iRacing Season 2 Skippy - VIR (Grand East) - Feb 16

[popabawa]

Wow! 40 minutes racing and 0.4s separated Don & I at the end  

Great intense racing and zero incidents too.

[Paul Thurston]

Huge apologies to Darren Seal for my extremely ill-judged rejoin.  I tried to stay on the outside but the rear tyres bit and pitched me across the track.  I should have waited.  Sorry Darren.

Bugger Darren, it was me you screwed up.  I was first bon you and had to take to the grass.  The two cars behind me had time to react and got past.

You owe me lunch for that.

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

Quite unexpected result getting on the podium, but par for the course round VIR where consistency always counts for more than speed, especially on the sillier layouts with all the Mickey Mouse stuff.

Got a fairly good start, and unlike a public race I trusted Darren enough to fight my way into 5th round the outside of turn 1.

Then coming up the hill and out of South Bend I could see Gary was out on the grass - I didn't know what direction he was going to lose it in, moved left ready to jink right if he spun back across, then decided he was going to go straight on and slide across the track in turn 11, and delayed turning in until he'd cleared me - by inches I think!

That left me 4th - good job too, otherwise it'd have been me in the firing line instead of Darren coming out of the Spiral. Stuart's indiscretion there left me 3rd and with Paul and Mike fighting between themselves I just had to keep it clean to maintain that to the end - not always easy when the rears started to overheat every few laps and I had to keep slowing down a little bit to cool them.

How is the tow time calculated?  Any ideas?  Gary came in the at the same time and left after about 30 seconds!!

It's something along the lines of distance from where you are to the pits, going forward, multiplied by some constant, plus some constant. So if you reset early in the lap it takes longer than if you reset later. But it's always painful.


I was not happy to see various chat messages during the race itself - one merely unhelpful, we have a working protest system, please use it - and one containing language which was completely unacceptable.

[Fred Basset]

until he'd cleared me - by inches I think!

I'll get you next time, I was annoyed, I did a 13 lap stint in practice with the only off being avoiding action

[Truetom]

I'm sorry for an inapropriate choice of words ... which completely described my feelings at the time.
I'm not sure I'm gonna bother anymore with this car.

[Mike Wrightson]

I'm not sure I'm gonna bother anymore with this car.

It took me until now to really get the hang of the Skippy, but I'm glad I have because racing it when you get some confidence is awesome.

What has finally cracked it for me, is to concentrate on not trying to carry a lot of speed into the turn.  If you do that, it swaps ends.  Go in a bit slower and power on through the turn.  I also use slightly higher front pressure and the front higher than the rear.

[purdie]

nice choice of track and car for me because I have been driving the skip since i renewed and the last week was the Long Course VIR... so i just had to learn the mad bit in the middle  

Picked up pace but backed out on the straight as Purdie had more speed and was going to pass.

Cheers Brian, I would have lifted buit that was my final chance for a decent time after screwing my last laps. Even worse I didn't get a decent time  

Was regularly getting under 3min lap in practice and I didn't in quali.... ..... putting me 13th. This turned out to be a blessing as I missed some of the spinners on the first few laps....... I ran 3rd in a 4-long Legends train and had some tough racing with Pops and Don  

... it is hard to keep momentum in this car... got a good run down the backstraight on Don and bounced the limiter once and lost my advantage instantly. I think to get a tow in these cars requires a 3 mile long straight with no crosswinds!!  

I'm happy with 6th   ......grats Brian!! Battling disco's and limited practice and PaulR   very impressive average lap times 2m57's!!!

[Truetom]

I'm not sure I'm gonna bother anymore with this car.

It took me until now to really get the hang of the Skippy, but I'm glad I have because racing it when you get some confidence is awesome.

What has finally cracked it for me, is to concentrate on not trying to carry a lot of speed into the turn.  If you do that, it swaps ends.  Go in a bit slower and power on through the turn.  I also use slightly higher front pressure and the front higher than the rear.

Maybe it's just the track - I enjoyed it on Race America. Or maybe it was Milan losing at home.

[Mike Wrightson]

Whoever designed that crazy middle section of the layout is a sadist 

[Paul968]

Sorry I missed this one as I normally like long, technical tracks like this. Everything went pear shaped late in the afternoon and it took until 10pm to work out what the problem was. I fixed it, but as so often happens, I don't understand why it went wrong in the first place!

[Paul Thurston]

I didn't count on getting very far after getting disconnected 3 times during practice.  It threatened to drop me twice during the race, but it held together and I'm glad it did!

You dropped out a few times in the first half of the race.  It took an article of faith to keep my foot in and hope you'd reappear in front.

Had a scrap with Robert until he spun off, then it was down to holding off Paul until the end of the race.  Both of us pushing like crazy!  Improved my PB by 0.8s  

I knew that if he got past, I wouldn't see him again.  Great race Paul, thanks!

I don't know actually, I couldn't have gone that much quicker.

It was one of the most intense, protracted battles I've had in a sim.  I tried everything, I even dropped back at one point to see if you'd lose concentration and make a mistake but no chance.

Brilliant.

Paul

[Don]

I enjoyed that last night.
Had a good scrap with Pops throughout the entire race, Ross was also in the mix for a while and kept Pops busy enough for me to manage to hang onto a slender lead from start to finish. That was about as good as I could of gone. No overtakes, but a consistent drive gave me a better result than I was expecting.
Was a shame to see Darren depart so early as he'd shown such good pace during our practice sessions.

Good fun, thanks Guys.

[Adam Parle]

Very dissapointing race for me all in all.

I couldn't really complain with my lowly start position - it was still a PB - and the race started pretty well, certainly at the back people were excercising common sense and taking it easy for the first lap .... which makes it doubly bad that I span on the last flipping bend!! Numpty.  Somehow the back stepped out and decided to overtake the front.  Thankfully I didn't contact anyone or anything, but I think it shook TT's concentration as he span just after me .  Once I was back up to speed there was just TT behind me, and the gap to the Legends train in front of me was 10 seconds, and with us (Pops, Don and I) being very evenly matched in terms of pace, it needed a cockup from one of them to allow the gap to close any.

In the end the mistake came from me on lap 6 - spinning the car on the exit of South Bend  (rookie error  ) although thankfully I never left the track and gathered the car after a quick 360 so I only lost 2 seconds - and that undid the hard work I'd put in to close the gap down a little.

Another spin in the same flipping spot put me into the wall and left my car looking more than a little sorry for itself.  Although it was drivable, the time loss was enough to allow Gary to close me down and pass on the run into the final lap.

A top 10 finish is no consolation for a race ruined by a couple of stupid errors - half the Legends on circuit should have been duking it out for the distance and I'm gutted I missed out on it .

Also sorry to see Darren and TT disco early

[spanner]

8 Legends drivers! Is this a legends only series?

[purdie]

Gulf have increased this years sponsorship cheque   we all got one of these