like capturing time in a bottle, it’s a come-from-behind story I won’t soon forget. This is the greatest drive of my sim racing career.

1. NEO Endurance Series at Road Atlanta – March 15, 2015

Time offers a chance for recovery. For preparation. But only if you use it wisely.

All too often in my years of endurance racing, I’ve let that time slip away. Sometimes, I’ve kept my racing schedule too full, balancing multiple leagues and driving several different cars that were tough to consistently jump between.

That was the case in NEO season 1, as I was running in that championship and another, the Masters of Endurance Series, on top of my ongoing oval racing career. With so much going on, time to practice simply slipped away.

In other cases, I’ve eschewed the workman-like task of practice for more glamorous official races or simply taking a break from the sometimes-draining world of sim racing.

Whatever the case, I’m usually never able to meet my pre-race practice goals, whether it’s testing and tweaking setups in different weather conditions, running multiple full stints on a dynamic track, or getting experience in traffic.

I wouldn’t make the same mistake leading into the season finale. Or, rather, I couldn’t. Our team’s fate depended on me being more prepared for this race than any I’d run all season, or perhaps in my entire sim racing career.

It would take an aggressive approach, but Karl and I were up to the challenge. In the days after the previous round, he “vow[ed] to double [his] preparations for that race”.

It wasn’t as simple as getting a setup ready. A new iRacing build would drop the week before the race, and Karl and I debated just how much work we should put in beforehand in case the C-Spec received major changes.

He argued that we should at least get a basic setup ready, and I’m glad he did, because when the build arrived and the physics updates were fairly minor, we only needed to make a few tweaks. Plus, we had both put in a dozens or even hundreds of laps around the track by then, so it certainly wasn’t a waste of time.

The week before a NEO race always feels a bit like cramming for a final exam, and in most cases, I constantly worry I haven’t done enough preparation and I’ll be embarrassed by my own performance compared to my competitors.

The lead-up to the Road Atlanta race was still busy, but in this case, Karl and I both felt prepared. We had done enough testing to have a solid handle on our pit and fuel strategy — something that we realized other teams obviously hadn’t done during the race itself.

We had also both put in several long runs, and Karl had staked out our competitors occupying that eighth-place position in the standings — one spot ahead of us — to see how we fared.

“I must say, we are looking good,” he said, noting their slower pace and frequent practice crashes. “All we need is to not screw up and beating them shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”

But just beating one team probably wouldn’t be enough. Another team behind us in the standings brought in a ringer for the race — a driver who wasn’t on their team but was one of the top GT drivers on the iRacing service. With him in the car, they could easily leapfrog us in points.

So we kept preparing and kept tuning. On the Thursday night before the race, we were debating the most minor damper changes in search of the last bit of mid-corner rotation and on-throttle stability.

It’s the most prepared I’ve ever felt for a race, and it showed in our pace. We were lapping within a tenth of each other, so it seemed we were getting the most out of the setup.

“I hope that means we’re both running at a good pro driver pace,” I commented.

We wouldn’t know for sure until the race weekend began and it was time to perform.

Qualifying is the ultimate test of time. It’s a race against the clock that doesn’t single-handedly decide your fate but can do an awful lot to influence it.

We had been consistent mid-pack qualifiers all season, but that wouldn’t be good enough in this race. At the short Road Atlanta circuit, the threat of an incident would be greatest in the middle of the field. Getting ahead of any potential carnage, as well as a few of our challengers, would help our chances of surviving, if not succeeding.

The first NEO season allocated an hour for each class to qualify on Saturday, and with so much time available and a mostly empty track to run on, it took a nearly perfect lap to post a top time.

Throughout the session at Road Atlanta, Karl and I took turns behind the wheel. Entering the final 30 minutes, he had recorded a time that was good enough for sixth place, but we both felt there was more pace in the car.

For my final run, I made a seemingly unorthodox setup adjustment. I added a click of wing to the car, figuring it could help find enough speed in the twisty first part of the lap to offset any losses down the two long straightaways.

Making use of that extra downforce would require pushing harder than I had in all of my practice runs and not making a single mistake. Halfway through my lap, I knew I was on pace to set a good time, and coming through the final chicane, I was physically trembling.

I crossed the line 0.118 seconds quicker than Karl’s best lap, moving us up to fifth on the grid — a position that held up in the closing minutes of qualifying while I was still shaking from my pressure-packed performance.

It wasn’t enough to match the alien-like pace of the top teams, but as a mere mortal sim racer, it was a timely performance that may be the best single lap I’ve ever driven. However, Karl and I both knew it would take six hours of equally mistake-free driving on Sunday before our fate would be secured.

Race day was all about making the best use of our time: going as fast as possible, limiting our losses in traffic, and spending as little time as possible on pit road.

We felt good about the former and the latter. We were both comfortable and quick with our setup, and we had a straightforward plan for a seven-stop race, figuring that saving enough fuel to make it on six wasn’t worth the risk.

But our other challenge, and potentially a make-or-break element of the race, would be traffic. At this track, prototypes would come through early and often, and we knew many drivers wouldn’t be too patient with the slower C-Specs through the narrow esses.

Staying as close to the front as possible would be crucial, and Karl wasted no time moving up even more at the start of the race. As we took the green flag, he made a pass for fourth, and once faster traffic arrived, the gap behind us kept growing.

As a crew chief, spotter, and spectator, time seemed to pass both satisfyingly quickly due to the constant action on track and excruciatingly slowly since there was still so much time — and so many encounters in traffic, especially for me — remaining in the race.

After Karl’s hectic single stint to start, it was my turn to get behind the wheel for a double. With more than ten seconds separating us from the cars in front of and behind us, I didn’t drop into a close battle, so my main job was to hold position.

It wouldn’t be easy, as the car behind us — fielded by our current team, SRN Motorsports — had finished on the podium multiple times that season, and their fastest driver Steve was still driving.

Today, he’s routinely a half-second faster than me even on my best days, but in that Road Atlanta race, I managed to match or even exceed his lap times, slightly increasing our gap to 15 seconds before the next round of pit stops.

Even with our stellar pace, it seemed that catching any of the top three teams would be tough. However, when Karl got back in, we caught a break. The same team ahead of us who employed a GT ringer for this race also had a slower driver in their lineup, and making matters worse for him, they inexplicably asked him to start saving fuel midway through his first stint.

Consistently lapping a second quicker than him, Karl ate up his advantage and passed him just shy of the race’s halfway point.

We were in podium position, but it was far from finished.

Our biggest scare of the race came 12 laps later. Karl was caught behind a slower C-Spec, and the class leader was quickly closing in on him. In the slow-speed turn 7 leading onto the backstretch, we got a bump from behind, and that was only the warning shot.

At the end of the straightaway, Karl ran a bit wide to avoid a collision ahead, and instead, he got divebombed by the leader in a move that driver later admitted was overly ambitious and borne out of frustration with being stuck in traffic — one of those all-too-frequent endurance racing deal-breakers.

Despite the shot across our port side, our ship was still sailing smoothly. Karl found his pace again, and to help our cause, the eighth-place team in the standings crashed while racing for position. Karl’s observation of them from practice felt prophetic, and it was certainly profitable for us.

Feeling more optimistic as Karl finished his double stint, I got back in the car for what ended up being the run to the checkered flag.

Those final three stints taking up two hours and change were my best of the race, and perhaps my best ever. I was matching Karl’s pace, but it didn’t feel like I was pushing. Instead, it seemed effortless. My practice and preparation had truly paid off.

Traffic was still stressful at times, but by the end, I felt like I had even mastered that aspect — at least enough to make in-race jokes about the same purple prototype who consistently got stuck following me through the esses.

As in my first two stints, I didn’t face any close battles, but I didn’t need any either. Our position had been earned through six hours of solid driving at the expense of other teams’ inconsistent pace and strategic missteps.

We were aided by a few on-track incidents as well, the most consequential of which came with an hour to go. The second-place team was twelve seconds ahead and I was only slowly gaining on them, but when they spun all by themselves out of turn 7 and nosed into the wall, that gap suddenly vanished.

That made the final hour of the race feel like one big victory lap, even though we were only in second. That’s not to say I let up on my pace. In fact, I ran one of my fastest laps of the race with just three laps to go.

But driving that quickly never felt risky. Our car was connected to the road, and Karl and I both had so much confidence that we never worried either of us would endanger our chances.

Our six hours of racing — the business-like approach at the start, the mid-race scare followed by the realization that things were working out for us, and the jubilation in the final stints — was all building to the moment we crossed the finish line.

As the clock ran out, it was as if time stood still.

We were second in the race and fifth in the standings, wildly exceeding even our most optimistic expectations.

In the minutes after the checkered flag waved, Karl and I couldn’t quite find the words to express our emotions. Those came days later.

“I would say everything went exactly to plan, but I never planned or dreamed of running as well as we did!” I told him.

“I think this was our best race in terms of preparation, planning, and execution, but I couldn’t have imagined anything like a second place,” he said, reflecting my own amazement.

“I’m really happy that we managed to stumble over each other in the vastness of cyberspace,” he added, also echoing my gratefulness toward a talented teammate who made this moment happen.

In a season and an endurance career that had started with so much frustration, we had finally broken through with a good result, and we saved our best for last.

Like endurance racing itself, it was about time.

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.

Let’s call them the Ghosts of Races Past.  Their mission, it seemed, was to offer a shot at redemption, making sure I had learned my lessons from mistakes in old races and condemn them to their crypts once and for all.

The Ghost of Computer Demons

The first test I faced wasn’t so much a reflection of mistakes I’d made, but simply the horrible luck that had kept me out of two NEO races this season.  On race day at Road America, I woke up to a computer that wouldn’t boot, which I later diagnosed as a bad cable connected to my hard drive. And at Spa, my Internet service became intermittent 30 minutes before I was scheduled to get behind the wheel, which put me on the sidelines once again.

At Le Mans, the computer booted up just fine on race morning, and I had no problems with my connection in warmup and the opening hours while my teammates Jason and Steve took their turns behind the wheel.

Just before the four-hour mark, I got behind the wheel in a NEO race for the first time in more than five months — since the season opener at Sebring.  While most of the season had been a wash for me, I still had an opportunity to bookend it with successful drives.

More importantly, our team had held up remarkably well despite my bad luck, and we entered Le Mans just a few points out of the top 12 in points, which would secure us an automatic invitation to the next season.

As I hit the track to begin the first of my three scheduled double stints, there was a lot riding on my shoulders, both for me and for the team.  And thankfully, those computer issues stayed away in this race. But while all was smooth in the internals of my equipment, would my own brain and body hold up just as well over 24 hours?

Concentration was required to tackle the Le Mans kerbs at full speed.

The Ghost of Thirsty Tanks

Much like in the real-world Le Mans race where full-course yellows have become rare, strategy often offers the best opportunity for teams to get an advantage.  Eking out an extra lap of fuel per run around the eight-mile track can be tough, but it’s often worth it if it means reducing the time spent on pit road.

That’s exactly what we hoped for.  Our team’s strategy was built around running 15 laps per stint, which would save us up to two pit stops over the course of the race.  Early on, it was clear that most teams around us could only manage 14 laps, so our plan had potential.

But to pull it off, we had to save some fuel each run, and that hasn’t always been my strong suit.  In my first full-time Power Series season on the oval side, I lost two races late in the season because I opted not to save fuel, both because of a lack of experience and a lack of skill.  If only I’d gone for that strategy, my results in both races and in the championship — where I finished second — might have been different.

In the Le Mans race, a lack of fuel saving could have also proven costly and thrown our strategy off-track.  Fortunately, after my early struggles, I eventually learned to love fuel conservation on both the oval and road side.  That’s not to say I’m the best at it, even compared to my teammates; at times, a tendency to drag the brake means I use a bit more fuel than them.  But I managed to lift, coast, and draft my way to 15 laps each stint.

Fighting traffic through the Dunlop Curve.

Since I wasn’t closely battling any other cars during my stint — by that point in the race, the gaps through most of the field had opened up — that fuel number gave me something to work toward.  It made the time pass quickly as well; two hours of driving seemed to be finished in a flash.

As my first double stint wrapped up, I was thinking that it couldn’t have gone much better.  I kept to our strategy, and even though my pace didn’t set the world on fire, I had saved time in other ways, like avoiding the slowdown penalties that are so easy to come by at Le Mans.

However, the final corner defined my stint, and not in a good way.  I pushed a bit too hard on pit entry, spinning the car out — thankfully, not back into traffic or into a wall — and cost us at least 10 seconds while I recovered.  All the time gained through performance and driving penalty-free was thrown away with one stupid mistake.

I might have banished one ghost, but I awakened another that I’d have to face later in the race.

A potentially costly mistake: spinning on pit entry.

The Ghost of Tired Minds

I went to bed on Saturday night with that spin still on my mind.  And with just a few hours of sleep ahead of me, I knew the chances of making another mistake would only increase once I got back in the car for my early morning shift.

I say that from experience.  I’ve often told the story of crashing our race-leading car at 5 am in the 24 Hours of Spa a few years ago after a momentary lapse in concentration.  But what made that incident all the more heartbreaking was how we’d gotten there.

Six hours or so before that, I was in the car and we weren’t far off of the leaders.  After a frustrating encounter with a lapped car, I half-spun the car and nosed the right-front corner into the wall.  It hurt our top speed and pace, and would have ended our chances of competing for the victory if not for a heroic triple stint by my teammate Karl to drag us back into contention.

In the final hour of my own triple stint that followed, I threw it all away.  With so much on the line at Le Mans, including saving us from being in the gauntlet of the ultra-competitive pre-qualifying session next season, I couldn’t afford a similar mistake in this race.

The speed difference between classes made for some scary moments in traffic.

As it turned out, Le Mans provided another scary encounter with a different car that could have resulted in disaster.  Midway through my second double stint of the race around 5:30 am — after just four hours of sleep and three further hours awake — a lapping HPD a half second in front of me spun sideways entering Mulsanne corner.

Once I saw him begin to slide, I hit the brakes and briefly locked up the tires, but was able to narrowly avoid his car.  If my reaction time had been slightly delayed, which can happen in those tired late-race stints, I would have hit him and trashed our goal of a decent finish in the race and the standings.

“That was almost it, boys,” I told my fellow teammates manning the graveyard shifts with me.  I breathed a sigh of relief and completed my stint, bringing the car into the pits without spinning to effectively banish two ghosts — one years old, and one conceived just hours earlier — that haunted my racing history.

A close call with a spinning HPD in Mulsanne corner.

The Ghost of Changing Conditions

In the past few years, iRacing introduced dynamic weather and track conditions that can change the way a car drives and a track feels during a race.  Granted, the changes generally haven’t been huge — maybe a few degrees of air temperature and some rubber being laid on the road — but even adapting to those conditions has at times been challenging for me.

While drivers like my Le Mans teammate Dean Moll flourished on a rubbered-in track in our Daytona 24 win and my other teammates Steve, Jason, and Karl seem to quickly get up to speed regardless of the weather, I have always been slower to acclimate.

Part of that may be due to my conservative driving style that is hesitant to push the limits, especially in longer races. My tendency to practice in largely static, default conditions may also be to blame.

In any case, it often takes me a dozen or more laps to get the feel for the weather and track conditions, and at Le Mans, I simply wouldn’t have that sort of time.  After all, 12 laps around Circuit de la Sarthe is the majority of one stint.

A cool, shaded track provided plenty of grip through the Porsche Curves early in the race.

When I got in the car for my first double stint, I surprised myself by running faster than expected right out of the box. My first timed lap was in the 3:51s, which is largely what Steve had been running just before me. And any time I can be within a half-second of him, I feel like I’m doing well.

When my next double stint started hours later, the conditions were quite different.  The air temperature had warmed by almost 10°F and the pace had slowed by at least a second per lap.  It warmed a few degrees more before my final stint, and that didn’t just affect the pace.

As the track slickened up, it also changed how the car drove.  In some corners where the car had been tight earlier in the race, it became loose.  In other places, it went from grippy to pushy. Where it had been sluggish to turn on corner entry, it started to slip and slide on exit.

Combined with limited sleep, it only added to the challenge of getting up to speed in a limited amount of time.  And while my lap times were never able to match Steve’s, Jason’s, or the fastest drivers on track around us, I held my own.

Steve brings the car across the finish line at the end of 24 hours of racing.

After 24 hours, we finished in ninth place, roughly 20 seconds ahead of tenth and 20 seconds behind eighth.  In the end, my spin entering pit road hadn’t cost us a position, but a slower pace while adjusting to the track conditions certainly could have.  We also managed enough points — but just barely — to clinch a position on the grid in the next NEO season.

At the beginning of this season, my goal was to not be a liability for my team.  Even though my race appearances were limited to four total double stints, including three at Le Mans, I can look back at them and know that one spin notwithstanding, I achieved that goal.

As for Le Mans, I managed to tame at least a few of the spooky spirits from my racing past, effectively putting them to bed.  Now, after limited sleep and many hours awake to watch, crew chief, and drive, it’s time to give myself the same treatment.

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.

Among the strong and closely matched GT field, how well would the teams play with one another? Given that drivers with almost equal pace would be fighting over the same real estate for six straight hours, for anyone predicting a clean race, I had some swampland in Florida, not far from the Sebring race track, to sell them.

For our team, we knew we had a strong lineup, but it was just our second race working together and our first one in the Ford GT. Could we agree on things like the setup, strategy, and stint schedule in order to make it a smooth and successful race?

And for me, after exiting pre-qualifications as our team’s slowest driver, could I maximize my pace and minimize my mistakes to show I belong in NEO and in our team’s lineup? As I put it in my pre-qualifying thoughts, I’m determined not to be a liability in the car this season, and there would be no better time to put that idea to bed than in the first race.

Unlike in pre-qualifying, when I was a reserve driver, I was actually called upon to perform at Sebring. One of our drivers, Steve McGarvey, had to miss the race, which left us with three drivers available and a mid-race double stint awaiting me.

Our SRN team cars tackle Sebring’s Tower corner.

First Things First

Before that, Jason Gerard — our quickest driver in practice — was in the car for the opening hours of the race. Starting in 24th out of 31 GTE cars, we had hope of moving up but it would take some work, and perhaps some help from other teams, to get there.

That help didn’t come in the opening stint. While we were stuck in a tight battle, attrition around us was almost non-existent. After an hour of racing, we had moved up only one position from where we started.

To make more headway, it seemed that an alternate strategy might be required. While we had planned to divide the race into six even stints, the start of the race saw three extra pace laps to sort out the starting grid. The extra fuel saved and time burned behind the pace car extended the first stint by 10 minutes or so, which opened the door to double-stint a set of tires and do a shorter run on old rubber.

We planned to defer our decision until the final pit stop, but we got a preview of its efficacy in the second hour of the race. One of the teams we’d been racing with, Blue Flag Racing, opted not to change tires during their first stop, which put them more than 25 seconds up the road from us.

However, a slower pace and a spin on worn tires cost them all that time, and we passed them just as they ducked into the pits to make their second stop.

Three-wide into Sunset bend with Jason on the outside.

Into the Fray

We pitted a few laps later, which meant it was my turn to get in the car. When my stint started, the pressure was on as I rejoined the fight with Blue Flag Racing directly ahead of me.

That battle would have to wait, though, as my stint got off to an inauspicious start. On my outlap, I clipped a bit too much of the inside tarmac entering turn 15 and received a slowdown penalty. I lost a second or so, but fortunately, it would be my costliest mistake of the day.

After shaking off that error, I set my sights on the car ahead, and while both of us were new drivers behind the wheel, our paces remained similar. During my first stint, I was able to stay in their draft and close in on them, although not close enough to make the pass.

Chasing the Blue Flag Racing car heading toward the hairpin.

Once we had both pitted, a new car joined the fray. This team had been running ahead of us for much of the race, but Karl cautioned me that they had a new driver in the car whose pace wasn’t as strong as his teammate’s. In other words, getting past him quickly would be important.

That was a tall task since I barely had any experience racing — let alone passing — in the Ford. But on fresh tires, an opportunity presented itself, and we went side-by-side through Sunset bend and down the frontstretch.

I was on his outside entering turn 1, so my chances to complete the pass seemed slim. However, a good exit allowed me to stay alongside entering turn 3, where I had to ignore my still-burgeoning instincts not to overdrive the Ford into the corner.

Going in deep worked, as I powered around the outside of my opponent’s Ferrari with one of the finest passes of my NEO career.

For the rest of my stint, I stayed locked in the draft with the Blue Flag car and we set some fast laps running in formation.  The setup we’d tweaked and tuned until the drop of the green flag was handling perfectly, even over the slow, bumpy sections of the demanding Sebring circuit.

While the track often becomes slow and greasy at this point in a race, in this case, cooling air temperatures meant the track was actually gaining grip, and our car felt as good as it had during any of my practice runs.

Despite not passing the Blue Flag car, my confidence in my own driving was high after a successful double stint that saw us move up to 19th place and into a points-scoring position.

Reversal of Fortune

The final two stints belonged to Karl — a slightly unusual role for him since he’s more used to starting our races together than finishing them.  But the traffic around him must have made him feel right at home, as a battle with one other car soon turned into a full-on six-car scrap when the GT midfield accordioned together.

Karl got the worst of that battle, falling to the back of the pack and into 20th, barely clinging to a point. It seemed that this race was becoming the latest chapter of our tough-luck NEO career together that has seen pretty much everything go wrong at some point, from computer problems to penalties to spins.

However, later in Karl’s opening stint, that bad luck instead began to plague the teams around us. One car spun another, which resulted in a penalty to the offender and two positions gained for us. Another car disappeared due to Internet issues, handing us another spot.

We entered the final hour in 18th position, and the only question left was which strategy we — and our opponents — would choose.

Karl said that he abused his tires in the earlier battle, so he preferred to spend the extra time changing tires in the pits to give him something to attack with.

As it turned out, we were the only team among those around us who opted for fresh rubber. That gave Karl some big gaps to bridge — 12 seconds to one car and 30 to the next — but he had the tires and he soon showed the pace needed to get the job done.

Karl sets up a pass for position while lapped traffic awaits ahead.

Cardiac Karl

Entering the final 15 minutes of the race, we were still in 18th, but our closest competitors were less than 10 seconds up the road. Karl worried about losing time while battling them, but I assured him that they had no tires left to battle with. Sure enough, he completed one pass in turn 1 and was catching the next car by more than two seconds per lap.

That pass would be easier still, although a bit scarier. That Ferrari spun on the winding road to turn 13, and while Karl had to take to the grass to avoid it, he was up to 16th place — the highest we’d run all day. As a welcome contrast to the rest of Karl’s stint, the final laps wound down uneventfully and he brought the car to the finish.

Earning that finish required a nearly mistake-free race — our most egregious errors were one slowdown penalty each. So given our effort, is 16th worth getting excited about?

In almost any other race, maybe not. But this season’s NEO GT grid is the strongest ever assembled. The drivers around us would all be favorites to win any given race in the official IMSA series.

So finishing smack dab in the middle of the 31-car field, just one lap down to the class winners who were up to a second per lap quicker than us, was something to be proud of.

Given how competitive all three of our drivers were against our opponents, I can’t help but think that we belong. And yes, after one of my best NEO double stints to date, even I belong.

For the fall, a new road beckoned, but unlike the official series open to anyone with a license, this one was invite-only. And that invitation had to be earned.

Now entering its fourth season, the NEO endurance series has established itself as iRacing’s premier endurance league. I’ve been fortunate enough to compete in all three seasons so far — in the first two as a full-time driver and in last season’s 24-hour race at Le Mans — and I’ve seen the skill and effort required to be competitive.

This season promises to require even more of both.  With only two classes, one of which will feature iRacing’s still-shiny new GTE cars, the talent pool will be deeper than ever and the interest level is greater than ever.

Fortunately, my SRN Motorsports team has prepared to meet that challenge.  I was paired with three of the fastest and most competitive teammates I’ve ever raced with, and headed into last weekend’s cutthroat pre-qualifying session at Silverstone, we knew we’d need all the speed we could muster in order to make the field.

Going fast at Silverstone often meant using every available inch of the road.

A couple of my teammates began practicing more than a month ago while I was still hopping from one car to another on my road trip.  Once that adventure ended, I began my own practice in our car of choice, the Ford GT.

I raced that car in week 5 of my Summer Road Trip, but I had driven seven other cars since then.  Surely getting back up to speed would take time, right?

Surprisingly not.  After my first 25 laps or so of practice, I was within a half-second of my teammates’ best laps.  Going into my road trip, I expected that changing cars each week might be a hindrance, but instead, it proved helpful.  Each week, it seemed easier to adapt to different cars, as if switching so often made me forget any stubborn muscle memory that had been slowing me down.

Although it was still tough to kick a few old habits, like using my braking points from the Skip Barber car around Silverstone, comfort came easily in the Ford, aided by a quick, stable setup from my teammates.

In our practices together, our lap times were typically separated by just two or three tenths of a second.  I was still the slowest on the team, though, so when the pre-qualifying session arrived, I told my teammates that I probably shouldn’t drive unless we were really desperate.

As my three teammates — Jason Gerard, Steven McGarvey, and Karl Modig — took turns in the car, I played the role of statistician, calculating the average lap times for other teams to give us an idea of where we stood.

Karl shares the road with a prototype in the stadium section.

But just as I was tallying up the laps in Karl’s run, which was our team’s third consecutive clean ten-lap run of the day, I got the call I didn’t expect.

“Want to see if you can make it a clean sweep, Corey?” Jason asked.

With that, I put my laptop aside and my driving gloves on.  After all, I wasn’t about to turn down a chance to get in the car.

However, I certainly didn’t expect to do well.  I was slower than my teammates to begin with, and in addition, I was getting on track when conditions were arguably the worst — the track had heated up and was still rubbering in, making it slick and tough to drive.

In the past, my lack of adaptability to such conditions has been one of my greatest flaws.  During this summer’s 24 Hours of Spa, for instance, it took hours of frustration in practice and several stints in the race to get used to the changing track conditions.

But that experience seemed to pay off as I headed on track at Silverstone.  While I overdrove some corners in my first few laps, I eventually got into a decent rhythm running lap times solidly in the mid-1:45s.

Navigating the rubbering-in esses at Silverstone.

After seven laps, I wasn’t on pace to beat any of our team’s previous runs, so my teammates called me in — a move I encouraged them to make when I started my run.

My average lap time of a 1:45.580 was about two tenths off our best run of the day.  Of course, my times would’ve likely slipped a bit in the final three laps, but my average likely would have remained good enough to make the grid.

It’s a feat few teams accomplished.  Out of 30 GTE teams that made a pre-qualifying attempt, only 13 received the golden ticket into the new NEO season.  Our SRN team was solidly among those, placing fifth in the final results thanks to Steve and Karl’s quick runs.

With that, we’ve checked one goal off the list and made the field.  That opens up a big opportunity — and presents a big challenge — for me as a driver.  Surrounded by fast teammates and competitors, I refuse to be a liability to have in the car.

That means I will need to approach this season different than any other.  Instead of moonlighting in different cars and splitting my time between series as I have in the past three endurance seasons, I will be driving the same car for months, needing to thoroughly learn its tendencies while finding speed, consistency, and adaptability.

Cresting the hill exiting the esses at Road Atlanta.

I got my first test of that earlier this week in the official IMSA series, where I drove the Ford in a 75-minute race at Road Atlanta.  Although it wasn’t the strongest GTE field — certainly not as competitive as the NEO grid will be — it was still a chance to try out the Ford in race conditions.

I’d like to think that I largely passed that test.  I qualified more than a second faster than the next car, and in the race, I found consistency even on older tires en route to a class victory.

If I can perform like that all season, I hope it will help me take a big step as a driver.  When others see me in official servers, I want their reaction to be “wow, he’s a NEO driver!” instead of “wait, he’s a NEO driver?!”

It’s a big ask, but armed with lessons learned from my Summer Road Trip and a new focus for this season, I think I’m prepared.

The road is calling, and I’m ready to answer.

In a previous post, I covered the start of the NEO Endurance Series and Blancpain Endurance Series seasons and how I needed to go on the attack in the season-opening events.

When the BES season resumed at Zolder, I was neither attacking nor defending.  My biggest competition that race, it seemed, was myself, as I struggled at times to keep the car on track and was well off my teammate Karl’s speed in the race, even though my pace in practice was fine.

Despite my best efforts to ruin our race, Karl carried the team to a 4th-place finish and we tied our season-best points total from Road Atlanta.

Practicing with my prototype teammate Bryan Carey at COTA

The next week, NEO resumed with a six-hour race at Circuit of the Americas.  We felt more confident in our pace here than we did at Sebring, and Karl qualified in 6th.  However, the challenges of multi-class competition bit us during the race.

Karl and I were both penalized for avoidable contact with other cars in one of the slowest and tightest sections of the track.  And coincidentally, our race eventually ended after another car punted us in the same section but received no penalty.

As a result of that contact and plenty of frustration for both of us, we retired our car before the end of the race.  It was our first retirement in the seven NEO events we’d done to that point.

The next three weeks, we were back in the McLaren to finish out the six-round BES season.  We first visited Silverstone and ran two races there.  In both, I ran the final stint of the race, and in both, I faced pressure from fast BMWs behind me that wound up right on my bumper.  However, I withstood the pressure in both cases, preserving our position and a solid points total.

Facing the pressure at Silverstone from the BMW behind me

The following weekend, we went to the super-fast track in Monza.  Since this was Thanksgiving weekend, I drove the Saturday morning race at my parents’ house.  That certainly gave the feeling of traveling to a new venue for a race weekend, even if I didn’t venture all the way to Italy.

In this race, Karl spent the first two stints inside the top five while conserving enough fuel to make just two pit stops instead of three.  When I took the wheel for the final stint, I was in the race lead, but only by a few seconds.  Two faster cars eventually passed me, but I still finished in third, and we took what turned out to be our only podium result of the season.

The BES season wrapped up at Spa — the same track where I crashed from the lead in a 24-hour race over the summer.  This time, I was determined to get some revenge.

Although I needed to tiptoe through the Blanchimont corner where I crashed in that 24-hour race, we survived to the finish of this three-hour event and capitalized on the incidents of other top-running cars to finish in 7th.  That didn’t make up for losing the 24-hour race, but it was a good result to end the season.

It also put us 62nd in the point standings.  While we missed the top 40 cutoff to qualify for next spring’s GT pro series, I was still proud of our performance in a series that more than 400 teams entered.

The following week, iRacing released its new build highlighted by the Nurburgring circuit and the 2015 McLaren MP4-30 Formula 1 car.  I quickly took a liking to the new car, and throughout the week, I ran a few fun races at the Nurburgring Grand Prix circuit.  In one of them, I passed the leader when he slipped on the final lap, handing me the victory.

This past week, iRacing’s official Grand Prix Series visited Road America, so I also joined a few races there.  Although I’m still trying to come to grips (quite literally) with this car, I’m finding it to be one of the most fun cars to drive, especially with the range of electronic gadgetry that makes the races more dynamic and unpredictable than ever.

Plus, it seems that I’m not my perennial half-second slower than Karl in this car, which gives me even more motivation to drive it.  Indeed, whether it’s in real racing or sim racing, there’s nothing like a little competitive rivalry between teammates.

The leader’s late slide was the opening I needed to take a fun-race victory at the Nurburgring

Our stretch of seven straight weeks of racing finished with the NEO race at Watkins Glen.  Since that is one of my favorite tracks, I was determined to be competitive there, but all week, we struggled to find the pace of even the mid-pack teams.

However, our endurance mindset paid off during the race.  As most of the other Ford GT teams had problems, we moved up from 10th to as high as second place.  We eventually slipped back to third but still had a podium finish seemingly in the bag, as our advantage over 4th place was more than a lap.

But in this race, a new gremlin struck us.  Karl’s screen froze with less than 45 minutes remaining and the car went hard into the wall.  Our race-long patience and persistence was wiped away by a half-second stutter, sending us from the podium to the paddock in our second retirement in a row.

Our seven weeks of racing didn’t end on the best note, but the experience during that time — practicing and strategizing, attacking and defending, surviving and even retiring — should make us a better team and make me a better driver.

And fortunately, unlike in real racing, there is no damage bill to repair our wrecked virtual cars.

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.

Navigating the rubbered-in race track at Road Atlanta.

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.

Multiclass traffic in the hairpin at Sebring.

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.

Making an outside pass in turn 3 at Brands Hatch.

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.