Day 76: August 8th, 2013

Week 1 of the Skip Barber Race Series is complete, and it’s official: I’m not complete garbage with the Formula 2000.

It didn't hurt that the first track was an ungodly familiar course in Summit Point, of course. It certainly helped me become familiar with the car, if nothing else. Here’s the video recap for those of you who’d rather watch a 30-minute recap than read about last week:

One of the key issues that I’m running into, especially with a car as willing to lose control as the Skip Barber, is that I need plenty of time to practice. Three nights were spent last week in open practices alone, as I worked on my line and driving habits. By the end of the first night, I had reached a point where my lap times were consistent 1:23s, and I could run about 8-10 laps without spinning out or visiting nearby woods.

I think we talked about this last week. At least one second had to drop consistently off of my lap time if I wanted to compete for decent positions. I found that second in the setup.

Those of you that play a lot of general racing games know how unwieldy car setups can become when you’re diving into the intricacies. At some point, they go from being easy improvements on time and speed to being preferences on how we want to drive and handle our cars. It’s a completely normal and natural ordeal, if perhaps a little frustrating to work through.

iRacing, at least at the lower levels of cars, limits this by restricting what can be changed on a setup to only the more realistic details. I can change the Skip Barber’s tire pressure, brake bias, fuel load, rear anti-roll bar, and essentially where the suspension’s mounted, but that’s it. There’s no gear ratios, toe-in and toe-out, or camber settings, though these adjustments can affect some of that on the car. It feels a little more realistic for a car of this caliber, where I wouldn't be able to change anything amazingly drastic to outperform my opponents.

As it turns out, dropping tire pressure significantly helps the little Formula immensely. After a few laps of practice and adjusting the brake bias from a pro recommendation to a level where normal people like me can brake without spinning out in half a second, I had my 1:22s.

It’s at this point that I took two days off due to being tired. Whoops.

I re-emerged Saturday, having to knock off some light rust and regain my consistency on the track. Thankfully, I managed to pull myself together long enough to drop a decent mid-1:22 lap time in qualifying, despite running into a mouthy child who spun out in front of me, ran less than a second behind me in qualifying, and then flipped out when my line varied from his and he had to dive off-track to avoid a collision.

This leaves just Sunday for racing, since I don’t have time to compete before 8 PM on Monday. Oh boy.

In all honesty, while I love to rip on my lack of skill in racing, I’m pleasantly surprised by how I performed. Sure, my first race was a middling finish with two spins, but my second race was a solid second place finish, and neither race involved any contact whatsoever.

Furthermore, and here’s where I’m really ecstatic, my pace was good enough to where I felt confident enough to fight for positions. If you watch my videos, you see me give up a lot of positions just because I know I’m not faster than the car behind me. While I still wasn't in a position to get scrappy at the end of a race, there was a lot of confidence that my line was good enough to hold. Cars could drive close behind me, sure, and they did, but I challenged them to make the pass stick. It’s one thing to drive a lap time slightly faster than the car ahead, and another entirely to be fast enough to complete a successful pass. I was not going to give up positions as easily as usual.

Again, this didn't really factor in to either race, since by the end of each I was only chasing a car in front of me, but it’s a nice feeling. I should work at having this confidence more often.

Oh, and I had a quick meeting with an old friend. God damn it all.

With week 1 done, I begin a trek into somewhat unfamiliar territory, as week 2’s race takes place at Road America. It’s one of my favorite tracks that I've visited in person, but I've only raced it in Forza. I’m a little apprehensive on how I’ll handle it in iRacing.

Also, it’s Thursday, and I still haven’t tested or practiced on the track. Fuck.

I’m beginning to run into a problem with iRacing, in that it’s not a great game if you want to spend nights doing other things. I've spent the last few nights either resting or playing Borderlands 2, and I guarantee this is going to hurt my ability to perform well when I race this weekend. iRacing doesn't welcome other games so openly, and if I’m going to compete in each week for my division title, it’s going to take a grand portion of this free time. Games like Borderlands 2, Papers, Please, and #GRID2 have to take a backseat. I’m not used to the uneasy feeling this imbalance of game time creates, but hopefully that will change.

Success demands sacrifice, after all.

Side Notes

So hey, we have a league for Giant Bomb running, and there’s going to be a race this Saturday night to test out our attendance capabilities. Check this thread out if any of that trips your fancy, OK?

I promise to have an entire championship devoted to races filled with dangerous levels of fog. We’ll call it the Inaba Super Cup. If you have great race ideas, I’ll be glad to help bring those to reality, too!