Move aside, bald eagle. I may have found an even greater story of recovery from the brink of extinction: the Radical Racing Challenge series on iRacing. Okay, maybe comparing a virtual racing competition to the living symbol of our nation’s freedom is a bit heavy-handed, but the change I’ve seen in the past year is Read more about Summer Road Trip, Week 12: Bounce Back[…]
It’s the most difficult car in iRacing, and as I arrived on the scene this week, its future erupted in controversy. It wasn’t my fault, I swear! The iRacing Grand Prix Series, home of the McLaren MP4-30 2015-spec Formula 1 car, is by the very nature of its A-class license level the pinnacle of road Read more about Summer Road Trip, Week 11: Formula One More Time[…]
He was an engineering visionary whose work I’ve witnessed before. Last summer, I got behind the wheel of the virtual Lotus 49 — one of the first Formula 1 cars created by legendary designer Colin Chapman. In the latest stop on my Summer Road Trip, it was time to again see eye to eye with Read more about Summer Road Trip, Week 10: Colin Card[…]
You might say I had a love-hate-love relationship with my latest Summer Road Trip combination. It went from being one of the weeks I most anticipated to one I dreaded, then back to one I enjoyed, all because of a little thing called perspective. Before this season started, I had never driven the Formula Renault Read more about Summer Road Trip, Week 8: Belle Ringer[…]
With some bad driving, bad luck, and bad opponents blotting my experiences with it, the HPD ARX-01c prototype on iRacing has always left something of a bad taste in my mouth. The first time I drove it after the car was released seven years ago, it immediately put me outside of my comfort zone. The Read more about Summer Road Trip, Week 7: Palate Cleanser[…]
Australia is known for its many creatures that bite, sting, or stab, and during my stint in the V8 Supercars last summer, I think I found their automotive equivalents in one of my worst ever sim racing showings. As the last of my six weeks driving GT machinery rolled around this year, I was set Read more about Summer Road Trip, Week 6: Hotlapper[…]
Over the past two summers, I’ve come across some cars and series that were struggling for participation. Last summer, the Radical Racing Challenge often managed just one official race per week, and this year, I found that both the Kia Optima and Pontiac Solstice had sparse turnouts in their respective multi-class series. For every struggling series, Read more about Summer Road Trip, Week 5: Ghost Town[…]
Two years ago, iRacing had a surprise in store for its members, and it was unexpected in all the wrong ways. 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, Read more about Summer Road Trip, Week 4: Thrown Back[…]
When I was a poor college student a dozen or so years ago, I made an exciting dorm room discovery after a trip to the supermarket. The store brand of Lucky Charms, it seemed, had more marshmallows and tasted better than the name brand. It was like an epiphany: an off brand didn’t always have Read more about Summer Road Trip, Week 3: Ruf and Ready[…]
In the beginning, there was the Solstice. When iRacing launched its open beta in 2008, more than a year before I joined the service, it had just two cars: the Skip Barber Formula 2000 and the Pontiac Solstice. Ten years later, there are more than six dozen laser-scanned cars available within iRacing, but those two Read more about Summer Road Trip, Week 2: Walk the Dinosaur[…]