The Indianapolis 500 may have lost some of its luster in recent years – remember when the world’s second largest single day sporting event (after the Indy 500 itself) was Pole Day?  Still, when it comes to sports events, it’s hard to match the goings-on at Georgetown and 16^th Street for sheer drama.   Whether you follow the start of the race from the Tower Terrace or the Southwest Vista, on TV at home or on the radio broadcast at a picnic, one thing is certain: in a few hours the career and life of at least one of the 33 starters will be forever changed.

I can’t point to a single Indy 500 that changed my life, but I know my life wouldn’t be the same without it.  I have watched, listened to, attended or covered every Indianapolis 500 since 1965.   Here are ten indelible memories:

1)    Dragging my father to Pittsburgh’s old Civic Area (aka The Igloo) in 1965 to watch a grainy, black and white, closed-circuit telecast of Jim Clark’s historic victory.   My father had never cared much for auto racing, but he became a big fan of Jim Clark that day and, for better or worse, our new-found mutual interest surely influenced my career path.

2)    Listening to Sid Collins & Company bring the much-delayed and, ultimately, tragic 1973 race to life with nothing more – or less – than words on my car radio.

3)    My first glimpse of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway; the three story, concrete grandstands stretching to the vanishing point along Georgetown Road.

4)    Standing on pit road during qualifying in 1982 watching Gordon Smiley arc into Turn One at the start of his final warm-up lap.

5)     Also in 1982, pulling into the “Blue” sticker parking lot at 6:15 the morning of the race, putting the seat-back down and going to sleep; then waking up a couple of hours later and seeing – I swear I am not making this up – Bernie Ecclestone and Gordon Murray get out of the car parked beside mine.  “You’re Bernie Ecclestone and Gordon Murray,” I managed to croak out.  “What brings you to the Indianapolis 500?”  “We heard there’s a race here,” said Bernie. “Thought we’d have a bit of a look.”

6)    Watching from the old press box as Arie Luyendyk won the 1990 Indianapolis 500 – his first win of any kind in Indy car racing.  At the time I was ghost-writing a column for Arie in On Track magazine and we had become, if not inseparable pals, very good professional colleagues.   I started experiencing violent stomach cramps when it dawned on me that Arie was really going to win the race.

7)    Staring at a blank computer screen in the post-race bedlam of the press room in 1995 and having no idea – zero, nada, nothing – where to begin writing my race report for Autoweek.

8)    Watching the broadcast of the Monaco Grand Prix in the Honda hospitality tent the morning of the 2005 race as my British colleagues hurled rolls and good natured insults at a fellow who lingered in the buffet line and blocked their view of the TV; a fellow named Dan Wheldon; did rather well that day, as I recall.

9)    Touring the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum with historian Donald Davidson the day before the race in 2010.  You’ve heard the saying that someone has forgotten more than you’ll ever know about a particular subject?   Multiply that ten-fold with Donald who, apart from his bottomless font of knowledge, is among the kindest, most unassuming and (here’s the real key) genuinely curious people you will ever meet.

10)   Not about a particular Indy 500, but about the race in the days before the modern “new” garage area and when the event was, literally, a month long in its entirety.  A few years ago, I was speaking of those days with legendary race engineer Tony Cicale.  And with all due respect to Janet Guthrie, Lyn St James, Sarah Fisher, Danica Patrick, Milka Duno, Simona De Silvestro, Ana Beatriz, Pippa Mann and Katherine Legge, this is what he had to say:

You ran every single day for three weeks, from 11 in the morning until 6 in the evening.  It was a nasty environment because you had eight or ten guys working in close proximity in your (old) garage.  And if things were going well, you were OK.  But you had to do well every single time out.  You were only as good as your last time sheet.  You could have done 225 mph when 225 was a pretty good speed and you’d have been happy (but) the next day you had to fight to get up on top again.  Every day was a race.

 With (Jacques) Villeneuve (in 1995) I mandated we’d run two days and then not even go to the track . . . because you didn’t want to get sucked into that daily game of  ‘Change the car to fit the track conditions . . .’  You went through every permutation and then you’d just get totally confused because you could never go back to what you had because a) you couldn’t measure well enough half the time and b) the track was different because the conditions had changed.  It was brutal.

 It’s a man’s game, Indy.  That’s for sure. 

Allow me to explain . . .

Back in 1976 and ’77, I spent two summers racing Formula Ford 1600s in SCCA regional competition.  While I was certainly not the worst driver to ever don a Bell Star and Nomex, I can say with equal certainty that I was – at best – a competent club racer.  Somewhere in my basement resides a pair of trophies marking the highwater marks of my competition career, one seventh place at Nelson Ledges and another at Summit Point.  (In my defense, I would note that in the mid- to late-70s, it was not uncommon for SCCA regionals to attract Formula Ford fields of 45 cars or more.)

Me in my Formula Ford (68) circa 1977

As I was saying, the fact that iRacing is so realistic is good news/bad news for me.   Good news in that it provides a remarkably authentic racing experience; bad news in that the mediocrity that distinguished my “real” racing career also characterizes my online racing efforts.  While I’m not the worst sim-racer to have steered into Turn One at Indianapolis with a Logitech G27 in my sweaty hands, suffice to say the NiSWC and iGPSWC regulars have little to fear from me . . . unless they cross my often wayward path in a “lesser” series, that is!

That should come as no surprise, given iRacing’s high degree of authenticity – although it tends to confirm my suspicion that my chronic lack of pace in FF1600 was not due to a terminal lack of cajones.  Back in the day, I was no slouch in the fast stuff like The Chute and Turn Ten at Summit Point or The Loop at the Glen.  Likewise, I’ve found that I’m reasonably quick in the fast stuff on iRacing.  So it’s no coincidence that some of my best races have come at Mosport, Brands Hatch and Watkins Glen (Cup), where medium to high speed turns dominate and there’s only one or two hard braking spots per lap.

But those slow speed corners – rather the transition from high to slow speed and rotating the car into the apex – get me every time.  Just as they did when I was losing gobs of time into Turn One at Summit Point in my Royale RP21; so much so that I tend get a little gun shy in online races when I find myself in a pack of cars, as fast or faster than most of my competition in the quick turns but anticipating a solid “crunch” from behind – along with a 4X — when I overslow for a tight corner.

An all too often occurence, me, overslowing on entry, causing an issue.

The good news is that I’m getting better, thanks to the iRacing driving school and the fact that I can practice to my heart’s content without running-up engine mileage, tire bills or worrying about crash damage.  What’s more, after each of the driving school’s braking exercises at Lime Rock or Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, rather than driving a complete lap before a “re-do,” I’m actually encouraged to execute a U-Turn, drive against the normal flow of traffic and do it again and again and again.  Got trail braking for Turn Two at Laguna down pat?  Able to deftly balance a Late Model around each end of Lanier by modulating the brakes?  No, actually, but let’s pretend . . .  With a few clicks of the mouse, I can do the same exercises in everything from a Pontiac Solstice to a Williams-Toyota FW31, a Sprint Car to an Impala Class A.

In that respect, iRacing does not replicate the “challenges” of real world racing.  That’s not just good news: it’s great news.

IZOD IndyCar Series competitors are currently poised to begin testing brand new cars for the 2012 season. It goes without saying it will be a painful process for team owners, who have to purchase new equipment after running essentially the same cars for the best part of a decade. But it will also be painful for drivers, engineers and mechanics, at least in the sense they will be operating outside the comfort zone they developed working with the old Dallara.

It’s a process with which the Formula One teams are quite familiar, not just because they design and develop new cars every season, but they had to adjust to Pirelli tires in 2011 after three seasons with Bridgestone as F1’s sole tire supplier.

Initial reaction to NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow was mixed -- at best.

NASCAR? Just this season the Nationwide Series switched over to its version of the Car of Tomorrow. And speaking of the COT, who can forget the COT’s – at times – rocky introduction in the 2007? Or Kyle Busch’s immortal words after winning the COT’s debut race at Bristol: “I can’t stand to drive them. They suck.”

Others were a lot more measured in their comments.

“The cars still drive the same,” said Tony Stewart at the time. “They’re either tight or they’re loose or you’re working with grip. It’s those three things all the time. It’s just a matter of the crews figuring out what the cars like and what they don’t like. After that, it’s back to those three basics.”

iRacing is currently experiencing its own version of No Pain, No Gain with the release of the New Tire Model to seven additional cars in the Season 4 build. Not surprisingly, more than a few iRacers are focusing on the “pain” element of the equation . . . and are not shy about expressing their opinions in the iRacing forums.

“iRacing should be ashamed about this new tire model adjustment. It is bad. It takes all the fun out of it!!!!!”

“I drove the street stock and the Late Model and also the trucks. They have missed it bad on the LM.”

“The new tire model is consistently inconsistent . . . I can’t get a 10 lap run in without spinning-out no matter what I do to my setup; car is very wishy-washy and not stable. At least before if you were sideways you could recover the car and now if you are sideways it’s around you go!”

Or to be concise:

“Garbage, plain and simple.”

In the interest of equal time (or, if you prefer, fair and balanced news), it should be noted there are plenty of members posting positive comments on the iRacing forums, opining that, after some adjustments in chassis set-ups and driving style, the new virtual new rubber is a step forward.

“It’s just a matter of the crews figuring out what the cars like and what they don’t like.” — Tony Stewart

“I just have a feeling the driving styles haven’t adapted. Good to hear that you have to be on top of the wheel and really drive the car rather than fling it in and mash it out.”

“The real problem is that people don’t realize that they have to completely relearn the car. Everything changes — your steering inputs may need to slow down (or speed up), your braking points will change, you may have to be smoother getting on the gas, etc, etc.

“The people that are having problems are those that haven’t taken time to reset their driving style and learn the car as it is now. And it’s especially hard for the MX5 people since the OTM MX5 would let you get away with murder.”

It’s also worth noting that iRacing has been very “up-front” in conceding the NTM is a work in progress. The build notes for Season 4 specifically note that fact, along with ongoing issues related to lack of lateral stiffness, tire behavior at slow speed and the fact that some car values “may fluctuate in the garage.”

“The Season 4 New Tire Model is an ‘in progress’ update, so there are ‘issues,’” explains iRacing software engineer Grant Reeve. “Some people are fixating on what is not yet working as they expect (tire pressures, camber, etc) or is simply buggy (unpredictable behavior of tires in garage). We shouldn’t – and we don’t — pretend these things don’t exist. But members need to know that if they can look past these work in progress issues they can have a fantastic driving experience, and that is what we’re trying to share with them, and that the other issues will keep getting better as the tire model improves over time.”

“. . . the other issues will keep getting better as the tire model improves over time.” — Grant Reeve

The key phrase there is “as the tire model improves over time.” Just as the IndyCar chassis that Dallara ultimately delivers to its customers in 2012 will differ in a hundred different ways from the original prototype, just as Pirelli’s Formula One R&D program is ongoing and just as today’s Sprint Cup car is very different from the COT of 2007, so the NTM will continue to evolve. It’s not as if iRacing released the Season 4 build and simply cast the NTM and baseline chassis setups in concrete. Working in collaboration with their real world racing counterparts, iRacing engineers are continuing development on the NTM, chassis setups and a host of other issues – including, most assuredly, the superspeedway drafting model. Indeed, updates of the Late Model and the Mazda MX-5 are on the fast-track (most likely they’ll be released within the next couple of weeks), with the speedway drafting model updated well in advance of the 2012 Season 1 build.

On the other hand, just as competitors in IndyCar, F1 and NASCAR Sprint Cup have upped their games to meet the challenges posed by new cars and tires, so iRacers need to adapt to the challenges posed by the NTM . . . challenges that, in the end, are little different from those posed by the old tire model.

So while development continues apace on the NTM at iRacing.com, iRacers would do well to remember that, old school Sprint Cup car or COT, Dallara IR05 or Dallara DW001, Bridgestones or Pirellis, OTM or NTM, it all still comes down to who best figures out “what the cars like and what they don’t like.” After all, it’s an approach that seems to be working well for Tony Stewart these days.

I recall seeing Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines in a jam-packed cinema as a youth and, along with the rest of the audience, laughing myself silly. Curiously, whenever I’ve seen the movie again on television it’s not the same. Amusing? Sure. Funny? Occasionally. Side-splittingly hilarious? Not so much.

One of my most memorable concert experiences occurred while I was living in Toronto and attended a double bill featuring Ry Cooder and Randy Newman at Massey Hall. Believe me, being an American surrounded by Canadians certainly colored my appreciation of Cooder’s American “roots” music to say nothing of Newman’s multi-faceted lyrical ironies, particularly Political Science.

Last week I had a rare opportunity to attend a preview (in the USA at least) of Senna, a documentary on three time World Champion Ayrton Senna. It was rare enough to see the film before it is released in the USA. But what made the experience utterly unique was viewing the film at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the hospitality unit of APEX Brazil, surrounded by an audience whose livelihood is racing, including IndyCar champions Tony Kanaan and Jimmy Vasser.

The event kicked-off with a brief cocktail party but quickly moved into the film portion of the evening, introduced first by Senna director Asif Kapadia and then Kanaan. My colleague Gordon Kirby and I happened to be sitting at a table with Vasser who quietly told us to be prepared for something special, having seen the movie himself a few nights earlier.

Senna began with the audience in, if not exactly a festive mood, a chatty, talkative spirit, decompressing from the events of Carburetion Day and anticipating all the hoopla attendant with the first and only Centennial Edition of the Indianapolis 500. That mood continued throughout much of the movie which, without giving too much away, focuses almost exclusively on Senna’s Formula One career with a particular emphasis on what developed into a bitter rivalry with Alain Prost. Senna is also noteworthy in that there is no narrator per sae moving the story line forward; instead the movie progresses in chronological fashion based on archival footage of racing action and interviews with Senna, his parents, Prost, Ron Dennis, Frank Williams and various journalists.

It’s all there – or at least most of it — from the moment Senna announced he was a future world champion with his sensational performance in the 1984 Monaco GP in the Toleman to his equally brilliant first win the following season with Lotus in the Grand Prix of Portugal and on into the victorious McLaren years, his battles with Prost and, finally, his move to Williams.

Given that the audience was largely comprised of motorsports insiders – many of of whom hailed from Brazil – there couldn’t have been anyone who wasn’t keenly aware of the film’s ultimate conclusion. In those circumstances, watching Senna was akin to attending a performance of Antigone or King Lear and, in the final ten or fifteen minutes, you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. Vasser, for one, left the hospitality tent before the events of that terrible weekend in 1994 began to unfold on film and, when the movie concluded, it was a somber crowd indeed exiting the APEX Brazil tent.

“Watching ‘Senna’ was akin to attending a performance of ‘Antigone’ or ‘King Lear.’”

Senna is not without its quirks, even shortcomings. Another colleague (doubtless a Prost fan) termed it “a masterpiece of propaganda.” Incomplete is another word that comes to mind. Gerhard Berger, who succeeded Prost at McLaren, is not even mentioned, let alone interviewed to provide a semblance of perspective on what Senna was like as a teammate. And there’s nary a hint of the nascent rapprochement between Senna and Prost that was so cruelly cut short, only a baffling (at least to those unaware of the thaw in their icy relationship) line in the credits mentioning the Frenchman is a trustee of the Ayrton Senna Foundation.

That said, Senna is one of those rare movies that treats auto racing in a thoughtful, dignified manner with none of the clichés, melodrama or, at worst, sheer fantasy that characterize the vast majority of the motorsports cinema “genre.” Senna is scheduled for release in the United States on August 13.  By all means see it at your first opportunity, no matter the audience or circumstances. And take a spouse, sibling, parent or friend along – they’ll be afforded a rare insight into what, despite its growing mainstream acceptance, remains a widely misunderstood sport.

When my iRacing colleague Otto Szebini e-mailed me a series of photos from the NVIDIA home office showing, among other things, a Jim Clark tribute Lotus/sim racing chassis, it triggered a complex series of memories . . . not least of which (thanks to a timely reminder from David Malsher at Racer magazine) are those associated with this day – 43 years ago — when the man many believe to have been history’s greatest race driver lost his life in an accident during a Formula 2 race.

The image of Clark’s car perched in front of NVIDIA’s giant monitor jogged some happy memories as well, including those associated with one of history’s earliest sim racers: Mrs. Emma Peel. For those deprived souls for whom the name “Emma Peel” does not ring any bells, allow me to explain. When Clark was winning races from Spa and Kyalami to Indianapolis and Milwaukee, Mrs. Peel was the female lead in a BBC television show called The Avengers, a suave, smart, witty send-up of the spy/secret agent genre. The role of Mrs. Peel was played by Diana Rigg (now Dame Diana Rigg) whose sparkling, flirtatious chemistry with Patrick McNee (in the role of John Steed) made the show a delight . . . and whose regular appearance in an assortment of Carnaby Street-inspired cat suits captured the, er, imagination of adolescent males of all ages around the world.

As agents of an MI5-like organization, Steed and Mrs. Peel (Mr. Peel was mysteriously MIA) saved England from a succession of devious villains, Soviet-esque saboteurs and demented psychopaths. One memorable episode found Mrs. Peel at the wheel of one of the world’s first sim racing machines: a Lotus 31 “magically” connected to an endless film loop of a lap of the Brands Hatch club circuit.

When Otto Szebini e-mailed me a series of photos from the NVIDIA home office showing, among other things, a Jim Clark tribute Lotus/sim racing chassis, it triggered a complex series of memories

Sure it was cheesey, even for 1967. The speed of the film was controlled by a separate console featuring a massive dial marked “0 – 160 mph” with a manually adjustable needle. Best of all, the chassis delivered an electric shock (of variable intensity) to the driver when he/she put a wheel off track, spun or crashed. So much simpler than iRatings and Safety ratings, don’t you think? Steady Nim and Shannon!

Anyway, after kidnapping Mrs. Peel, sticking her in the race car and handcuffing her to the steering wheel, the bad guy speeds-up the film and increases the voltage “penalty” to lethal levels in the hopes of extracting top secret information from her. Ultimately, Mrs. Peel is lapping Brands Hatch at upwards of 160 mph (!) before Steed arrives to save the day . . . but not before a ditzy bystander unwittingly puts the video in reverse, forcing our talented heroine to lap Brands Hatch in reverse without putting a wheel wrong. At 160 mph. Worthy of a Class B license at the very least.

The years went by with a succession of increasingly high quality racing videos (including Lap of the Gods and In Car 956 among others) the best the average race fan could do in terms of experiencing an authentic racing experience. Then came Night Driver, Pole Position, Indianapolis 500: The Simulation, Nascar Racing and Grand Prix Legends as ingenious folks like Dave Kaemmer turned that “magic” missing link between Mrs. Peel’s Lotus and the Brands Hatch film into virtual reality.

Coupled with 3D, surround sound and multiple plasma screens, today’s racing sims – iRacing, rFactor, Gran Tourismo and a score more — provide a sense of realism that would have blown the mind of Mrs. Peel (or Jim Clark). Indeed, even using the phrase “sense of realism” may rightly raise the hackles of those who view sim racing as a legitimate sport in its own right, independent of its origins in “real-world” racing. And while one episode of The Avengers hardly counts as the birth of that sport, I hope you’ll humor me if I suggest that Mrs. Peel is the Mother of Sim Racing.

At the start of this third season of iRacing NASCAR Tour Modified racing, New England’s PJ Stergios wasn’t sure how much racing he would get to do in the “ground pounders” this season. After all, the bigger sim racing picture was a shot at the big time in 2011. “Attempting to make Pro will probably be my first priority,” said Stergios before heading to the Toyota Speedway at Irwindale. While he strives to make the top twelve in the Class A Impala SS in the opening week, he made a pair of starts in the NASCAR Tour Modified class, coming home second in the top split of the week at Toyota Speedway – which was good enough for the overall win when the points were tallied!

The toughest field of the week was ranked with a 3272 strength of field (SOF) rating and took place on Thursday. Massachusetts club driver Ryan Field took the win in that 100-lap event with NASCAR Tour Modified veterans PJ Stergios, Eric Mauriello, Matt Bentley and Paul Wisniewski rounding -ut the top five. Field would go on to run three more races during the week, winning in two of those additional starts to score three wins in four starts! Untamed Motorsports pilot Shawn Colley had the last laugh in the win column though as his two wins on Saturday combined with two on Thursday left him with four victories in five starts.

Shawn Colley completes a lap at the Irwindale Speedway. The Untamed Motorsports driver would visit victory lane four times last week.

The points didn’t add up in the favor of Field or Colley though, as they ended-up fourth and seventh, respectively, at the end of the week. Behind Stergios after the twenty-one races were counted up included Mauriello, Herbert Engelhart, Field and Bentley. Division Two drivers racked up big points as five of those NASCAR Tour Modified drivers appeared in the top twenty-five overall. Kevin Nelson topped Rich Zimmerman by six points while Andrew Morrissey, Patrick Thomas and Jamie Damgar also posted a top five run in the Division.

Shawn Holbrook leads the third division as he amassed 157 points in California. Indiana’s Andy Jennings led Division Four with Chuck Shaw Jr. became the top driver in Division Five after the first week of competition. Jonathan Dockery has a slim seven point advantage on Don Warrenburg in Division Six with West Club driver Joe Gauthier heading up Division Seven. Christopher Burgess has a double digit lead in Division Eight while ten points is the gap between leader Robert Milsaps and Jamison Adair in Division Nine. Division Ten has one of the closest point battles after leaving Toyota Speedway as Jeffrey Stanton (56 points), SC Tosi (52 points), Daniel Knight (51 points) and Edwin Jones (45 points) all attempt to bring home the 2011 Season 1 title to Carolina. Jeff Sarson from Pennsylvania completes the five pack in Division Ten as he took home 34 points during Week One.

Shawn Colley, Field and Robert Sandt raced to multiple wins in the first week of the season while Noel Parker, Steve Ritter, Mike Keirstead, Michael Wells, Shane Kline, Chris Forster, Daniel Valley, Gary Holbrook, David Colley, Rodney Funston, Engelhart and Mauriello visited Toyota Speedway Victory Circle once a piece. Division Four driver Joey Foote led all competitors in starts as the Florida driver ran in six races over the three days of competition.

Not all drivers had good luck during the week. Robert Padavich (13, background), Jerold John (7, middle) and Rick Webster (4, far right) were swept up in a wreck during a race on Saturday. Chuck Carter (11, inside) passed by unscathed.

At press time, Sandt had the edge in the Time Trial portion of the NASCAR Tour Modified competition. Sandt led fellow Division One drivers Mauriello and Kline on the podium while Benelux’s Rene Cornella was fourth. A pair of Division Ten drivers in Brandon Salvatore and Zoran Scepanovic held down the fifth and sixth place overall with just hours remaining in the opening week. Martin Brown, William Bakker, Robert Peretto, Josh Gerlach, Corey Davis, Scott Riggs and Dirk Linden led Divisions Two through Nine with the exception of Division Seven which had no drivers attempt Time Trials as of Monday morning.

Next week the drivers of the NASCAR Tour Modified series haul their virtual chariots to the Richmond International Raceway. Last season it was David Hutto who topped the field on the popular oval while Herbert Engelhart led all his peers with three victories at the Virginia racetrack. Who will find Week Two glory and who may have to use Richmond as an eventual drop week en route to the championship? We’ll get the answers to those and more questions starting on Tuesday. Be sure to check out inRacingNews next week to see how your favorite NASCAR Tour Modified drivers made out at Richmond!

Until next week, keep the hammer down and we’ll see you at the track!

Learn more about the prizes and NVIDIA’s cutting-edge 3D technology at www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_family.html

But wait, there’s more!

Any iRacer running the NVIDIA logo as their primary logo on any car in a minimum of 20 official races is automatically entered in a random drawing to win a great NVIDIA prize pack.  This package will include an NVIDIA GTX 580 graphics card, an ASUS 3D monitor and a 3D glasses kit.  The prize pack will be awarded at the end of iRacing’s twelve-long 2011 Season One and again at the end of 2011 Season Two.

Welcome NVIDIA and good luck to every iRacer!

First, iRacing released one of the most eagerly awaited tracks in history to its members, namely Circuit Spa-Francorchamps.  From daunting Eau Rouge to picturesque Blanchimont and the iconic La Source, sim racers can now test their mettle at the home of the Belgian Grand Prix, Spa 1000K and 24 Hours of Spa for just $14.95.

What could be better?  How about a free stocking-stuffer in the form of the iRacing Street Stock?  A maxed-out version of the entry-level stock cars found on nearly every short track in America, the 375 horspower iRacing Street Stock is now available for download to all iRacers.

Conceived a year ago as a way for iRacing.com’s 20,000+ members to sample the world’s wide range of oval-track and road-racing cars and circuits, the 2010 World Tour of iRacing proved to be an extremely popular artistic success among the global group of sim racers and racing game enthusiasts who enjoy competing with one another in virtual versions of real-world racing cars on the internet racing service’s high-fidelity reproductions of many of the world’s premier race tracks.

So it’s no surprise that even before the last event on the 2010 World Tour schedule was run last month – the iRacing.com Late Model 300 at the 4/10s-mile South Boston oval – iRacers across the globe were already clamoring for a 2011 edition of the series.

Earlier today the 2011 World Tour of iRacing series was confirmed.  The nine-race schedule begins the second annual 2.4 Hours of Daytona, a mixed-class tribute to the classic twice-around-the-clock endurance classic, run the Friday of the GRAND-AM season-opening Rolex 24.  After seven other stops – including races for grand prix, NASCAR stock cars, Indy cars, sports cars, and grass-roots oval track machines on a variety of tracks in America, England and Belgium – the schedule concludes with the October 8th running of the Suzuka GP for the Williams-Toyota FW31.

“The 2010 World Tour of iRacing was one of our most popular features, so for next year we’re just fine-tuning the formula, said Tony Gardner, president of iRacing.com.  “The more than 750 participants in last year’s virtual Indy 500 made it one of the most popular events in iRacing history.”

Gardner noted that for the World Tour of iRacing every member of the service is eligible to compete, regardless of their iRacing license level.

“We want the World Tour to be open to every one of our members,” Gardner said.  “The purpose is to enable them to compete with other sim racers in cars and tracks they might not otherwise have tried.”

Most of the races on the schedule run the same weekend as their real-world counterparts.  But while iRacing’s virtual events will run on millimeter-accurate versions of the same track as the real world races, the iRacing events are scheduled so as not to preclude members attending the real-world event or watching it on television.  In the case of endurance sports car races, the virtual events bow to the reality of real-world schedules by condensing races to a few hours duration.

And don’t look for a couple thousand iRacers to be running side-by-side and nose-to-tail around Daytona International Speedway; the iRacing service is capable of scheduling as many iterations of a given race as necessary to accommodate every member who signs up.

2011 World Tour of iRacing Schedule

January 28 – 2.4 Hours of Daytona
Daytona Int. Speedway, Road Course – 2.4 hours, mixed class (Riley MkXX and Mustang FR500S)

February 17 – Daytona 500
Daytona Int. Speedway – 500 miles (Chevy Impala SS NASCAR Cup)

April 9 – Ice Breaker at Thompson
Thompson Int. Speedway – Distance TBD (iRacing Street Stock)

May 29 – Indianapolis 500
Indianapolis Motor Speedway – 500 miles (Dallara-Honda Indy car)

June 18—Michigan 400
Michigan Int. Speedway – 400 miles (Chevy Impala SS NASCAR Cup)

July 16 – Radical Cup
Brands Hatch – 40 minutes (Radical SR8)

August 27 – Spa-Francorchamps GP
Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps – 44 laps (Williams-Toyota FW31)

September 30 – Petit Petit Le Mans
Road Atlanta – 120 minutes (mixed class TBD)

October 8 – Suzuka GP
Suzuka Circuit – 53 laps (Williams-Toyota FW31)

The amazing thing is that I’m actually nearly 4,000 miles west of Francorchamps, Belgium, in the office of Greg Hill, iRacing.com vice President of art and production.  Greg is giving me a preview of the latest addition to the online racing service’s catalogue of virtual race tracks, legendary Circuit Spa-Francorchamps, set for release to iRacing’s membership on December 21.

We’ve taken a virtual tour of the majestic circuit as it sweeps up hill and down dale for 4.3 miles through the Ardennes Forest.  Eau Rouge.  Les Combes.  Malmedy.  Pouhon.  Stavelot.  Blanchimont.  Names steeped in the lore of grand prix, sports and touring car racing.  But for all of Spa’s history, I keep returning to the fact that iRacing members will be able to view online racing from a second floor window of Auberge de la Source.

Turning dreams into virtual reality: the view from Auberge de la Source.

There is, of course, a practical reason why iRacing’s designers and artists went to the trouble to create the old inn, along with dozens of other buildings in and around the circuit.  For in addition to competing in their virtual cars on exacting digital replicas of the world’s fabled race tracks, many iRacing members record their races, watch the playbacks and, in some cases, post them on YouTube.

“When we’re done creating what the driver sees,” Hill explains, “we do the spectator areas because we offer so many camera angles within our simulation.  We go to all those viewpoints and create panoramic shots of what the spectator would see.  So when we broadcast races or members record them, it’s similar to what you would see on TV.”

Think of it this way: if iRacing invests the time and energy to make it possible to watch races from Auberge de la Source, imagine the resources that went into creating the precise curves, gradients and road and curb surfaces of the race track itself.  It’s a painstaking process, one that spanned six months from the time a crew headed by iRacing Laser Scan Project  Manager Dave Moulthrop arrived in Belgium to next week’s release of the virtual track.

The fact that Spa-Francorchamps is the longest track yet created by iRacing contributed to that lengthy development process.  But it was hardly the only factor.

“Spa was a huge project,” says Hill.  “It’s the longest single-configuration track we have.  The tall pines of the Ardennes Forest flanking the track are different than those at the American tracks we’ve done.  So we had to create some new tree types.  Then there’s the terrain at Spa.  There’s hardly a level surface anywhere.  It’s very mountainous and complex, which always adds time.

“And the paddock . . . there are so many objects stuffed in there, and the architecture is a mixture of new, classical, old; stone houses and barns, aluminum.  Most new tracks have a kind of vanilla architecture – brick walls over and over again.

At Spa every object is so different.”

As well, the scanners, graphic artists and software engineers worked with a new process at Spa, one enabling them to improve on the industry-leading authenticity of its tracks.  As with all of the iRacing tracks, the Spa “build” began when Moulthrop & Co. painstakingly laser scanned every inch of the track from the driver’s perspective.   Next they augmented the laser scans with tens of thousands of photographs, capturing the textures and colors of road side objects like billboards, tire barriers, curbs and grass verges.

However, like most tracks, Spa is in use virtually every day of the summer, if not for races and testing, then for driver schools, track days and other revenue-producing activities that keep the facility in the black, so to speak.  Thus Moulthrop & Co. were forced to do most of their work “after hours” – as in after dark or the fading light of evening.  Hardly an ideal recipe for accurately capturing subtle textures and colors.  But the recipe changed at Spa.

“In the past, the guys would take a bunch of pictures and then we would come back and try to determine the textures,” says iRacing software engineer Shawn Nash,   “There’s no science to that; it’s pure art.  At Spa we began using a method to collect textures with a reference in each photograph so that we can later calibrate how reflective the material is.

“We also used light meters to collect information about ambient light levels and direct sunlight levels with the sun at different positions and with different amounts of cloud cover.

So the lighting is more calibrated and the track is the most accurate we’ve ever done – not just physically but visually.”

What’s more, the best is yet to come.  The calibration process will enable Hill, Moulthrop, Nash and their colleagues to dramatically enhance the realism of future iRacing tracks.

“In the past we’ve worked within a limited dynamic range; the darks haven’t been as dark as they should be, the brights haven’t been as bright as they should be because we didn’t have a way to encode the data,” Nash continues.  “Now we have features with accurate reflectivity and lighting that’s real values; we’re putting-out lighting levels that you can’t even display on a computer monitor because the monitor doesn’t get bright enough.  You know how when you’re driving your car the sun hurts your eyes?  That never happens on a computer screen, does it?

“So we have all that information – the data to make it as bright as the sun – so now we can start doing effects based on that to trick your mind into thinking that it’s hurting your eyes.”

To be clear, iRacers won’t need a pair of sunglasses (or a tinted visor) to race at Spa.  But the Circuit Spa-Francorchamps that will be available on December 21 is the most accurate — visually as well as physically — yet produced by iRacing.com,  From Virage de la Source to Auberge de la Source.  Take it from one who knows the track . . . intimately.

“I went to my first dirt track race when I was 8 years old, so I’ve been around racing for about 50 years,” says Moulthrop.   “When you go to these places full of racing history that you always thought about as a kid, and now you have the opportunity to replicate it; to know you’re going to spend nine days at Spa-Francorchamps and when you leave, you’re going to know Spa better than just about anybody else because you’ve captured every nook and cranny.  That’s very satisfying.”