Be Excellent To Each Other

Two hours' sleep. One of our drivers has gone AWOL. Up to 10th. Time for me to drive again!

Just finished my last stint of the race (a triple! On one set of tyres!) 106 laps in total at 4 mins a lap so about 7 hours of driving - yikes.

Up to 7th in class, P22 overall.

Welp, that didn't work out as planned. Server disconnects meant I had to jump back in the car for another hour. Now I'm destroyed. Leaving the other two to finish off.

Down in P11 now though.

Oh, we finished 10th. Really happy with that.

Well done! There's a really nice le mans 24 series on Amazon that I binge watched.

Jack Bauer drives a racing car?

He rides a bike pretty well.

Week 16 - Toyota/Save Mart 175 @ Sonoma Raceway (55 laps, 110 miles)


Q: 9
R: 19

After missing three weeks due to other commitments I came back to the NASCAR iRacing Series at one of the only two road courses on the calendar. Let's be kind to these cars, they handle like utter barges at the best of times, but put them on a very slippery, dusty desert track and it's quite the challenge. However I did ok in qualifying and put the car in 9th. Got stuck behind two teammates in 6th so decided to pit a couple of laps early for the one and only pit stop and managed to undercut them as I managed to stay out in 4th after they pitted.

Unfortunately a lap later I managed to destroy my engine when accidentally putting it into 1st gear when I meant to change up to 3rd! This meant I had to wait 30 mins for a new powerplant and by this point there were only two laps left. A big shame as I was doing well, but considering last year I was about 5 seconds a lap slower here, I'm definitely making an improvement. Back to Daytona next week and I definitely have unfinished business there after the Daytona 500!

Week 21 - Overton's 200 @ Pocono Raceway (80 laps, 200 miles)

Q: 10
R: 5

Missed another four weeks due to other commitments which means trying to win my division has gone out the window now (you are allowed six drop weeks in the 36 week season). Did surprisingly well considering I'm not usually very good at the tricky triangle. Got tangled up in the first incident on lap 1 but didn't suffer any damage luckily. Had some interesting moments when making some passing manoeuvres but was really pleased to squeak into the top 5 at the end.

Week 23 - Pure Michigan 200 @ Michigan International Speedway (100 laps, 200 miles)

Q: 9
R: 8

Missed Watkins Glen but came back for Michigan. My team has basically fallen apart in the last month or so. An hour before the race I was invited to join another team and using an unfamiliar setup managed to bring it home in 8th after incurring some damage scraping the outside wall which dropped me from P5 to P25. I'll take that.

Week 27 - Tales of the Turtles 200 @ Chicagoland Speedway (133 laps, 200 miles)

Q: 12
R: 18

I put in a surprisingly good qualifying time here as car #29 of 30, outqualifying most of my team. However I made a silly error of not loading my race setup before gridding. After two laps I noticed my water and oil temperature rising to critical levels and had to pit to remove some grille tape. This put me a lap down but I soon got it back when a caution flag came out. Unfortunately in this race anything that could go wrong did. I got turned around by another car which at the same seemed really odd as we weren't really that close, but my team told me that I was blinking on track, which meant my internet connection was having problems. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting but this didn't resolve it, so I had to go for the dreaded router reboot. By the time I rejoined I was 11 laps down, although my connection seemed solid again.

From that point onwards it was just a case of trying to get as many laps back as I could. By the end I was only 4 laps down, but it was a struggle. Shame as I had a top ten car, but after all the issues I'd take P18.

In turning left AND right news I'm now focused on racing two series this season (Blancpain Sprint Series and IMSA Sportscar Championship), both in the same car, the Mercedes-Benz AMG GT3. So far this is paying dividends as I've racked up three top 5 finishes in as many races (P5 at Sonoma, P4 at Circuit of the Americas and P4 at Laguna Seca).

The funniest thing that happened this week was this. I'm the green car in front:

That was some pretty late braking. Still he recovered well.....

Week 29 - The Apache Warrior 200 presented by Lucas Oil @ Dover International Speedway (200 miles, 200 laps)

Q: 6
R: 14

Managed another good qualifying session here and put the car 6th on the grid. Racing at Dover is pretty frightening as the track is reasonably short but the speeds are very high due to the banking. One mistake and you're usually in the wall with a lengthy repair. I managed to run inside the top ten for 160 of the 200 laps when car #14 pinched me off at the entry to the corner as I took the low line. I managed to save the car but on corner exit I made a mistake by pushing up back into him, which sent me into a spin and I collided with the wall. Luckily I escaped major damage and was back out again in under ten minutes. I managed to recover to P14 which still gave me an iRating gain as I was ranked car #25 of 29.

I'm now up to 2200 oval iRating which is a career high. My goal for finishing the year was 2500 which may be a stretch now, but I'm still really happy with my progress in 2017, especially with the upheaval of changing teams and the fact I haven't been able to race much at all over the summer.

I'm on holiday next week but the week after is Talladega!

We lost in the World Cup final to Finland - third year running.

Now my endurance team has just disbanded.

Oh, how come?

Team owner doesn't have time to run it as he's just started a new job.

Something will probably rise from the ashes, not sure what yet though.

Can you run it?

I've just started a new job too! Plus I'm just a lowly driver. He was the heroic one who stayed up the full 24 hours as engineer and strategist. I couldn't and wouldn't want to do that.

I have my own mini-team which runs occasionally in the Blancpain Endurance Series. Those races are 2-4 hours which is much more manageable.

Holy Shit. I am having so much trouble getting my head round that.

I am jealous in a way of being able to get that passionate about something but then also glad I don't get quite that obsessive.

He only had time to do a few races a year so he made sure he made them count. Since I joined last June we've raced 24 Heures Du Man (twice), 12 Hrs of Sebring, 24 Hrs of Daytona, Petit Le Mans and 6 Hrs at the Glen.

apparently gT sport is like racing http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017- ... n-progress

Looks good. I can't play this with a pad though and my wheel isn't PS4 compatible.

Came so close to my first road win a couple of days ago. Here's the last few laps where I try in vain to get around the leader. I'm the green Merc and he's the BMW with the white wheels:


Here's an incident I had on lap 3 of the same race where I get squeezed off the track. Perhaps I would have won if this hadn't happened as it cost me quite a bit of time as I ended up going for an early pitstop to get out of slow traffic:

Would your opponent get a reasonable penalty for that incident?

Only if I protested, which I didn't. It wasn't egregious enough for me to bother, would probably be deemed a racing incident anyway. They don't penalise for poor driving, just malicious.

Two F1 drivers racing...MX-5s.

I did pretend racing cars at Rockingham.

Trying to work out which sim that is, considering iRacing doesn't have the UK Rockingham.

Oh, the track was Donnington. I think the SIM was FP2 or something? Dunno.

Does this help?

Ah, probably RFactor2.

Sadly this is what happens when someone with 700 iRating drives a faster car class than the guy in front with 1700 iRating. Drives right up the back of me along the straight and then doesn't allow for my earlier braking zone, nudging me off into the barrier and destroying my car.

"Rubbin's racing!" - Malia 2017

Why didn't he overtake?

Another GTE on the inside who he was battling with.

If I had been him I'd have just given up the place and tucked in behind, I was going to run wide to allow them through anyway.

I protested it but I suspect because he's got such a poor iRating it'll be deemed as incompetent rather than malicious.

It sadly ended a streak of 12 races where I gained iR.

*Gives driver the Pundylicious Driving Award* Proud of ya!

I got punted all over the place in a quick race before work on GT Sport this morning losing safety rating all the while. It was my own fault, I did a race before doing enough practice laps to get a decent qualifying time so ended up in a roomful of idiots. Still made me grumpy as fuck, though.

Yeah I probably don't do enough practice unless it's a track I haven't raced before. I only really drive the Merc now in the road discipline so I pretty much know how it's going to handle.

Blancpain Sprint Series is at Homestead Miami road course this week so I definitely had to practice that as it's very rare they use rovals.

Here's a good example of a tough but respectful fight between two decent drivers (sub please check). I succumb eventually, but I use all the defensive driving techniques I can muster. Of course if you watch it until the end you can see why I'm not that upset over losing the position. Also a great example of a driver behind being able to gain ground on two drivers who are losing time fighting each other:


Here's me in the same race overdriving after my pit stop trying to catch the front two:


And here's me making a mistake with three laps to go. The driver in front's tyres are shot and I didn't realise how early he was braking for the corners and I rear-end him. Thankfully it doesn't spin him out and he recovers without losing too much time. If I'd have spun him out I would have waited for him and given the place back. Half a lap later he spins himself anyway because he has no grip - guess I'm just kinder on my tyres than some drivers! That gave me 2nd place for my joint-best road finish and best ever championship points haul. A win still eludes me!

Wow, a very bad-tempered NiS at Texas tonight. One driver decided to drive through three cars causing wrecks, including me.

Week 34 - The AAA 250 @ Texas Motor Speedway (250 miles, 167 laps)

Q: 12
R: 23

Due to stupid work I missed the last four race meetings, so it was good to get back into the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Toyota Camry last night. What was shaping up to be a compelling race was marred by some boneheaded driving by one driver in particular, who caused three wrecks by just driving through people. I had some handling issues in the first stint which dropped me back to the back of the field after a fairly decent qualifying (I was car #17 of 29), but my race engineer tweaked my rear suspension and it was much better after that. Coupling that with me being especially good on my tyres, I managed to get back up to P9 when this happened:



This basically destroyed my engine and I needed a 37 min repair, effectively ending my race as there wasn't enough time left. This was bad enough, but the same driver proceeded to do the same thing twice to someone else:




From the in-game chat I think there will be a number of protests against him. It was a shame for me personally, as I felt I could've got a top 10.

I am currently toying with the idea of running the NASCAR iRacing Pro Series which starts next Tuesday night at 1am. My iRating isn't high enough to get into the top splits so I don't really stand a chance of getting into the NASCAR Peak Antifreeze Series, but it could be fun anyway.

There's no way those could be accidental. I did think that yours could be but after watching the other videos, yeah.. He knew what he was doing. How annoying.

The curse of playing online with other people.

You say that, but 99% of the racers I compete with are fine. It's so much more enjoyable than trundling around with 40 AI drivers. This is the exception rather than the rule.

My team are livid. They say next time they see him he's going to eat wall.

Especially at an organised online event, that's very rare.

Are they sure it was him behind the keyboard?

Probably yes. Despite these moves he was still pretty fast and finished 8th. If it was his kid or something I would have expected much more destruction derby. These moves were subtle and deliberate.

My experience of NASCAR is limited to Talladega Nights, Cars and Days of Thunder - but isn't contact allowed?

Oh yeah, rubbing is racing! But that tends to be either short tracks (bump and run to move a slower car off the racing line if they have been blocking you for a while) or bump-drafting on superspeedways (Daytona and Dega) to push the car in front to make you both go faster.

It doesn't mean dump your competitor into the wall and end their race.