Not so fast!

Well I thought I was ready for the Ford spec class but now I'm not so sure. I can't remember how many seconds off the pace I was but it was enough to get lapped. So I have some work to do. I'm going back to the Solstice for now until I get more road experience.


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No Longer a Rookie!

A lot has happened since the last post. I have won both and oval race in the Legends car and a road race in the Solstice. In both road and oval I have gained enough points to advance to the "D" class. This is important as it allows me to race in a higher level. For now I am going to stick with road racing going into the Ford spec series. When I get tired of that I will run my late model. I'm having a lot of fun and think I am doing well so far!

Awesome Race

Had a great race tonight with Michael Hansen and Steve Sandlin. Finished a career best 2nd place, had my fastest lap ever at Lanier and increased my level to 3.53, up .10. This iRacing is fun!!!

Finally above 3.0

So after a few days away I finally got to race again last night at Lanier. I am happy to say that I had a solid race and I'm not at a 3.43 level. I am really looking forward to a 4.0 so I can move into the Late Model series, that will be a blast. I guess for now I may try some advanced Legends..... we'll see.

03/22/10 - Lanier Surprise

I signed on to the 8pm Legends Cup race tonight and I thought this was my chance to surpass the 3.0 mark and allowing me to choose another class. After a great qualifying run I chose the race session and I was ready to go. When I got loaded into the race I immediately realized that this was not South Boston, the track I had been running for the past few days and had just qualified so well on. It was Lanier Speedway. I had never run a lap on this track but here I was about to race. I ran as much of the warm up as I could and was ready to go. I was starting the race in 10th spot. My strategy was to not wreck and hopefully stay on the lead lap. After a few laps I was enjoying the width of the racing surface and just biding my time. One by one cars wrecked in front of me and I was thus far unscathed. I made my way all the way up to 5th position and I held it strong. With about 10 to go I realized 6th place was catching me. 5 laps to go and he caught me, I let him go, he made a mistake, I got past him again. We took the white flag nose to tail going into turn one. He drove in deep but didn't touch me as I guarded the bottom. Coming off the corner we caught a lapped car and I made a mistake and didn't give him enough room and my right front hit his right rear sending us both spinning down the back stretch. I finished the race 7th. Felt like an idiot. Lost points and am now down to a 2.88 ranking. Not to mention I probably made that lapped car pretty mad. Bad night.

Welcome to "From Rookie to Regular"

A few days ago I was browsing Facebook and came across from a posting from a friend of mine saying how addicted he was to iRacing. This friend of mine is a long time RC oval racer and race organizer so I thought if it was good enough for him, I needed to check it out. My roots in racing are deep. I have been a racing fan since my childhood years (I am 32 now). I will watch anything on 4 wheels except I don’t care much for drag racing. I have raced RC cars since I was in 6^th grade or so. I also already enjoy online racing, via the PS3 and GT5 Prologue, and EA Nascar 2009. I’m sure most of you have played these games, they are good but could be much more realistic. It’s also important to note that my son (who is 3) has completely taken over my PS3 setup and he’s not too happy when I’m racing and he is not. This kid has it good, PS3, 32” LCD, Playseats racing seat, Logitech wheel and pedal set. Me, I’m stuck on my PC with a 19” monitor , an old Logitech momo wheel and pedal set up, and a desk chair.

Downloading seemingly took forever….but it was worth the wait. Before I paid $100 for an annual subscription I decided to play it safe with a 1 month pass. I didn’t want to spend all that money to realize my older PC couldn’t handle the game. Once everything was installed I figured out that I needed to use the web interface to launch the application and I was up and running. My first laps were in a Legends at the Lowes Legends track. After some adjustments to my wheel and pedal setup I was turning some fun laps (note that I said fun, not fast J). I realized right away that my PC had plenty of power for the game, it was very smooth. After navigating the site a little bit I joined the rookie Legends Car league.

In a few days I have gone from being in the way to wanting people out of my way. Keep in mind, this is in the rookie league. I am at a 2.90 rating and looking forward to moving into either another rookie oval class or possibly advanced legends. Before I advance I would love to get into the 17 second bracket at South Boston in my rookie Legends car. I’ve come so close! I can run an 18.0 but I need one more tenth. I should be watching the replays of these laps when I see someone runs one. One thing I really like about iRacing is the realism. There is no pause, no do over, once the race starts it’s on. It reminds me a lot of RC racing. Staying out of trouble is of upmost importance. You can be the fastest guy on the track but if you can’t pass a lapped car without wrecking you are useless. In the last race I was in I started 6^th. I prefer to start on the inside row but what can you do? It was funny, while we were driving the pace laps the car on the outside of the front row and someone else crashed. On the pace lap! Unfortunately someone got paid back right after the green flag and a lot of innocent cars were collected including myself. That was frustrating.

The point of me creating this blog is just to capture the experience of a new iRacing driver. Hopefully other new racers will learn from some of my mistakes and others can follow my progress if they choose. Please feel free to leave a comment here or you can e-mail me at Nickolas.Ledford@gmail.com.