- iRacing.com Announces iRacing 2.011,355
- iRacing.com to create virtual McLaren MP4-12C GT38,008
- Scanning What’s in Store for iRacing with Tony Gardner6,016
- Dave Kaemmer Comes Clean on Dirt5,497
- Improving the Sound of iRacing4,825
- iRacing 2.0 Debuts in 2011 Season 34,765
- Preview Shots of HPD ARX-01C, Ford GT & Suzuka4,742
- Two New Cars and Two New Tracks Coming to iRacing Soon4,253
- iRacing Pro Race of Champions Gets Green Flag Wednesday3,304
- Gooden Plenty II2,942
- Towler, Wood Suspended from Upcoming iWCRR Events 66
- Coming Soon, the iRacing Driving School 41
- iRacing.com Announces iRacing 2.0 41
- SFI Decertifies All Impact Racing Products 27
- Dave Kaemmer Comes Clean on Dirt 27
- iRacing Announces Added Features, Lower Prices 26
- iRacer Profile: Sandeep Banerjee 25
- The Customer is (Nearly) Always Right 17
- iRacing Simulation Gives NASCAR Hall of Fame Guests Authentic Driving Experience 17
- Improving the Sound of iRacing 15
- iRacing.com2134
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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.
Sim Racers Set Sail at Irwindale
by Chris Cunningham on March 11th, 2010
The NASCAR iRacing.com Late Model Series (NiLMS) went from coast to coast, traveling from Lime Rock to Toyota Speedway at Irwindale for the sixth week of action. Several oval drivers were able to get back into their comfort zone, as many elected to drop last week’s road race to focus on the upcoming seven ovals to end the season. Irwindale, a series favorite for a majority of the drivers, allowed for side-by-side racing, and in some cases, three-wide battles. However, some of the NiLMS drivers had a little bit of difficulty re-adapting to oval racing due to a lack of practice causing tempers to flare, which is pretty common on a short track.
Three-wide NiLMS battles are the norm at Irwindale.
Division One points leader Brett Nesbitt maintained his lead, and now heads new second place driver Rusty Greer by 76 points. Nesbitt, the Plains club member, secured himself a top ten finish at the end of the week, with 163 points. Nesbitt’s five wins and nine top fives in 12 starts were enough for a solid finish. Greer, who gained a position in the standings this week, was 20th overall at Irwindale. Although Greer won a pair of races, the low strength of field hampered his efforts to catch Nesbitt, and he only grasped 151 points at the end of the week. Jameson Spies was the class of his division this week, with seven wins in eight starts. Spies had another victory within his grasp on Monday, until Blake Brown, the top dog of the week with 209 points, sneaked past for the win. Mike Tosi, the Massachusetts driver, moved to third in the overall standings, just 109 points behind Nesbitt. A mere four points behind Tosi is Northwest driver Toby Jenkins, who has five wins and nine top fives in just 10 NiLMS starts. Michael Vaughn rounds-out the top five overall, just 118 points behind Nesbitt.
Drivers throughout all ten divisions had some of the best oval racing action of the season, with three-wide passing, and multiple driving lanes to choose from. After the race, I caught up with Midwest club driver Matthew Carter who shared some insight with the inRacingNews crew: “Lots of good hard racing all through the field. This track is really hard to pass on. I really prefer having to hold people off than to try to pass. It seems like almost everyone has troubles with tire wear in the last 10 laps of the race. I’ve seen guys in the top five spin by themselves because they ran out of grip”.
This week sees the drivers making a return trek to the state of Connecticut, as they battle on Jack Arute’s Stafford Motor Speedway. Week Seven of the NASCAR iRacing Late Model Series is about to unfold, and the Connecticut drivers are once again going to have an upper hand in running a second home track in just three weeks. Stafford is one of the signature racetracks on the NiLMS tour, and is a destination many drivers have been anticipating throughout the season.
Care for a little bump-drafting?
DRIVERS OF THE WEEK
Division 2
Jon Chavez impressed many drivers this week, with four wins in six starts, and five top five’s. Chavez’s consistency earned him 146 points, the second best of the week in Division two.
Division 3
JR Petrella ran just once this week, but he brought home the win. He was fourth this week in his division, but picked up his win against a pool of drivers with a high Strength of Field.
Division 4
Mark Creighton was 24th this week, but four top fives in four starts (including three wins) netted him 90 points.
Division 5
Division leader Doug Wells capitalized with three wins and eight top fives in his ten starts.
Division 6
Aleksandr Kogan added two wins and two top fives to his resume in just three races. He was second overall in his division this week.
Division 7
Scott Freeman scored five trips to the winners circle and seven top fives in just eleven starts.
Division 8
Jaime Chambers grabbed two wins and four top fives in five starts, good enough for ninth best in his division.
Division 9
Richard Childress – unfortunately not the RCR team owner, but a fellow iRacing member – catapulted himself into the Division 9 points-hunt with three wins and sixteen top fives twenty four starts.
Division 10
Denny Locke proved he was in no joking matter, with five top fives in just six races, and two trips to victory lane.