As my iRacing career progressed, I came to find my niche and I discovered it was endurance racing. Rewarding patience and consistency over raw speed, longer races became my specialty.
Before the team endurance racing era began on iRacing, I found my stride in longer solo races such as the Targa Virginia, often finishing ahead of faster drivers who dropped out early, made more mistakes, or otherwise didn’t have the stamina required for those events.
With that early experience in hand, when the endurance racing feature finally arrived, it felt natural to get behind the wheel for two or three hours at a time, plugging away at a decent pace while keeping the car on track.
Of course, even my own endurance occasionally found its limits, often when forced to push harder to pick up the pace or drive uncomfortably close to other cars.
Exhibit A was my well-documented crash out of the lead in the 2015 24 Hours of Spa. In that case, it wasn’t even a nearby opponent, but a faster lapped car behind me, that caused me to lose focus and lose control.
Even in this year’s iRacing 24 Hours of Le Mans, I spun and damaged our car when a prototype ahead of me unexpectedly checked up in the high-speed kink before the Indianapolis corner. Once again, it cost our team a chance at the victory, and although that prototype driver had been erratic during my stint, the blame — mostly of my own conjuring — still fell squarely on my shoulders.
Looking back on my endurance racing history, I can fortunately find some examples of success and solid driving even when faced with close competition and pressure to elevate my pace.
As the countdown of my ten best drives in ten years of iRacing continues, I shine the spotlight on two of these moments that epitomize endurance.
8. ISRA Grand Touring Cup at Suzuka – March 25, 2013
In its heyday, the ISRA league was one of the most popular and competitive on iRacing. Its premier series, the Grand Touring Championship, was ahead of its time in many ways, from its use of multi-class racing to the incident review system to the live streams and post-produced broadcasts, complete with commentary and sharp on-screen graphics.
The only thing it was missing was team racing and driver swaps, which wouldn’t arrive on iRacing for a couple more years. Instead, its schedule was made of solo events between one and two hours long.
Before other leagues and iRacing official series popped up to meet the endurance racing demand, ISRA’s GTC was the place to race. Series rosters often filled up within hours of registration opening, and when I joined for the start of the eighth season, I was lucky to get a spot at all.
During that season driving the old Ford GT2, I managed a few podiums but mainly tried to get comfortable in a multi-class setting. Looking back, I still cringe at some of the moves I made — such as suddenly changing my line to move for prototypes coming up behind me — that were fortunately corrected by watching and hearing from other drivers.
By the start of season nine, I felt better prepared, but with the lowest class switching from the Ford to iRacing’s first GT3 addition — the McLaren MP4-12C — and many of the fastest drivers flocking to that car, my job became even tougher.
My season started on a rough note with a DNF at Spa — perhaps a haunting hint of my future fate in that car at that track — but bounced back with more promising third-place runs in the next two rounds at Silverstone and Interlagos.
Suzuka was next on the calendar, and as I noted in my Summer Road Trip visit to the track last year, some of my only experiences at the track to that point were a couple of particularly forgettable Lotus 79 races.
My qualifying run was a reflection of mediocrity: sixth place out of ten cars, and two spots behind my then-teammate, René Weissflog.
However, it didn’t take long before chaos reigned and I found myself moving from mid-pack to the front of the line.
When the green flag waved, the GT3 field was still navigating the tight Casio Triangle, and contact between the second- and third-place qualifiers exiting that chicane left one of them spinning.
One of the drivers directly in front of me checked up for the incident, so I got past him on the frontstretch, moving me up to fourth.
A near-spin for the polesitter and race leader exiting the Dunlop Curve caused another check-up that helped me pass my teammate, and after the erstwhile leader ran wide in the Degner complex, I passed him as well.
Like a yanagiba knife through sushi, I had moved from sixth to second in half a lap, and I wasn’t done yet. A slowdown penalty for the new leader late in the lap handed me the top spot.
Leading an endurance race was a new experience for me. I wasn’t used to setting the pace, and I knew I’d eventually have to fight off a charge from the faster qualifiers who were down but not out.
My main consolation was that my teammate René had followed me through the first-lap frenzy and provided a friendly buffer behind me. A lap-three spin by the outside polesitter — his second of the race — also helped open the gap to him, although I knew I’d need all I could get if I hoped to hold him off in a 75-minute race.
From the first lap to the finish, most of that time is a blur for me. I don’t remember much about my driving, my strategy, or what my team talked about over the radio.
I was simply in the zone, turning laps, watching my mirrors, and keeping an eye on the steadily shrinking gaps behind me.
With 10 laps to go, I had a 15-second advantage over second place. With 5 to go, the lead had effectively been cut in half. That trajectory was setting up for a nail-biting, and potentially heartbreaking, finish.
Fortunately, a few decent laps and some cooperation from traffic helped stabilize my lead. That doesn’t mean it was an easy run to the finish, though. I still had to hit my marks and avoid any mistakes, all while the anticipation and anxiety grew as I dreamed of victory.
At the checkered flag, those dreams became a reality. I was five seconds up on second place and for once was glad that this wasn’t a longer race, because my lead and my nerves surely wouldn’t have lasted that long.
It was, to that point, the biggest win in my sim racing career, and even my other four GTC wins — all coming the following season in the McLaren — can’t compare to the feeling of accomplishment that the first one provided.
7. Blancpain Endurance Series at Silverstone – November 22, 2015
When team endurance racing finally did land on iRacing, the McLaren remained one of my cars of choice — or at least one preferred by my long-time teammate, Karl Modig.
He always seemed comfortable and quick in the notoriously temperamental McLaren while I often struggled to find a competitive pace, and in some cases such as our 24-hour try at Spa together, to even keep the car out of the wall.
Reflecting back on our races together in the Macca, Karl noted why it was such a tough car to drive, at least for me.
“It really was pretty hard to be consistent in as you always had to fight some trait in it, mainly mid-corner understeer,” he said. “To get the maximum pace from it, you had to be pretty aggressive in it, and that’s something that my style is probably better for.”
One of our campaigns together in the McLaren was the inaugural GT3 pro endurance qualifying series in 2015. We knew going in that we’d be a longshot to make the top 50, since all of the top teams had multiple entries.
We ended up sixty-fourth in the final standings, but I couldn’t help but wonder how much better we could have done if not for my up-and-down driving in the McLaren.
We started the season with a solid fourth-place run at Road Atlanta. I followed that with a clutch middle-stint drive at Brands Hatch in which Karl told me how quickly the cars behind were closing and I responded by increasing my pace to hold them off until I pitted. It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to Michael Schumacher’s uncanny ability to run a certain lap time on demand, and that race barely missed this top-ten list.
I followed that with my worst performances of the season in our two races at Zolder, where my stints were plagued by spins, car contact, and a struggle to run within a second of Karl’s lap times.
Up until that point in the season, we had generally opted to have Karl run the first and last stints with me in the middle. However, his tendency to take lots of off-tracks — and my ability to avoid them, even if running at a slower pace — in a series where we were limited to 30 per race led us to change our strategy.
Beginning in week 4 at Silverstone, Karl would start and run the first two stints while I would step in for the final hour.
While I was still the clear number-two driver on the team, my responsibilities behind the wheel would increase since there would be no relief driver to gain back any positions I lost. That was never more clear than in our two races at Silverstone.
I barely remember our first race of the week, possibly because it was in the pre-dawn Saturday morning timeslot. However, the results show I gained one position during my stint — from thirteenth to twelfth — and managed no incidents compared to the 24 racked up by Karl.
Memories of our second race are much clearer, and it’s that drive that lands at number 7 on my top-ten list. Karl made a great start to the race, moving from twenty-ninth to thirteenth before handing the car over to me.
From the start of my stint, my competition was close. As Karl recalled, “you had at least two cars after you for pretty much the whole stint.”
Despite my lack of confidence driving the McLaren and the overall pace advantage of the drivers chasing me, I managed to keep them behind — at least for the most part.
With five laps to go, one speedy BMW driver who had torn through the midfield and was lapping a second quicker caught up to me and easily got past. Although I could have resorted to defensive driving that late in the race to hold him off, the endurance racer in me knew that wasn’t the smartest move.
Even if I’d started running off-line, that faster driver likely would have still gotten by, and it could have opened the door for my two stint-long chasers queued up behind me to sneak past as well.
So in the motorsports equivalent of picking my battles, I facilitated a relatively easy pass for the BMW and focused once again on the green Bimmer and blue McLaren filling my mirrors.
Starting the final lap, they were as close as they’d been, well within drafting range of my thankfully top-end-endowed McLaren.
As that lap went on, something funny happened. I started catching the blue BMW who had flown past a few laps before. Out of Bridge corner, I was suddenly on his bumper and made a quick decision to cut left rather than run into him.
He was out of fuel — his penalty for unhindered speed throughout the stint. If I had held him up for even another lap, maybe he would have saved enough to make it to the finish.
That hypothetical didn’t matter, though. As I led our three-car train past him and across the finish line, I had completed one of my most pressure-packed hours of driving up to that point.
While I knew it probably would have been an easier final stint if I had Karl’s pace, on that day, I was able to fulfill my duties as a co-driver — holding position, keeping the car clean, and managing incidents (Karl left me with four to use; I took just one).
Even after plenty of longer and more prestigious enduros since then, my maiden ISRA win and stint-long stand at Silverstone remain some of my best performances. That’s probably because they remind me of the qualities and mindset it takes to be an endurance driver — namely patience, race management, and enough speed to get the job done.
In his reflection on our races together that season, Karl mentioned one other trait that he noticed in me: “being a bit of a problem-solver”.
I’m not exactly the McLaren McGyver, but as an endurance racer, I’ll certainly add that title to my résumé.