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February 2012

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iRacing TV

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The Team

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  • David Phillips
    Editor and Chief
    David Phillips is a long-time contributor to print and electronic publications in the U.S. and abroad, including Racer, Autosport, AutoWeek, Motor Sport and SPEEDtv.com, oversees the daily updating of news stories and assigns, edits and contributes feature material for inRacingNews.com.
  • Chris Hall
    iRacing.com Series Writer
    Chris Hall has been writing since the nineties and moved into motorsports reporting in 2005, covering series such as ALMS, British GT, FIA GT, Le Mans and 2CV racing for Full Throttle magazine, Motorsport.com, The-Paddock.net, GTGateway.com, L' Endurance and, of course, inRacingNews. During 2008 and 2009, he worked with the RSS Performance Porsche Carrera Cup Team (and former British GT(C) champions) as a data engineer for a variety of drivers and models of 997s.
  • Jameson Spies
    Contributing Writer
    19 years old, Jameson Spies lives in Quartz Hill, California. He grew-up surrounded by racing. His mother raced late models throughout Southern California while his father built and setup the car. Not surprisingly, Jameson began racing go-karts at the age of 13, and is now racing Spec Trucks at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale. He has a passion about all forms of racing and hopes to make a career out of it.
  • Jason Lofing
    iRacing.com Series Writer
    Jason is 21 years old and was born and raised in Elk Grove. California. A big time NASCAR fan, he hasn’t missed a race on Sunday in years. Lofing is also a huge San Fransisco Giants fan and tries to take in at least a couple games a year. Other than sim racing, his biggest (and far more expensive!) hobby is photography. Although he is rather new to sim racing, Lofing has already accomplished some pretty impressive results, qualifying for the 2011 iRacing Oval Pro Series in Season 1, 2011, winning the inaugural Landon Cassill Qualifying Challenge and finishing runner-up in the second one.
  • Ray Bryden
    Technical contributor
    Ray grew up in Nova Scotia, which means he’s a hockey nut, but in Nova Scotia’s two non-winter months he had to find other diversions, which meant watching F1 racing on weekends with his dad and brothers. Without the resources to get started in racing, he gravitated to computer versions of racing – first Atari games like Pole Position, followed by PC racing games like Indianapolis 500: The Simulation. Dozens of others came and went, until Grand Prix Legends came along and he decided sim-racing was his official hobby. Years were spent enjoying this both offline and online until a few years of fatherhood took priority. When free-time reappeared he heard about iRacing and signed up in 2008 and became so involved in the service that he wrote one of the first books on the subject of sim-racing, iRacing Paddock. When not writing for inRacingNews.com, his main occupation is as a research associate with Saint-Gobain working on advanced ceramic materials.
  • Patrick Atherton
    Contributing Writer
    Patrick Atherton, originally from Adelaide in the state of South Australia, currently resides just outside of Melbourne, Victoria with wife of 17 years and 3 kids. A business manager by profession, but also dabbles with blogging, cartooning and fine art, having been published both as a writer in a short-lived South Australian motorsport yearbook and later as a cartoonist in a niche trade magazine. At the age of 19 he competed in club circuit events in an Austin Healey Sprite, later indulging in sprint karts between 1994 and 2000. Following the move to the State of Victoria he raced Road Race Karts (“Superkarts” as they are known in Australia) in the popular Rotax class, competing at Phillip Island, Oran Park, Mallala, Wakefield Park, Eastern Creek, Calder Park, Sandown and Winton. It was during this time he met former Australian F2 champion and inventor of Australia’s first, and most prolific race simulator rig, Jon Crooke. This culminated in an introduction to Papyrus’ legendary NR2003 simulation, and the subsequent sim racing addiction which brought him to iRacing.
  • Tim Terry
    Contributing Writer
    Tim Terry, aka the voice of Maritime stock car racing, fell in love with sim racing in 2004 after he joined the Sim Racing Network crew as a pit reporter. From October 2004 to SRNtv’s closure in June 2007, he’s covered prestigious races and leagues such as the Online 500, FLM Fall 400, Real Racing Online and the DMP Racing League – each as the lead broadcaster for the company. At the same time the wheels started to turn in another direction as he began announcing stock car racing locally. Terry became the assistant announcer at Scotia Speedworld in May 2007 and took over full duties in May 2009 when long-time voice Mike Kaplan retired from the track. Terry also became the series voice of the Parts For Trucks Pro Stock Tour in ’09 and continues to hold down both posts in 2011. He has also announced races for the Pro All Stars Series, Atlantic Open Wheel and Maritime League of Legends tours and has called races at six different Atlantic Canadian tracks. Terry can be heard online at WebRacingNetwork.com, RLMtv.com and OLRtv.com covering sim races. He also makes occasional appearances on PSRtv.com. In addition to inRacingNews, his articles and columns can be read on ScotiaSpeedworld.ca, MaritimeProStockTour.com and his own website at timterryonline.com.
  • David Allen
    Contributing Writer
    North Carolina born and raised with over 15 years of computer/IT experience, I combine two of my biggest hobbies -- racing and technology -- here at inRacingNews. In my spare time I run a Nascar fan site and cure my own need for speed riding atvs. If it involves technology or racing I'll be there, but combine the two and I'll be looking a front row seat. Stop by and say hello anytime!
  • Allen Krier
    Contributing Writer
    Allen was born in West Palm Beach, Florida but grew up in Atlanta and attended Georgia College and State University where he received a BS in Information Systems. Currently a resident of Albany, GA, he started sim racing in 2008 while in college when iRacing was first released to the public. Since then, Krier has been a two time iRacing Pro Series driver (2009 and 2010), picking up one Pro Series win at Daytona in ‘09. Besides sim racing, Allen’s other hobbies include RC Car racing as well as “attending and watching any sporting event that I can including going to the local dirt track.

Title Tension at Suzuka

by Patrick Atherton on September 13th, 2011

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sim racing motorsport simulation

Week Six of the iRacing V8 Supercar series by Bigpond Sport headed north to iRacing’s new Suzuka Circuit for the first time. It meant starting from scratch with no existing setup data, here at the full 5.8 kilometres of the Suzuka GP track. At the halfway mark of the iRacing V8 Supercar Series, as expected, a tight battle is unfolding at the sharp end of the points ladder. Mitchell McLeod leads by a slender 13 points from Madison Down, with Rens Broekman and Mick Claridge not far behind. Even with points up for grabs in other splits and timeslots, regular participation in the “Monday Night Main” and consistent finishes, certainly pays off. The form guide continued at Suzuka, it was Down who poled with a time of 2:03.914, the only [...]

Team Spirit

by David Phillips and Shuji Aratani on September 10th, 2011

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racing games

There’s no “I” in team. There may be plenty of “I’s” in Team Giddy-Up! and the names of Toshinobu Shigemitsu, Nobuhiro Fujitaka and Teruaki Kato.  And, obviously, there’s an “i” in iRacing.    But when it came to Round Three of the Okayama Challenge Cup, a two hour enduro at Okayama International Circuit in July, there were no “I’s” — only teammates who pulled together with co-driver (and fellow iRacer) Yuho Abe and a pit crew full of iRacers to score a remarkable podium finish. Remarkable?  Consider that Team Giddy-Up! was debuting its VITA-01 (a sports racer with a semi-monocoque chassis powered by a 1.5 liter Toyota Yaris engine) at Okayama and that the three drivers chosen by team director Shigemitsu to pilot the #93 entry had never driven at Okayama [...]

Tim Terry Day

by David Phillips on September 8th, 2011

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Tim Terry Day

You probably didn’t notice on your calendar, but today is Tim Terry day at inRacingNews.  Not only did our intrepid sim racing correspondent from the Maritimes deliver three (typically) top notch reports on the NASCAR iRacing.com Tour Modified Series, the NASCAR iRacing.com Class C Series AND the NVIDIA Cup, he is the subject of a profile by Pat Healey in the current edition of The Enfield Weekly News. SCOTIA SPEEDWORLD: He’s called some of racing’s biggest names during online racing games and for the past two years he’s been the Voice of Scotia Speedworld and the Parts for Trucks Pro Stock Tour. He is Tim Terry, an affable 21-year-old whose maturity surpasses his years. However, the enthusiasm and energy he brings as he belts out the action on the racetrack [...]

Down back to front

by Patrick Atherton on September 6th, 2011

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Down powerslides to another Season Three win

Week Five, Season Three of the iRacing V8 Supercar Series by Bigpond Sport took the circus to the relatively flat Silverstone International layout. Rens Broekman has proven to be a worthy signing for the Nfinity Esports team. He helped out the team by snaring pole, and helped out the commentators by sporting a new, less green livery to help tell the Nfinity cars apart. Splitting those two Nfinity cars was Madison Down, enjoying a return to (his usual) form. Mitchell McLeod was next from Mick Claridge and Simon Madden. Lewis Dodimead was sixth, finding even more speed since his return to the top split. Nfinity’s third driver Scott U’Ren was next from XSG’s Shay Griffith, then Richard Lock and Stuart Wood rounded out the top ten. All of our well-known [...]

From Armchair to Race Seat – Partridge Shows the Way

by Chris Hall on September 3rd, 2011

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Together with co-driver  Partridge was in the hunt for a podium spot in his debut at Brands Hatch.

Recent years has seen several highly publicised sim-racers making the step up from the virtual to the real world of motorsport, with names such as Wyatt Gooden, Bryan Heitkotter, John Prather and Jim Caudill, Jr successfully making the transition. What’s different about iRacing member Chris Partridge’s story is his objective of sharing his experience of going from armchair supporter to eyeballs-on-stalks racer by recording his progress for a series of BBC segments. The 42 year-old, a member of the BBC News production team, hit upon the idea for the series of reports following a one-off piece with Anthony Davidson in 2010, when the pair compared their layman and professional driving skills. Encouraged by his 1:19.9 lap time around the Bedford Autodrome circuit (just over four-seconds from Davidson’s), Chris set his [...]

iRacer Profile – Luke Beck

September 3rd, 2011

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racing games

Australia’s Luke Beck is man who knows what he likes.  And when it comes to sim racing, his likes can be summed-up in two words: Lotus 79.  OK, if you want to be positively wordy about it, his likes can be summed-up in five words: Classic Lotus Grand Prix Series. It’s not that he hasn’t tried other cars on the iRacing service, and even liked them.  Heck, Beck has raced (and continues to race) everything from Legends, Street Stocks and Silverados to Radicals, Dallaras, Ford GTs, Star Mazdas and HPD ARXo1cs.  But his true métier is tapping into his inner Mario Andretti/Ronnie Peterson with the Lotus 79.  In fact, Beck has finished no worse than third in the Classic Lotus GP Series standings in the past three seasons, twice earning [...]

A Brand New Name in IndyCars

by David Phillips on August 30th, 2011

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Brand has driven the Livestrong Dallara to third place on the ovals of the iRacing.com IZOD IndyCar Premier Series.

Monica Clara Brand’s name may not be quite as familiar to IndyCar fans as those of Sarah Fisher and Danica Patrick, but she has much in common with them.  Like Fisher she has qualified on the pole for an IndyCar race . . . 30 by actual count.  And, like Patrick, she has finished an IndyCar race in Victory Lane.  In fact, Brand has more than 25 wins to her credit from MIS to Iowa to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. What distinguishes Brand’s racing career from those of Fisher and Patrick is that all of her IndyCar success has come in a digitized Dallara on the virtual race tracks of iRacing.com.   In fact, the 34 year old resident of Bucharest, Romania has never even attended a “real world” IZOD IndyCar [...]

iRacer Profile: PJ Stergios

by David Phillips on August 27th, 2011

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driving games

If PJ Stergios’s name sounds familiar, there are plenty of reasons.  First, PJ features regularly on inRacingNews’ accounts of a number of series from NASCAR Class A, Radicals, Silver Crown  (where he won the 2009 Season 3 title) Sprint Cars (he is P5 in Division One as of this writing) to IndyCar (where he currently ranks P2 in the IZOD IndyCar Premier Series oval and P14 on the Premier road series).  The fact that his brother Jake (a finalist in last year’s Intel® World Series and currently P11 in NASCAR Class A) also figures prominently in iRacing lore helps on the name recognition front as well. Then again, if you’ve spent time around the short tracks of the Northeast, you might have seen the Candia, NH resident racing Quarter and [...]

Family Affair

by David Phillips on August 27th, 2011

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The Hubbells practice together to improve their sim racing games and to keep in contact across the miles.

The family that sim races together stays together, even when one member of that family is in the military, stationed far from home.  That’s certainly the case with iRacers Jeff Hubbell and his son Chad, a Master at Arms in the U.S. Navy. With Chad stationed at the joint Naval Support Facility Anacostia/Bolling Air Force Base near Washington, DC and his family living near Pittsburgh, obviously the distance could be greater . . . say the tens of thousands of miles from Western Pennsylvania to Okinawa or Diego Garcia.  Still, the 250 miles or so from the ‘burgh to DC is plenty.  But a few clicks of their computers’ mice — and a few twists of their steering wheels — brings Jeff and Chad Hubbell together again. “iRacing keeps us [...]

Sea of Green at the Glen

by Patrick Atherton on August 23rd, 2011

143
The Nfinity Esports crew threw everything they had at the opposition

Week Three, Season Three of the iRacing V8 Supercar Series by Bigpond Sport saw the field arrive at Watkins Glen. Reality and its virtual counterpart were colliding in many meaningful ways. It was less than a week since Aussie Marcos Ambrose scored his maiden Sprint Cup win at the same (real world) venue. Meanwhile, iRacers Shane Van Gisbergen and Scott McLaughlin had hit the podium at least once in the weekend just gone, at the Queensland Raceway V8 Supercar round. The rolling green hills of The Glen were made even greener by no less than four Nfinity Esports Falcons in Mitch McLeod, Rens Broekman, Scott Andrews (another real world V8 racer) and Scott U’Ren. Van Gisbergen was missing from this round, as was Peter Read. McLeod was on pole, scraping [...]

iRacer Profile: Andrea Disarò

by David Phillips on August 20th, 2011

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computer games

It should come as no surprise that Andrea Disarò is a big Ferrari fan.  After all, as a resident of the Rho, Italy, he’s almost a next door neighbor to Maranello.  Nor should it be surprising that Spa-Francorchamps is Disarò’s favorite track on the iRacing service.  After all, it would be tough to name another track that comes close to matching the rich Formula One legacy of the legendary Belgian circuit (although there’s a place near Rho called Monza that has a bit of F1 history of its own). What might come as a surprise is that Disarò’s favorite car is the Star Mazda, not the Williams-Toyota FW31 (even in Ferrari colors).  Disarò tried the Williams and didn’t find it to his liking.  Not so the Star Mazda, witness the [...]

The Giz shakes up Sonoma

by Patrick Atherton on August 16th, 2011

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Van Gisbergen, now in Hyper Stimulator NZ colours, was untouchable, but he had to work for it

Round Two of the sensationally popular iRacing V8 Supercar Series, presented by Bigpond Sport, arrived at Infineon Raceway, Sonoma. While Round One at Mosport was claimed by the reigning series champ, Madison Down did not have it all his own way, having to work through some obstacles in Mitch McLeod and Mick Claridge. This time Shane Van Gisbergen trumped them for pole at the tricky, undulating Infineon. Barely a tenth behind and sharing the front row was Peter Read. Van Gisbergen was sporting the colours of Hyper Stimulator, sim racing’s timeless pioneer rig, which you can read more about here. Broekman and Down shared the second row, McLeod and Claridge the third. Scott McLaughlin and Simon Madden were seventh and eighth, Shay Griffith and Dylan Gulson rounding out the top [...]

iRacer Profile: Sam Edwards

by David Phillips on August 13th, 2011

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racing games

In many racing circles “Squirrel” would not necessarily be a nickname of endearment connoting – in most circles – an excitable, unpredictable driver.  Yet, Sam Edwards proudly carries the bushy-tailed rodent’s handle and although he may be excitable, he’s anything but unpredictable.   In 2011 Season 2, for example, you could have set your watch (figuratively of course) by the consistency of his performances in the NASCAR iRacing.com Late Model Series.  How else to describe a sim racer who recorded 41 top fives in 43 starts, completing 23 of them in Victory Lane? But what would you expect from a professional racing instructor?  (Edwards works for the Dale Jarrett’s racing school.)  And don’t pigeonhold Edwards as “just” a Late Model racer.  The resident of Cullman, AL is branching out to Class [...]

Caudill to Drive JR Motorsports Late Model

by David Phillips on August 11th, 2011

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racing games

Longtime iRacer Jim Caudill Jr. has been selected to drive a JR Motorsports Chevrolet in two upcoming late model races at Motor Mile Speedway (Radford, VA).  The announcement was made by JRM co-owner and general manager Kelley Earnhardt, who revealed that Caudill will pilot the No.  88 Chevrolet in races on August 13 and 20, with sponsorship from iRacing.com.  He will be joined by JRM teammate (and fellow iRacer) Josh Berry, who will be driving the No. 72 R&B Chevrolet in those events. A native of Whitesburg, Ky., Caudill has experience in multiple racing levels, including the World Karting Association where he earned 85 feature wins, Legends Cars and street stocks. He was a 2007 Legends Car Champion at Lonesome Pine Raceway (Coeburn, VA) and Newport Speedway (Newport, TN), and [...]

Dillon Welch Blog

by Dillon Welch on August 11th, 2011

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Dillon Welch Blog

Hello fellow iRacers! I made my debut in Steve Lewis’ 9 midget last Thursday at Lucas Oil Raceway (also known as Indianapolis Raceway Park).  As part of Kroger Speedfest, this race has been around for a long time.  I grew-up coming to this race a lot and if you read the formal press release, you’ll remember that I always dreamed of driving the 9 midget.  So this was a neat opportunity for me to debut in my “dream ride” in a race that I really have grown to respect. We had tested the week before so I felt confident.  We struggled a little bit in practice though.  The car was tight at the beginning of practice, and loose at the end of it so we were scratching our heads a [...]

Where There’s a Will There’s a Way

by Dean Viall on August 9th, 2011

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will-featured

A lot of people have built their own home-made racing simulators.  Technically, anyone who has fastened a steering wheel to a desk has already started to build their simulator, but many people stop building their simulator the day their first wheel arrives.  I am not one of those people. Let me give you a bit of background first, because it explains how/why this project came together . . . I’ve been ‘into sim racing’ since playing f1gp on an Amiga500 computer in the 1990s, but my first time driving against a human instead of AI was at a Hyper Stimulator race centre in 2005.  That week I signed up to a league and became more and more involved with Hyper Stimulator and sim racing, from hosting group bookings, painting sim [...]

Madison’s opening account

by Patrick Atherton on August 9th, 2011

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The final finishing order- but for the best part of 25 laps it was anybody's

Mosport was the scene for opening hostilities in the iRacing V8 Supercars Series, presented by new sponsor Bigpond. Yet another feather in the cap of the world’s best motorsport simulation- to be named the official online series of the biggest motor racing category Down Under. Perhaps “hostilities” is a bit unfair. The camaraderie in this series is second to none. Having said that, some of the series’ regulars were wearied by some early-lap carnage towards the end of Season Two. Many vowed to clean up their act, knowing that this series is famous for superb racecraft, intense action with nary a bent panel required. Mitch McLeod declared his intention to wrestle back the title he lost to Madison Down in Season Two, by claiming pole position. Down was second from [...]

The Ugly, the Bad and the Good

by David Phillips on August 8th, 2011

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The Ugly, the Bad and the Good

Last weekend was a case of the Ugly, the Bad and the Good for iRacers at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Iowa Speedway and Pocono Raceway. First the ugly . . . Long-time iRacer Justin Wilson sustained an anterior compression fracture of the fifth thoracic vertebra on Friday in an incident during practice for the IZOD IndyCar Series race at Mid-Ohio.  Justin, who suffered a fractured wrist earlier in the season, was taken to the circuit medical center before being transferred to the local hospital, Mansfield MedCentral, where the diagnosis was made.  He is expected to meet with IndyCar’s medical consultant Dr. Terry Trammell in Indianapolis today for further evaluation. Needless to say, iRacers the world over wish Justin a full and speedy recovery. The bad?  iRacer Will Power had [...]

iRacer Profile: Greg Blouin

by David Phillips on August 6th, 2011

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iRacer-Profile

When Greg Blouin says one of his favorite cars on the iRacing service is the Corvette C6.R he’s not kidding.  The resident of suburban Toronto (Etobicoke) has personal bests in the C6.R in qualifying, races and/or time  trials on a dozen iRacing tracks from A (as in Road America) to Z (as in Circuit Park Zandvoort).  That’s just for starters, less than a week after the roll-out of iRacing 2.o, Blouin has established new personal bests in iRacing’s newest ultra high performance sports prototype (the  HPD ARX-01c) at iRacing’s newest international road course (Suzuka).  Probably just a matter of time before he adds some personal bests in the Ford GT at Iowa Speedway to the list . . . Q:  How long have you been sim racing? A:  Started out [...]

Win Dale Earnhardt Jr’s Car

by David Phillips on August 5th, 2011

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Dale Jr.

As everyone does (or should) know, Dale Earnhardt Jr is one of iRacing’s biggest fans and supporters.  And we like to return some of the love whenever we can, for example, by alerting inRacingNews readers of a chance to drive away in Dale Jr.’s 2011 Victory Red Camaro! The red beauty is being raffled-off to benefit the Dale Jr. Foundation! The Dale Jr. Foundation is also doing random drawings until the end of July to give away additional prizes, but you have to have a raffle ticket to be eligible to win! Check out Dale with the car here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J4o-Ch4UkQ and then visit www.windalejrsride.com for complete details and to get your raffle ticket for $25. The contest runs through Sept. 1, 2011, with all proceeds benefitting The Dale Jr. Foundation.