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David Phillips
Editor and ChiefDavid 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 WriterChris 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 Writer19 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 WriterJason 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 contributorRay 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 WriterPatrick 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 WriterTim 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 WriterNorth 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 WriterAllen 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.
Q and A with Nick Wirth
February 18th, 2010
Timo Glock managed 72 laps in the Virgin VR-01 today and was eighth out of 12 on the timesheet – a significant achievement for the new team, which has struggled with reliability problems throughout testing at Jerez so far.
Virgin technical director Nick Wirth gave AUTOSPORT his feedback at the end of Thursday’s action.
Q. It’s been a long night but it looks as though it paid off because you got some decent miles today?
Nick Wirth: We needed it. Yesterday was a real challenge. The problems we had were tricky, not ones we had experienced before and it just required a lot of thinking. We eventually found the problem, but too late to get going. There was a lot of work last night to fix that problem and get everything ready for today – try and regroup and have a good day today.
Q. Was this a hydraulic problem?
NW: Yeah this was a hydraulic problem yesterday. We know the car is fundamentally sound. Timo [Glock] had a very frustrating week last week, so it was nice to finally get him in, albeit in challenging conditions. He seems to enjoy driving the car; he’s got a big smile on his face today. The whole team, everybody put in a continuous effort and it’s nice to finally see that rewarded.
Our longest run so far was longer than a grand prix distance, so we found new problems, but it’s all about problem solving at this time of year. We found those, fixed them, it’s an exciting and challenging engineering process.
Q. So at the moment it’s just about putting miles on the car, it’s not about chasing set-ups?
NW: Yeah, with this weather it’s just impossible [to chase set-ups]. We tried some experimental parts today, which will be part of our on-going aerodynamic upgrades, and it was really satisfying to see them come in and perform as per expectations. It’s great validation for us and good confidence for the drivers to say ‘here are some new parts and this is what they do’ and they do it. It says ‘perhaps this CFD lark will work!’ It was a really good day, tiring, but we’re looking forward to continuing on this odyssey we’re on.
Q. Has Timo had enough time in the car to give you some feedback?
NW: Very much so. I just wish the poor guy could get some dry laps, but his time will come – he’s patient. He’s been an absolutely fantastic addition to the team – his experience, his talent and he’s a joy to work with. He’s given some very positive comments and we know what areas we need to improve, we knew them some time ago, and we’re just working along. Rome wasn’t built in a day. We’re not experienced in building Formula 1 cars, we got our eye in with sportscars but this is a bit different. But it’s engineering, it’s fun and we’re enjoying the challenge.
Q. What’s the plan for tomorrow?
NW: As best I know we’re swapping to Lucas [di Grassi], hoping for some nice weather and just carry on.
Q. Are you concerned about running out of dry days before Bahrain comes around?
MW: We are finding and fixing problems, we’re not stopping because of the weather. We had another issue today and pretty much every issue we’ve had has fallen into the category of ‘happy issues’, which are problems that are not fundamental, but are new problems that we did not understand when we got into this project. It’s just about fault-fixing, and we’re all in the same boat.
It’s interesting how parallel the challenge is to sportscars, particularly to the Acura LMP1 car. We went though misery and then stuck the thing on pole and won eight out of 10 races, nine out of 10 poles, lack of sleep!
Q. How are things going as far as getting the Wirth side and the Manor side to gel?
NW: Perfect, no problem, we’re all one team with regard to this project. It’s very exciting to be testing and working toward our Le Mans package with our partners HPD on that programme. We’re testing simultaneously in Portugal with a new sportscar, so it’s quite a challenge but it’s an exciting time and the integration is very good.