Author: d_e157

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Three Hour, One Tank Enduro

My last blog post was about a race on the simulator using iRacing which was a 3 hour team race. Funnily enough, the weekend after that race which myself and Jason finished 4th out of 37 people in the top split, I had the chance to run an endurance race at the track where I work, Harris Hill Raceway.

Harris Hill Raceway hosts a race called “Three Hour, One Tank Enduro”. This race is three hours long, and you have to finish in one tank of gas. I decided the day before to run this race. I drove my 2011 Hyundai Sonata, and had a good strategy planned out. The day of the race, I woke up early, filled my tank up with gas, and headed to the track. Once I got there, I checked in with Philip, who was running timing, and put a transponder in my car to be able to track the laps.

This race started 12 cars. There was a Porsche GT4, a couple Miata’s, and a Tesla even attempted it.

Because we run the track on both directions at Harris Hill, we started off the first hour and a half going counter clockwise, to a 5 minute break/ driver change, then the last hour and a half going clockwise.

The start of the race was a lot of fun. My strategy was to drive like I was driving in the highway, starting off a bit slow and slowly improving the lap times, not even putting the car in manual mode and shifting gears, just letting it do automatically. It was a lot of fun because the pack was all together, which made up for some good battles on track. Myself and a Miata were going back and forth overtaking each other and I had a lot of fun. I was keeping up with the timing on my phone, but unfortunately, my phone died for the second stint.

When the first hour and a half was done, I came into the pit lane, and immediately ran up the hill to go to the bathroom. I was the first person to see the checkered flag which gave me a little bit of extra time compared to everyone else to go use the bathroom, since the 5 minute break mark started as soon as the first car (me) went into the pit lane. I completed 45 laps in this first stint.

By this point, I had more than half a tank of fuel left and knew I could push for this second half. Two cars had already fallen out (one of them being the Tesla, duh) So I was just happy I wasn’t running in last place.

The beginning of the second half, I came out really strong. Know I was shifting gears and pushing my car to its limit, but I was cautions and would do a cool down lap every now and then to save fuel and to make sure I made it to the end. I always kept in mind that it’s a long race and to finish first, you first have to finish.

There was a point during the second half of the race where I didn’t see anyone in front of me, or behind me. I knew the checkered flag hadn’t been shown yet so I figured people were falling off. I got to the top of turn 4, which is up on a hill, and as I came down, I looked around the track to see where everyone else was at. I only saw 6 cars left on track and knew I had a chance to do well.

During this last stint, my worst lap was a 1:45:439 and I did the best lap I had ever done with the Sonata on the track at a 1:42.089. I saw my friend Rachel had came by to watch me race, and caught her out of the corner of my eye while I was passing by the start/finish line, which made go a bit quicker and pull off some nice overtakes for her to see.

After the race was over, I didn’t know what position I had finished in, but I was happy to have finished the race. During the awards ceremony, I was surprised to hear Courtney (the COO of the track) say that I had completed 95 laps, 4 laps behind the leader, which was the Porsche GT4 and I had finished in second place.

It was an awesome time, and I had some great racing with people I knew. After the event, Harris Hill hosted the annual downhill derby, where members build downhill racer cars, and we taken them down from the top of turn 4. Rachel and myself went on to go down on a bunch of different downhill derby cars, this was my favorite one.

 

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Preparing for 3 Hours at Road America

iRacing is hosting the IMSA Endurance Series at Road America this week. This race is a three hour race multi-class race that requires at least 2 drivers per car, myself and my friend Jason will be racing in this series on Sunday morning. We will be driving in the Dallara P217 car, also known as an LMP2 car (Le Mans Prototype). This car is basically like a formula two car but with a closed cockpit. It’s very fast, and you need to be hard on the breaks for the thing to stop. This series runs the McLaren MP4 GT3, Audi R8 LMS GT3, BMW M4 GT3, Lamborghini Huracan GT3, Porsche 911 GT3, Mercedes AMG GT3, and the Dallara P217.

This will be my third endurance race, I’ve done a six hour race at Spa-Francorchamps, and a 3 hour race at Le Mans. However, this will be my first time driving the LMP2 in an endurance race. I’ve ran the LMP2 series the last couple weeks, which runs a 45 minute race, and have gotten a good feel for the handling of the car. Road America is a track that is very fun to drive and has a good combination of high speed and low speed corners, with plenty of elevation change.

Getting ready for an endurance race is tricky. Luckily, this race is ran with a fixed setup, meaning no one can make any mechanical changes to the car. Besides how much fuel you want to run. My friend Jason and I have been doing a lot of testing to determine our race pace, pit stop strategy, fuel management, and when the tires start to wear out that it ends up costing lap time. The plan is to start off with a full tank, which will last about 16 laps. Which should be about 20 minutes into the race. Since I have a little bit more pace than my friend Jason, I will be starting us off on Sunday, pushing as hard as I can until the first pit stop, and make the driver switch after the second pit stop. I should be able to get the first 45 minutes of the race rolling.

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Jason will then drive an hour and a half stint, managing the fuel more conservative than I would be on the first stint to last a bit longer on track. He should be doing 2 pit stops for refueling and new tires before I hop back on to finish off the race.

Because this is a multi-class race, the LMP2 cars are about 20 seconds quicker than the GT3 cars that are also on track. One of the hardest parts about these races is getting by lapped cars. Slower cars that are being lapped are supposed to hold their line and let the faster car go around them. However, because this is iRacing, and not everyone is too smart, after a couple of practice sessions I’ve ran into some troubles with unpredictable driving and slower cars trying to move off their line as I’m trying to go around them, which is dangerous and can cause a big crash and ruin not only mine, but their race as well. Here’s an onboard lap in the LMP2 around Road America.

iRacing has a penalty system, during this endurance race, we can’t go over 100x, if so, we’d get disqualified. Going over track limits is a 1x, a loss of control is a 2x, contact with damage is a 4x. The best way to go about this is being patient and making calculated moves.

The beginning of the race is always nerve racking and the goal is to survive the first 2-3 laps. There’s always going to be someone making a dumb mistake and going a little too hard on the first lap. Drivers always need to remember not to push too hard the first couple of laps, since the tires and breaks are not up to temperature yet, making the car more difficult to stop, and giving you less grip since the tires are still cold and slide all over the place. With sim racing, always let the people ahead of you crash into each other, and try to stay clean and out of the mess.

The goal is to simply finish the race and stay out of trouble. If we manage to not go off track, spin, or make contact. We should be looking at a top half finish. The race pace is good and we’ve put in many hours of practice for this event. The day of the race, I will wake up early, stretch, get my water ready, do a couple of practice laps before the race session registration begins and make sure my internet cable is connected so I don’t get kicked out mid-race. And of course, I will make sure to finish my homework ahead of time, so I can hopefully celebrate a good result in the afternoon.

You can check out the highlights of the real deal here.

 

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Singapore Grand Prix Recap, and how Max Verstappen can clinch his second world title this weekend.

Last weekend’s race was the first time Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen could have mathematically clinched his second World Championship title. Max would’ve had to win the race with the fastest lap, and Scuderia Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc would’ve had to finish eighth or lower at the Singapore Grand Prix.

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The Singapore Grand Prix is the toughest race of the season according to the drivers. Not only because it is a street track, but it is very humid and the track surface is really bumpy, making it extremely difficult for the drivers to adapt to the track, especially with the new 2022 cars. It is also the only night race on the calendar.

See the source image McLaren driver Daniel Ricciardo said “It’s the only race on the calendar where you crack your visor open during the race, and you wish you didn’t because it feels even hotter outside than in the car”.

To make things more interesting, Saturday’s free practice and qualifying session’s came along with a bit of rain. Qualifying in Singapore is very important, because it is a street track, it is difficult to overtake similarly to Monaco.

Qualifying was interesting as we saw Alpine driver Esteban Ocon get knocked out of Q1. The lap times kept improving throughout the sessions as the track slowly dried up and the teams where looking for a gap to switch from intermediate tires to slicks.

The biggest surprise of Q2 was Mercedes driver George Russell missing Q3 by 3 one hundredths of a second. Russell had been struggling with break issues since FP1 and was not able to keep up the same pace as his teammate Lewis Hamilton.

In Q3, the drivers went for it and made the switch to slick tires. Even though some corners of the track were still quite damp, most drivers made the switch to slicks to give their final two push laps.

This is where it went horribly for Max. Verstappen. Max had backed off on his first lap due to traffic, on his final push lap he was nine-tenths down and on his way to a stunning pole position lap, but on the second to last corner, he was asked to come into the pits by his engineer. Max was furious with his team, followed by a raging radio message.

This meant Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc took his ninth pole position of the year, alongside Max’s teammate Sergio Perez starting in the front row. Max would start the race in P8.

After qualifying, we found out Max was asked to box because there was not enough fuel in the car to provide a sample after the session to the FIA.

“I can’t see how much fuel is in the car, but we have all the sensors in the world to track these kinds of things. It’s incredibly frustrating, because I think we had a good car. And I think you could see that already in Q3 that the car was really good on slicks. Of course, the conditions are tricky, but I liked that. The car was working quite well.”

F1 Grand Prix of Singapore - Qualifying

Sunday’s race was delayed by an hour and a half, due to heavy rain. That sparked up the conversation of what the point is of having wet tires, as the track looked dry enough after about half an hour, but at the end of the day it is the FIA decision for the safety of the drivers.

It’s lights out and away we go, Sergio Perez takes the lead into the first turn as Charles Leclerc has a bad start, with a bit too much wheelspin. Every driver is starting on intermediate tires as the track is still very damp and conditions are still very tricky.

Max Verstappen didn’t have a great start either as he went into anti-stall and dropped back to P14 by the end of the first lap, leaving him with some work to do. At lap 11, we see the Williams of Nicholas Latifi completely crash into Alfa Romeo driver Zhou Guanyu bringing out the first safety car of the race and both drivers are out of the race.

As the drivers keep struggling for grip and trying to get a hold of the track, Max Verstappen has been able to make his way up to sixth place pulling on some incredible overtakes. Williams driver, Alex Albon misjudged his breaking point, locks up his breaks and goes straight into the wall, followed by Lewis Hamilton, who rarely makes mistakes also hit the barrier.

The second safety car will come out after AlphaTauri driver Yuki Tsunoda, also completely misjudges his breaking zone and hits the barrier at turn 10 going about 80 miles an hour. Every single Singapore Grand Prix ever hosted has seen the safety car come out.

After the safety car restart, Max Verstappen is sitting P5 behind McLaren driver, Lando Norris. Because of the safety car, the field is backed up, and because of the safety car speed, the breaks and tires lose temperature and don’t perform as well as when they are at peak temperatures.

Max Verstappen makes a bold move trying to pass Lando Norris right after the restart, locks up his breaks, and goes too deep into the corner, having to make a pit stop since the tires had flat spotted.

That drops Max back into last place into P14, with six drivers already out of the race due to crashing, or reliability issues. With 30 minutes to go, Max Verstappen manages to finish the race in P7, while his teammate Sergio Perez wins the race, leading every single lap, and possibly his best drive to this day. The Ferrari of Charles Leclerc finishes P2, followed by his teammate Carlos Sainz in P3.

For next week’s race in Japan, it is all up to Max Verstappen. If Max wins and gets the fastest lap of the race, he will become a two-time Formula 1 World Champion. If he finished first without the fastest lap, Charles Leclerc will have to finish third or lower for Max to win the championship.

Do you think Max will become a two-time F1 World Champion in Suzuka? We will find out next weekend.