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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.
SpecRacer Fords go Round and Round at Charlotte
by John Bodin on September 5th, 2010
Week Four of the 2010 Season Three schedule took the SpecRacer Ford Challenge sim racers to Concord, North Carolina for a run around Charlotte Motor Speedway’s 2.24-mile “roval” (or “road course oval”).
The overall points lead continues to be dominated by Division One drivers, with Gaston Taberner continuing as the series leader with 568 points, with Daniel Lopez moving up to second-place with 542 points. Dan Lambright charged into the third-place position with 526 points to bump Chris Hughson out of the top-three.
Charlotte's sinuous roval had the SpecRacer Fords coming and going.
The Division Two top-three standing remained the same, with Jerry Burkacki holding on to the first-place spot with 459 points, followed by Matthew Tucker in second place, with Wan Hanafi still holding down the third-place spot with 409 points. The competition at the top in Division Three continues to be dicey, with Felix Simoes slipping into the lead with 460 points, bumping Tim Bone to second with his 457 points. Meanwhile, John Kennelly remains firmly planted in third place with 428 points.
Changes abounded in Division Four once again, with Iker Estefania moving to the top from his second-place spot in Week 3 with 377 points, followed by Samuel Collins with 362 points. Aaron Sparks breaks into third place with 346 points, while yours truly somehow managed to hang onto my tenth-place spot in Division Four with a couple of strong second-place finishes, bringing up the rear with 285 points.
Michael Pollock remained on top in Division Five with 368 points, but Tim Adcock and John Pappas swapped the second- and third-place spots, with Adcock taking second with 362 points over Pappas’ 333 points for third. Similarly, Patrick Swisher remained in first place in Division Six with 349 points, but Andreas Goritschnig moved up from third to challenge for the lead with 347 points. Jeff Auger came from out of nowhere to claim the third-place spot with 333 points.
The top two names remain the same in Division Seven with Kevin Coronato remaining on top with 354 points, followed by Nickolay Karabasov in second with 344 points, while Glenn Read of England moved into the top three with 267 points. Jeremy Burris bumps into the lead in Division Eight with 287 points, with Ahmad Zulkifli moving into second with 240 points, and Andre Forget at 234 points.
No matter the car or series, Turn One at CMS is a formidable challenge.
Mark Cossins remains the Division Nine leader for Week 4 with 295 points, followed by James Meadlock at 204 points and Samuel Willis at 187 points, with both of these drivers making their first appearances in the Division 9 top-three. After a bit of a shake-up in Week 3, things remained the same in Division 10 for Week 4, with Peter Bolton emerging on top with 228 points, followed by Dylan Casey with 199 points and Sergio Rodrigo Simarro with 184 points.
In the Rookie Division (Division 11), Duarte Pires held onto the lead again this week with 382 points, followed by Marti Pietila at 346 points who remains in second-place, with Alfredo Boluda Serrano moving in third-place with 315 points.
Week Four at Charlotte featured 495 active iRacers participating in the Spec Racer Ford Challenge, showing a huge increase in Season 3 over the Season 2 Week 4 participation numbers, which saw only 388 iRacers turning out to drive the Spec Racer Ford.
Week Five of the Season Three SpecRacer Ford Challenge schedule is currently underway at the 11-turn, 2.238-mile (3.602 km) Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca circuit. With average lap times in the 1:40 – 1:45 range, consistency and endurance will count for as much as speed here because the long lap times can wear you down fast if you don’t remain focused. Because of this, attrition can be high, and if you take on damage and need a tow, the pit stop time for repairs can seem like forever, so it’s best to avoid trouble in the first place if at all possible. The famous Corkscrew can seem quite intimidating, but there are plenty of other places that can sneak up and ruin your race, so don’t let your concentration lapse.