I managed to survive a week of racing the Skip Barber at Okayama with my division championship lead intact, but badly reduced. I dislike the track intensely - I was always on the verge of a crash (or actually having one!) although did manage to get a couple of half decent results. I ended up with 2 completely different car set-ups - one which was pretty fast but was prone to crashing on lap 1 (when I say prone to crashing, I mean I crashed on the 1st lap 5 out of the 6 races I did with that set-up) and 1 that was reliable but slow....

Elsewhere, the week went pretty well. I'm getting better with the Star Mazda and also the Riley DP and I also had some really good oval results - including my 1st race win with the Legends 34 Coupe.

I'm still the top points scorer for England - actually I've got double the points of the 2nd placed person. This doesn't mean I'm Englands best driver - just that I've done a LOT more races than most people.

This week, the Skippy moves to Lime Point and I'm good there - hopefully I'll have a better week there. I need to get some good races in - my rating suffered BADLY last week.

What I am struggling with is getting any traction in Malaysia for iRacing. I've hardly found any users so before I can do anything with creating a league, I'm going to need to promote iRacing here. I've got contacts at Microsoft so I'll try to speak to them and see if they'll help - being Windows based, it's a nice fit. 

Up and Down days

Just like life, in iRacing you have good days and bad days and that's where I've been the last couple of days. Before I list disasters, I need to explain a little about how iRacing works.

Each year is split into 4 x 12 week seasons. At the start of each season, drivers are assigned divisions based on their performance and, in each race series, you compete for an overall championship and also a divisional one. The points gained in any race are based on how strong the opponents are - so if you're in a race with very good people, the winner gets more points than a race with low ranked people.

Each week, you race on a different track and your best 25% of results are averaged for your point score for each week. At the end of the season, your best 8 weeks count towards the season score. OK - got all that?

Tuesdays are the beginning of the week so for people in their first season like me, it's a hard day because there's new tracks to learn in each series you compete in. I've come to have low expectations for results on Tuesday but yesterday was just a string of disasters. In the Skip Barber series - my main focus - the new track was Okayama which I've raced on with other cars and always struggled and the Skippy is no exception - in the 4 races I did yesterday, I crashed in all of them - twice self inflicted and twice but take outs but other equally incompetent drivers :-) Other series were no better - in 4 oval races, I only made it past the 1st corner once (and on that one I then drove into a huge accident a few laps later.

My biggest crash of the day was at Indy. At the 1st corner I got squeezed onto the grass and then came back onto the track right in front of another car. The replay looks like the kind of accident you hold your breath for in real life until the see the driver climb at of the remains of his car...

Wednesday has been better. I've won a couple of Skippy races (but in low ranking races) and also had a good run in the Riley DP in the endurance race. ovals have gone better as well - no crashes and some pretty decent finishes.

Apart from the Skippy, my other main objective is to be the highest points scorer for England in the club competition.  I'm in the England club rather than the International alone which includes Malaysia because my Paypal account is based on my UK bank and address.  This looks like the easiest objective because it's basically dependent on performing OK in a lot of races and that's exactly what I'm doing.  But, this does conflict a bit with my objectives in the Skippy. Explaining that is a bit complicated so I'll leave that for another post.

John King2 - iRacing Career to date

My "name" in iRacing is John King2 (presumably there's another John King out there somewhere!). I joined in October 2012 and have made petty decent progress. A couple things of remember about me:

1) I'm pretty ancient so the faster (and more twitchy) cars are a bit more of a challenge to my reactions
2) I'm playing for fun so want to race and so the cars/series that require you to do a lot of set-up work on the cars are not going to be my favourites :-)

So, what's become clear to me is that I can be reasonably competitive in the Skip Barber single seater and so that's been my main focus. I'm also OK in the Star Mazda, the Riley DP sports car and some of the saloons - the VW Jetta and Mazda MX5. I also race some of the ovals, although really only for fun. I especially like the Legends car - it's awesome to drive on the decent size tracks.

As of today, I'm already at the top licence class (outside of Pro) for ovals and in Class B for road racing. At the end of week 3 for this season, I'm leading my division championship for the Skip Barber.

As a relative newcomer, I have to learn all the tracks as they change each week. Some of the tracks - like Spa - I obviously know the layout and have driven them in other games but learning to go to the max on each track takes time and practice.

In future posts, I'll give regular updates on the races I do, good or bad :-)

Can Simulation replace karting as a talent search tool?

For many years, karting has been young driver first introduction into motorsports. Virtually all the modern F1 drivers started this way and, at least in Europe, South America, Australia and Japan, works well as a talent search and driver development formula.

In smaller countries, like Malaysia, the picture isn't so good. Sanctioned Karting exists but is extremely expensive compared to local income and so is dominated by kids with rich parents. There are also only 6 races a year and these are nowhere near as competitive as the average club race in Europe. So, for some time now, I've thought that karting in Malaysia isn't doing what it should be doing to find and develop talent. It's too expensive and not competitive enough to give the drivers enough race craft to be able to adapt to single seaters quickly. And, it's getting worse - basically all the drivers are learning now is 1) The person with the most money wins and 2) It's OK to push people out of the way if you want to pass them. 

So, I think we need an alternative and the more I think about it (and play it myself), the more I believe that on-line simulation would be a better way to find talent in smaller countries like Malaysia. In particular, the way the game works with iRacing will develop the right behavior and thinking in drivers and also give them constant wheel to wheel action with similar performing drivers in exactly the same cars. Obviously there are limitations - you don't get a same physical challenge and a mistake loses you ratings points rather than puts you in hospital. But, it can work - Lucas Ordonez went from winning the Playstation league to Le Mans in one giant leap and did very well.

So, my idea is (at least as an experiment) to create a Malaysian league within iRacing and offer prizes to the best 15-16 year old. The prizes will be 1) A days coaching and testing with a Rotax kart and 2) Free entry to the myKart race series. I'm also talking to single seater teams about the possibility of doing something with them.