The 120 Minutes of Sebring, a tribute to America’s oldest sports car race, is slated to run concurrently with this year’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring on March 20.  The third stop on iRacing.com’s 2010 World Tour, the two-hour online racing event is a chance for iRacers all over the world to celebrate the 58th running of this classic endurance race and to experience the awesome performance of the American Le Mans Series GT1-class Corvette CR6.

“The 12 Hours of Sebring was America’s first truly international race,” said Kevin Bobbitt, iRacing.com’s director of marketing. “And today Sebring is probably the best-known American sports car race among the global community of sports car racing fans. Like all of our World Tour events, the 120 Minutes of Sebring is open to every iRacing member, regardless of their level of experience with racing games or simulations. Given that a third of our members live outside North America, and that the race is being held on the weekend, we expect a large proportion of the entry to come from our international online racing community.”

Qualifying begins March 14th at 00:00 GMT, with 20-minute open sessions starting throughout the week start at 30 minutes past the hour. The race takes the green at 12 noon EDT (16:00 GMT) on Saturday, March 20th.

Circuit Park Zandvoort, one of Europe’s most historic motorsports venues, is now available to online racers around the world through iRacing.com’s internet-based virtual-racing service.  iRacing’s first offering on the European continent is a millimeter-precise rendering of the undulating Dutch seaside circuit, from the famed Tarzanbocht hairpin to the daunting Scheivlak curve and the Arie Luyendijkbocht honoring the two-time Indy 500 winner who cut his racing teeth at Zandvoort.

“Circuit Park Zandvoort is one of Europe’s most iconic race tracks,” says Divina Galica, iRacing’s director of partner relations and former Formula One driver. “There’s some great history at Zandvoort, with new history being made every year with the Formula 3 Masters and DTM events, together with a full schedule of national and club events. On top of that, there’s a multitude of different track configurations that are fun and challenging to drive.  I raced at Zandvoort in the Aurora F1 series in 1978 and absolutely loved it.

From the hard braking at top speed into Tarzan to the flat-out (or nearly) curves around the back and some of the more technical sections, Zandvoort is a fantastic test of a driver’s ability and commitment.”

The creation of a virtual version of the former home of the Dutch Grand Prix is the result of a collaboration between iRacing.com and Circuit Park Zandvoort, one that will enable online racers worldwide to experience the challenge of racing at the famous Dutch circuit.  After a crew from iRacing.com laser-scanned the entire facility last summer, a team of graphic artists began the painstaking work of creating virtual versions of Circuit Park Zandvoort’s various circuit configurations.  The results include the Grand Prix, Chicane, Club, National and Oostelijk circuits ranging from .87 to 2.67 miles (1.4 to 4.3 km) in length, all of which are now available to members of iRacing.com.

Circuit Park Zandvoort’s Chief Operation Officer Erik Weijers is enthusiastic about the cooperation: “We are delighted to see Circuit Park Zandvoort as one of the first European circuits presented in iRacing.com. We believe that the current digital versions of the various circuits at Zandvoort, created by the team of iRacing.com, are the best so far. It is great to offer race fans around the world a very realistic ‘taste’ of the famous track, where the banked curves and uphill and downhill parts encourage you to drive an extra lap each time you pass the finish line.”

Circuit Park Zandvoort is the latest in a string of international components to the iRacing.com service that counts 40% of its membership from outside North America.  iRacing.com already has nearly every major North American oval and road course in its inventory, and is now focusing on adding more the greatest circuits in the rest of the world.  The service features Brands Hatch, Silverstone and now Zandvoort, with Belgium’s Circuit Zolder, England’s Oulton Park and two Australian tracks – Phillip Island and Oran Park – currently under construction.  In addition, iRacing has announced plans to develop virtual versions of the Williams FW32 and Ford Falcon Australian V8 Supercar in the near future.

One of the most breath-taking facilities in the world

This fall’s trip to Australia has so far been one of the most enjoyable trips in my five year tenure as the Laser Scan Project Manager for iRacing.com. After getting over the six hour flight from Boston to San Francisco, followed by another fourteen hours to Melbourne and a two hour drive to Phillip Island, I ended-up at what has to be one of the most breath-taking racing facilities in the world. Phillip Island is just off the southern coast of Australia and connected to the mainland by a bridge. It is bordered by cliffs that drop of into the Bass Straight between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Although our scanning crew arrived at the track ready a full afternoon of work, we were forced to change our plans when the equipment-shipping company failed to meet the agreed-upon arrival time. That left a little extra time to explore the island, including wildlife areas set aside to protect the native wallabies and koalas.  Later, we headed out for our first day of digitally reproducing the famed 2.7 circuit and found the same animals we had seen in captivity earlier observing our activities in plentiful numbers. During most of our time we shared the circuit with work crews that were transforming Phillip Island Circuit from a Moto-GP Course into one that would next host the Australian Super V8 Series.

This fall’s trip to Australia has so far been one of the most enjoyable trips in my five year tenure as the Laser Scan Project Manager for iRacing.com.

A local Wallaby admiring our work

We would spend the next six days of perfect 70 degree weather doing approximately sixty set-ups of 300 ft sections of the track until we had a perfect digital reproduction of the track.  The uncommonly perfect weather enabled us to finish four days ahead of schedule, allowing me the luxury of flying to Sydney and arranging an early start scanning the Oran Park circuit.  This historic track is closing after nearly 50 yrs and the site will be transformed into a housing development to meet the growing needs around the Sydney area.

This time the equipment arrived on time, so less than 24hrs after leaving Melbourne we were ready to start our second Australian circuit . . . but not before we had been given a lesson in the track’s history by its staff and told a story or two about their native son, Marcose Ambrose, who was having his share of success in the American NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

Track scanning work in action

Again weather was not an issue as summer approached the Southern Hemisphere. With every form of racing in Australia trying to get their one last chance to race on Oran Park before it closed we were not able to scan before 5 PM on any day.  Still, that left us enough daylight to capture the thousands of photo images that would later be needed for iRacing’s team of graphic artists to transform the digital point cloud into a life-like clone of the soon-to-be-lost facility.  As Oran Park is somewhat smaller than Phillip Island, we completed our work in just four days. Overall, a project which had been scheduled for twenty days had been completed a full week and half early, partly due to the perfect conditions but also due to the ability to work so closely with our international partners.

We were “forced” to spend a few extra days in Sydney because of the high cost of changing our flights home for an immediate departure.  That bonus time only reaffirmed my desire to go back to Australia in the future to bring the iRacing community more Thunder from Down Under.

Brad Davies or Dax Shepard?

It was really terrific to get to catch-up with some friends and colleagues that I had not seen in quite some time, but I also got to meet and make some new friends from both real world and online racing.  I met two of our NASCAR iRacing.com World Championship Series drivers, Brad Davies and John Gorlinsky.  Brad looks like someone famous and it was killing me because I could not think of who it was until I saw a commercial last night for a new NBC show called “Parenthood” and I figured it out.  Put some glasses on Dax Shepard and you have Brad Davies.  I also ended-up getting quite inebriated with iRacing spokesperson Leigh Diffey who is an absolute riot and can regurgitate our infomercial almost word-for-word.  If you ever run into Leigh ask him how he enjoyed the 199 laps of the 2010 Daytona 500.

It was a great trip though.  It certainly is exciting to really see first-hand how our partnership with NASCAR has spread not only through the garages but into the media room and grandstands.  I must have been stopped at least a dozen times in my two days at the track by people seeing my iRacing logos who either commented on how much fun they had with the service or asking questions on how to get started online racing as they had read or heard about it through a wide ranging collection of channels.

Speaking of new channels for exposure to iRacing . . . the NASCAR Hall of Fame project is coming along great.  They have an early build of the commercial version of the software installed and operating at the Hall already and they did some initial testing on it last week.  It sounds like everyone really enjoyed it and, although it’s still not finished, I believe this will be a terrific experience for the visitors to the Hall and a great way to reach new potential members.

Another avenue to expand our membership that we have been working quite hard on is broadcasting live events to the web.  I am sure many of you tuned-in to our first test for the World Cup of iRacing event (congratulations again to Club DE-AT-CH for their impressive victory — Germany, Austria and Switzerland for those who are country acronym challenged like me) and saw that we still have some work to do before we are really ready for prime time.  The good news is that we have made quite a bit of progress on the backend and on the client side of the software to make the actual mechanics of broadcasting easier.  My hope is that we will have found a partner and be ready for live broadcasts of the DWC series in another month or so.

Yet another avenue to get eye balls on iRacing kicked-off this week with our sponsorship of the 3 Wide Life television show.  There is a pretty scattered schedule of when the show is on in your area but you should definitely set your DVR to record the show.  We will have more than a dozen segments based around iRacing throughout the season, so it should be pretty interesting to see how they turn out.  A piece that we did down at VIR with the TDI Cup Series car will air next week I believe and there will be a piece with Dale Jr, Greg “the Hollywood Hammer” Hill scanning and building tracks, and Wyatt Gooden at the TDI Cup driver selection weekend coming in the next few months.  If you miss the actual show we will have these segments up on our website in the near future.

I know that some of you have seen our announcement of a marketing relationship with a company called Interush specifically targeting new customers in Asia.  It is obviously a very exciting proposition to gain some online racing/race simulation game market share in Asia.  I have seen many forum posts asking about licensing content from this market and I will confirm to you that I have been working diligently to make that happen.  I can’t say that I have anything that is close to signing, but we have made a lot of progress on a number of fronts and I feel confident that we will have some exciting news in this department this year.

Staying on the “regional” content topic, we are working very hard on the Ford Falcon V8 Supercar right now.  It is our hope that we can line up the release of this car with Phillip Island which will be the next track to be released after Zandvoort comes-out next week.  I expect that Phillip Island and the V8 will be ready sometime in May.  More a global topic, but we will send Eric Hudec over to England this week for an onsite visit with the William FW31 and to spend time with the engineers to begin the process of building the virtual version of this fantastic car.  I am just as eager as everyone else to find out what it will be like to drive a modern F1 car with an iRacing physics model.

Speaking of physics, Dave has made a lot of progress on his new tire model.  I know some of you may be getting tired of hearing that this will come out soon, but I think it will be well worth the wait.  Just from what I have seen so far on how the tires’ contact patch changes based on different track grades and bumps, I think it’s going to be incredible.  Our hope is to get something at least into testing in the next month so we can see really how far (or close) we are to getting this out to the members site.

I also see a lot of discussion on the forums about split times and if/when we’ll see split times in iRacing. Although I never say something is 100% positive to be in the next build, I will say with 80% confidence that some form of split times or delta lap tracking will be in this next build.  We have a lot of things we would love to do in this department but, like everything else, it’s important to start someplace and I think we have a good plan in place to do that.

We will have more than a dozen segments based around iRacing throughout the season, so it should be pretty interesting to see how they turn out.

Another item I will throw out there for now that we are working on is mixed class racing.  This is actually a pretty significant task but I feel pretty confident that we will have something in place for the next build that will allow us to group multiple racing classes in one online racing series.  I have to admit that I have wanted some type of racing game or racing simulator that accurately represented true multi-class racing myself.  I can’t even remember if there were ever even any racing games on Nintendo/Xbox/Playstation that really had multi-class racing in the same event.

I think this is probably a pretty good place to stop for now on what is on the horizon for iRacing.  I will try and do another blog post as we get closer to the end of this current season to update you on how development has progressed.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our loyal customers who have been with us for so long and helped us build this terrific product and community.  We make great strides every day in improving our product, practices and procedures and a lot of the credit for this goes to your passion for this product and your desire for it to succeed.

Fast forward to today. (Many, many years later) In the past 5 years I’ve been privileged enough to drive some cars and run on tracks I never thought I would – from a Dodge Viper to a late model stock car, from Lime Rock to Thompson Speedway. I’ve been to race shops ranging from Newman-Haas to Jr. Motorsports. And now thanks to iRacing, I get to build 3d replicas of some of these great cars. As a car enthusiast and artist, I’m living the dream.

While my job may not be as glorious as being a driver for the cars I create, it’s one I enjoy very much. And while the only similarity between reading about what I do and reading a good novel is that they both can make you sleepy, I would like to give you some insight into what goes into creating the 3d cars that you see on the tracks of iRacing. So sit back, pull up a chair and drink lots of caffeine. This could take awhile.

I would like to give you some insight into what goes into creating the 3d cars that you see on the tracks of iRacing. So sit back, pull up a chair and drink lots of caffeine. This could take awhile.

Before I set off to write this blog I went digging for some notes I had taken during our first company meeting where we discussed what we were hoping to build with iRacing. And while a lot of the stuff I had written sounded really ambitious, at least in the context of where we were back then, it’s nice to see that we have mostly kept to that initial game plan and the future is getting better every day. One of the places where we deviated is of particular interest to this blog though. Polys (short for polygons) are the building blocks of a 3d model, and the more you can use the more detailed the models can be. In NASCAR Racing 2003 the poly budget for a car was right at 1000 polys. Our projections for iRacing: 1600-2000 polys. While that’s double the poly count, it’s “extremely” low by today’s standards. Thankfully those numbers didn’t stick and we have gradually increased the detail over the years from approximately 10,000 polys in our Skip Barber car to right at 26,000 for the Dallara.

The amount of detail we get for art reference today is incredible. With laser scans, cad data provided by the manufacturer and thousands of digital photographs, we are able to see things today in a lot higher resolution than ever before. Once I receive this data it’s time to start the modeling process. Unfortunately there is no easy button for this, so models are still built the old fashioned way in 3d Studio Max.

Different configurations lead to more realism

First we start by building a high poly model of the exterior of the car as well as the wheels which will be used for the normal mapping. High poly models tend to run around 500,000 polys or more and make a really big difference in the car’s appearance once complete. The time for this varies as each car is unique. For instance, on the Dallara we had to build 3 different nose and rear wing configurations based on different tracks. This is in stark contrast to the VW which was a fairly simple build.

Moving on, next we go about reducing the polys of the model to something much closer to what will be in the final release. Even with the increased poly budget, we still have to make tough decisions on how much detail we can retain and still maintain acceptable frame rates. As hard as it is to make cuts, it has forced us find creative ways to keep details high. One of the things we have done is create custom shadow models for the cars. By taking items such as the rear axle, exhaust, and other items under and around the car and making it so that they don’t cast shadows, we’ve picked up a nice performance boost with an almost imperceptible visual difference. This is just one example of numerous tricks we’ve picked up over the years.

Advancements in modeling techniques allow much more detail

On a side note: One of the more frequent criticisms with our cars has been with the tires. While the laser scans and cad data we receive gives us incredible detail to work with, round tires can eat thru our poly budget before you can say Mangler. Believe it or not, one tire on the Dallara has over twice as many polys as a complete car did in 2003. That said, we continue to try and find ways to make them look better and we have even gone back recently and added more polys to some of the open wheel cars such as the Formula Mazda. This, unfortunately, is a never-ending process of trying to find a balance between performance and beauty.

Next it’s on to the cockpit. This normally ends-up being one of the most time consuming parts of the modeling process mostly due to the fact that resource for the cockpit isn’t always as good as it is on the exterior, and since the cockpit of the car is what you will see most of the time while racing, more time is spent trying to make it as convincing as possible. As artists, we cursed the day that they made the cameras inside the cars more adjustable. There was a time when we could leave out parts that weren’t visible from a fixed point of view that now, well, aren’t always as hidden. Advancing technology isn’t always your friend.

Some of the first cars we built used separate sets of lower resolution textures for the exterior cockpit (seen in replays) and much higher resolution textures for the driver’s view. We have since changed the modeling process so that we can make use of those same higher resolution textures for the exterior view as well. This not only gives us much better visuals, but it uses less texture space and also speeds up the texturing process. Anything that speeds up Brian Simpson is bordering on miraculous. (smile)

Well, that about wraps up this blog post. While I could write on and on about creating the damage models, LODS (levels of detail) and other mind-numbing things, I think it’s time I get back to work on what really matters: getting this Mustang FR500s completed. In the future I hope to find a ghost writer to do these for me, but should that not happen, well, there is always caffeine.

iRacing.com is joining the Lyn St. James Foundation in support of “Women in the Winner’s Circle,” a five-year traveling exhibition that recognizes the past history, the growing achievements, and the future growth of women in racing.  iRacing.com’s support of the exhibit marks an expansion of the company’s relationship with the foundation, which was initiated last year through the company’s involvement with the Women in the Winner’s Circle Driver Development Academy.

The joint announcement by St. James and Kevin Bobbitt, iRacing.com’s director of marketing, was made prior to a reception at the opening of the exhibit’s first stop, the Daytona 500 USA.

“Last spring iRacing.com generously made its simulation service available to more than a dozen of the foundation’s Driver Development Academy,” St. James said.  “The enthusiastic support iRacing is providing for our new historical exhibit will help us bring an appreciation for the rich but little-known history of women racers that has led to the current rapid growth of female participation in motorsport.”

Women in the Winner’s Circle is organized by The Henry Ford museum in collaboration with the Women in the Winner’s Circle Foundation. As a component of the project, The Henry Ford is developing an archive featuring women in racing, which will also be used to develop a highly experiential permanent American Auto Racing Exhibit for the museum.

iRacing.com’s goal is to give as many people as possible the opportunity to go racing, whether in support of real-world racing or through online competition in the virtual world,” Bobbitt said.  “Through her foundation and all of its supporters, Lyn St. James has worked tirelessly to bring more women into motorsport.

“We were pleased to have members of the Women in the Winner’s Circle Driving Academy spend time in our Driver Development Lab last spring, and to provide them with memberships in our online service.  And now we’re happy to be able to help expand the reach of the Foundation as it provides a historical context for women’s participation in the sport.”

The primary goals of the Women in the Winner’s Circle exhibition are to:

•    Engage viewers, and inform them about, the history of women in motor sports.
•    Raise awareness of the growing women’s presence and leadership in the sport.
•    Provide role models for the power of determination and positive thinking.
•    Showcase racing as a gender-neutral sport, where men and women truly compete together and against each other without handicaps; in effect demonstrating that racing is a “true example for society.”

The design of the Women in the Winner’s Circle exhibition is visually stimulating, interesting and informative. It is modular and expandable for such venues as museums, galleries, libraries, trade shows, racetracks, and auto shows.  It includes graphic panels (with text and images), media, photographs and personal memorabilia.  It also includes an interactive module featuring a database of both historic and contemporary women race drivers.  The exhibit is designed so that where space is available it can include real race cars.

The target audiences for the exhibition include motor sports enthusiasts, general audiences (including non-enthusiasts), intergenerational groups and international audiences, with an age target of teens and up.

Following its premier at the Daytona International Speedway during Speed Weeks, the exhibition will travel to approximately 10 American venues.

What makes a game a simulation or a simulation a game or are they the same thing? Is it all just marketing or is there a real difference?

To me there are a few distinct differences between a game and a simulation. First and most importantly to be a simulation the title must be replicating something that takes place in the real world (sorry World of Warcraft fans, living your life as an elf doesn’t count).

Second, to be a simulation the title must require the same or at least very similar inputs or controls as what the real world activity requires. For example, the Madden Football franchise gets excluded from simulation status because wiggling your thumbs around and pressing a series of buttons to control your players bears no resemblance to what you would do if playing football in the real world.

The third thing that qualifies a title as a simulation vs. a game is that the ‘player’ should be able to learn skills that will transfer to the real world if and when they participate in the real world version of said simulation – the space shuttle simulator is used by astronauts to prepare for space travel for example.

So here is where the differences can get cloudy. For the sake of brevity I’m going to stick with racing titles. I chose some titles that I enjoy playing and feel comfortable ‘driving’.

Mario Kart for the Wii – This is a really fun family game. Game play involves navigating various vehicles around racing circuits with a hand held controller. Yes it is true that you can place the controller in a special Wii racing wheel to ‘simulate’ driving a real racecar, but that is where the similarities between the real world activity of racing ends. Acceleration and deceleration are controlled by pressing buttons and there are no real car physics to speak of, that is to say the cars in Mario Kart don’t react to driver inputs the same way a real racecar would react to the same inputs. The special boxes that provide extra speed or lightning strikes against opponents take a way from the simulation factor as well.

Dirt 2 for XBOX 360 – Another really fun game. Great graphics. Spectacular crashes, a good selection of vehicles but most gamers play this title using a game pad which immediately disqualifies the title from simulation status. Some hardcore fans of this title may be using a wheel and pedal set but that is not enough to bring it back to simulation status in my book. The car physics are so far from reality I can’t use any of my real world racing skills to help me master the game, in fact these long practiced skills can be a hindrance to success in games like Dirt 2 as the cars often react in opposite ways compared to the real world counterparts, not to mention in this particular title you are actually rewarded for passing opponents by running them off the road. If you have done any real world racing you will note this is not how your fellow competitors or the race steward would react!

iRacing for PC – iRacing is definitely a simulation. It fulfills all three major requirements for being a simulation – it replicates a real world activity, user inputs/controls are nearly identical to the real world counterpart and the skills learned by using iRacing translate back into a real racecar.

Sounds serious doesn’t it? While I call iRacing a simulation the truth of the matter is that most iRacers race because it is fun, even professional drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Justin Wilson, Marcos Ambrose and Alex Gurney will tell you how much fun they have racing on iRacing. The very things that make it a simulation are what iRacing members enjoy most – uber realistic driving physics and track replications that call for real racing skills. If you choose to play iRacing with a joystick or game pad you can do so as well, you might classify iRacing a little differently than I do then. As long as you are having fun you can call it whatever you want!

I guess I’ll change my answer for iRacing and call it both a simulation AND a game!

Game or sim, it is really up to the user. What say you?

iRacing's Dave Kaemmer gets ready for his turn on camera.

Dave Kaemmer and I spent a few days in Indianapolis last week filming portions of the soon to be released iRacing Driving School. The shoot was great, the weather, not-so-much. I could have driven back to Boston in less time than it took to fly!

We are still several months away from launching the school but it is shaping up nicely. The iRacing Driving School will feature about a dozen separate chapters, each being its own stand-alone video on the member site. Many of the chapters will finish-up with exercises designed to help you  practice what you just learned.

The basic idea of the school is to help iRacers become better racers. Many iRacers have no formal racing education and that often leads to reaching a plateau where no matter what you try you don’t seem to get any faster. There are also many iRacers who are completely new to the sport and by teaching them the basics right from the start, we think it will improve everyone’s enjoyment of the service. After all, faster racers means better racing for everyone!

iRacing Driving School host, Chris Agos, gets ready to read through a script in front of the green screen.

The school actually began taking shape last year. We started first with the idea; next we needed the curriculum, scripts and exercises. Having just filmed the on-camera instructor we are now ready to move to production and begin incorporating in-sim footage so students can see what we are talking about.

Chapters subjects will include:
•    Vehicle dynamics
•    Fundamentals of the racing line
•    Using your eyes
•    Braking
•    Shifting
•    Race-craft
•    Race starts
•    Pre-race – practice, qualifying and time trials

A lot of work remains to be done on the school to get it ready for launch, but we are excited to have made it this far already. Look for an announcement later this spring for the launch date.

Welcome to the iRacing blog. It’s a forum for those of us at iRacing to share our ideas and experiences with you and, we hope, stimulate some lively and thoughtful discussion.

It’s not quite spring, but this is surely a time of exciting growth and anticipation. In the racing world, of course, but in just about any sport you can think of, and the world at large.

Think about it, with the Rolex 24 a new racing season is underway. The Daytona 500 is in two weeks time and with it endless possibilities for the NASCAR season to come. Will Jimmie Johnson score a five-peat? Will Juan Montoya take his first oval win, or even compete for the title? Can Mark Martin take that elusive first Sprint Cup title? Can Dale Jr. regain his winning touch? And, of course, what’s in store for Danica?

What many are rightly calling the most highly anticipated Formula 1 season in memory is on tap, what with Jenson Button joining Lewis Hamilton at McLaren, Fernando Alonso joining a fully-recovered Felipe Massa at Ferrari and, oh by the way, Michael Schumacher making his return to F1 with the new Mercedes GP effort. Three young world champions at their peak form joined by the most dominant driver in F1 history? I can’t wait.

Welcome to the iRacing blog. It’s a forum for those of us at iRacing to share our ideas and experiences with you and, we hope, stimulate some lively and thoughtful discussion.

IndyCar racing has gone through a tumultuous few months and heads into a new decade with a new leader – Randy Bernard – and with many crucial decisions on its plate, among them the so-called Delta wing chassis and the continuing effort to attract additional engine manufacturers. The American Le Mans Series is reshuffling its deck, with a higher focus on a consolidated GT class even as Aston Martin dips it toe into the reconstituted waters of LMP1 that already include Acura and Mazda. And the GRAND-AM season got-off to a remarkable start with a new team winning the series’ featured event, overcoming some of the series traditional powerhouse teams.

But motorsports doesn’t have a monopoly on anticipation and growth. Sunday saw an entertaining Super Bowl and a dramatic win by the Saints that got Mardi Gras off to an early start. The NHL season is well underway, with teams positioning themselves for a run at the Stanley Cup; ditto the NBA and college basketball’s run to the NCAA’s Final Four. Let’s not forget the coming gathering in Vancouver called the XXI Winter Olympic Games . . . and in just a few weeks players will be reporting to spring training.

Lest you think it’s all about sports, how about the Apple’s new iPad? Will that revolutionize the way we live and do business like the iPod and iPhone? Will I be eating the words I shared with my iRacing colleagues at lunch the other day when I said – mainly in jest – that we could probably have made a ton more money by developing a high-end lanyard for the iPad than we’ll ever see from our efforts at iRacing.com!

So just in case you think it’s all about iRacing here at iRacing.com (where it’s always 72 degrees and sunny – as long as you can see past the snow banks outside our office), I’m here to tell you there’s lots on the minds of everyone here besides iRatings. And we’ll be sharing some of that with you in this space in the days, weeks and years ahead.

Through this agreement, Interush will provide Japanese and Chinese translations of the website and gaming content, iRacing.com will use these to create Japanese and Chinese websites, and Interush will market the online gaming program through their extensive marketing affiliate organizations throughout Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.  Interush will also market iRacing.com through their portal websites and through ongoing promotional and public relations activities in these same countries.

In addition, Interush will commence online marketing into China, already the world’s single largest market for both Internet users and online gaming, and also one of the world’s fastest-growing motorsport enthusiast markets.

“The agreement with Interush is a significant development for iRacing,” said Tony Gardner, president of iRacing.com.  “Our company is currently increasing its global footprint, adding tracks in Europe and the Pacific Rim and cars with world-wide appeal such as Williams F1’s FW31 and the Australian V8 Supercar.

This partnership will result in the iRacing service being translated into Japanese and Chinese, as well as a wide range of marketing and public relations programs throughout Southeast Asia.  This is a major step in iRacing’s international growth.”

L to R: Todd Mitsuishi, CEO Interush; Roger Yasukawa, Interush racing driver; Kevin Bobbitt, iRacing Marketing Director; and Marty Matthews, Interush Chairman.

The agreement also provides for Interush to market iRacing.com to worldwide markets in English. Interush is based in Irvine, California and over the past four years has been a team sponsor in the NASCAR Sprint and Nationwide Series, NASCAR Grand-Am Series, and the IZOD IndyCar Series. Interush also recently introduced MySpeedwayRacer.com, an aggregated news website for racing enthusiasts.

“iRacing.com is exactly the type of innovative online content that Interush is eager to help bring to Asian markets,” said Marty Matthews, Interush’s Chairman.  “We have been marketing the IRIS Internet Suite of communications applications for individuals, associations and small businesses for several years now. Plus, over the past few years and through our team sponsorships in the NASCAR, Grand-Am, and IndyCar Series, our extensive network of Marketing Affiliates have become racing fans. With their appreciation of motorsports and their understanding of the Internet, we are certainly the premier organization to take iRacing.com to these exciting Asian markets!”