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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.
  • 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.
  • Chris Cunningham
    Contributing Writer
    Chris is 20 years old, and recently moved to Charlotte, NC during his sophomore year in college to feed his need for speed. More than just an auto racing enthusiast, Cunningham has risen through the ranks of BMX Racing, Sailboat Racing, and Cycling. Cunningham recently took up go karting, and qualified as an alternate for the 2011 Red Bull Kart Fight at the PRI expo. Aside from racing, Cunningham has recently picked up the hobby of competitive eating (Ranked #7 Collegiate Eater in the country!), and competes all over the east coast in various contests. Chris also enjoys sim racing, writing, playing the drums, and enjoying college at UNC Charlotte.
  • Tim Doyle
    Contributing Writer
    I've been a race fan since before I can remember, going to dirt tracks around the Washington, DC area since the early 70's with my parents.  I got away from racing during my school years but in 1989 a friend and I went to a race in Hagerstown, MD and from there my life was all about racing.  I currently live in Winchester, VA and while Dirt Late Models is my favorite form of racing, I also enjoy many other forms such as F1, IndyCar, 410 sprint cars on dirt and (probably more than anything) sim racing.  My favorite driver is Ayrton Senna.
    I was introduced to sim racing in 1989 when a friend turned me onto Indy 500 The Sim by Papyrus.  It took me a few years to own my own PC but once I did, all I wanted to do was sim race. I tried to race my friends as much as possible via modem racing back in the 90's before joining TEN in 1998.  From there I devoted a lot of time to online racing enjoying every minute of it.  I was able to meet a lot of my competitors from all over the world at LAN events and races I went to.  Being able to call some real world drivers friends as a result of sim racing is probably the neatest part of this whole deal!
  • David Roberts
    Contributing Writer
    David lives in Brisbane and is a former Australian National Formula Ford Champion who now owns his own marketing and design company. After racing in Europe, David returned down under to swap a career behind the wheel for a career in the creative department. He now has three children, an ongoing love affair with the good ol’ days of motor racing, and just enough spare time left to enjoy a bit of sim-racing with a few of his old mates.
  • Ben Rothberg
    Contributing Writer
    I was born and raised in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne where I still am situated. I am currently at University studying for a Certificate in Motorsport and hoping I will be able to achieve my top goal and become a part of a race team. In the sim-racing world, I won an rFactor V8 Supercar season and also was awarded with Best & Fairest award. I am now situated with the best simulation in the world (iRacing.com!) and love every minute of it. I currently race in the V8 Supercar Online Series and finished 16th overall in 2012 Season 1.
  • Dylan Sharman
    Contributing Writer
    I was born in Adelaide and we moved-out for Angle Vale for a few years until I was about 7 years old, when we moved to the Barossa Valley where I live now. I'm 19 years old and currently traveling back and forth weekly as I’m studying for a Diploma of Furniture Design and Technology.

    I’ve always had a love for racing as my close family did some racing and we were always out at the local dirt track. I joined iRacing back in 2010 and slowly but surely got the hang of it as this is my first experience with sim racing and am loving it each time I race. I’ve won two SK Modified titles (almost had three in a row but finished P2 in 2011 S4), an inRacingNews Challenge championship (2012 S1 Mazda) and was also an AustralAsian Intel GT Series Finalist.

Q and A with Sam Bird

November 30th, 2009

Q. How does it feel to have signed with the champion GP2 team for your first year in the series?

Sam BirdSam Bird: ART are the team everyone wants to drive for and I’ve been wanting to sign for them for a long time now. It’s such a pleasure to see that Fred has given me this opportunity and I’m really excited by the new challenge. I’ve moved on from F3, graduated up to GP2 and everything starts afresh now.

ART are an extremely professional outfit and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with them so far. We get on well and I believe we can forge a strong relationship in 2010.

Q. How was your GP2 Asia Series outing with ART in Abu Dhabi?

SB: It was very encouraging. I qualified second but had a problem with the car in the first race with one lap to go. Then in the second race, starting down the back, I set the fastest lap. So the speed was there, and I hope I can continue to learn from that experience. We have got off to a good start.

Q. What are your thoughts on being paired with Jules Bianchi, who has already won a championship with the team?

SB: The first thing is always to beat your team-mate, but it’s important to work well together as well. I worked with him for the first time at Macau and we got on extremely well on and off the track, so if that continues in GP2 we could hopefully learn a lot from each other.

As I said, the first thing you have to do is beat your team-mate, and in order to beat Jules I think you’re going to have to be winning races – he’s shown how quick he can be. But with ART I think I’m in the right place to do that, so we’ll have to see what happens.

Q. Nico Hulkenberg won the GP2 title as a rookie with ART this year. Is that the target for you in 2010?

SB: There is a strong history of GP2 rookies at the team. Nico Rosberg was a rookie, Lewis Hamilton was a rookie, and Hulkenberg too – all driving for ART. There are some massive shoes to fill, but if I work hard over the winter and am well prepared, I’ll have the best chance possible.

Q. You’ve experienced the GP2 Main Series car already in testing, how have you found that so far?

SB: The GP2 car is an extremely tough car to drive, you need to have prepared well – particularly physically – over the winter. The races are a lot longer than in Formula 3 and the competition is extremely strong. Everything just goes up another gear, so you need to be prepared for that.

It’s really more about learning how the team want me to drive their car. Their way of working is extremely good and has obviously worked in the past with so many of their drivers winning championships. If their methods were good enough for those past champions then I need to keep learning their ways, which is what I’m doing at the moment.

One Comment or Trackback

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  1. Chris Hall
    November 30th, 2009 at 5:51 pm

    I could have sworn that Sam had raced a GP2 car before in a one-off in 2006/7 (I interviewed him in 07 when he’d just signed to Carlin F3)