- iRacing.com Announces iRacing 2.011,372
- iRacing.com to create virtual McLaren MP4-12C GT38,024
- Scanning What’s in Store for iRacing with Tony Gardner6,037
- Dave Kaemmer Comes Clean on Dirt5,536
- Improving the Sound of iRacing4,836
- 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 Soon4,264
- iRacing Pro Race of Champions Gets Green Flag Wednesday3,306
- Gooden Plenty II2,943
- The Fountain of Youth 12
- Mauriello's Stafford Statement 6
- Building the iRacing System 101 6
- FPS is Still King 5
- Ducati will not build a Yamaha 'clone' 4
- Le Mans-Winning HPD ARX-01c LMP2 Coming to iRacing 4
- iRacer Profile – Nenad Matijevic 4
- D. Allison, Others Joining Motorsports Hall 3
- Spindel Takes Pro Series Finale at Suzuka 3
- Mars, The Humble Iceman 2
- iRacing.com2136
- NASCAR 1754
- Motorcycles 1713
- Formula Cars 1568
- WRC 1243
- IndyCar 1150
- Touring Cars 755
- Sports Cars 300
- Other Racing 314
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.
Latvala claims superb home victory
July 31st, 2010
Jari-Matti Latvala claimed the biggest win of his World Rally Championship career by holding the Citroens to earn victory in his home event Rally Finland.
Latvala became Ford’s only hope after his team-mate Mikko Hirvonen – who had set a spectacular early pace – had an enormous crash on Friday morning. Hirvonen’s accident had put Petter Solberg (Solberg Citroen) into the lead for a while, but by the middle of day one Latvala had pulled ahead.
As Solberg slipped back thereafter, the two factory Citroens started chasing Latvala down. Sebastien Ogier had made a quiet start to his first rally in the factory line-up before raising his game and charging through to second, while his team leader Sebastien Loeb had dropped as low as seventh initially having damaged his car’s front aerodynamics early on Friday.
A string of stage wins for the Citroen duo kept Latvala under pressure, and Ogier went into the final two stages of the event – which saw a full weekend’s rallying squeezed into two days under a new-for-2010 format – just 10 seconds adrift. But Latvala had things under control and managed to clinch victory with a similar margin.
“This is something that I have been dreaming of since I was a very, very small boy,” said the ecstatic winner.
Despite being defeated, Ogier was thrilled to take second on his factory debut.
“It’s fantastic weekend for me,” said the Frenchman. “To finish second is better than I expected for sure. Jari-Matti was incredibly fast. It’s a perfect result.”
Loeb won a late battle with Solberg to finish third, which he was content with having decided not to risk everything this weekend with an ample points lead in his pocket already and a string of asphalt rounds ahead.
“Third place is not what we prefer, but I didn’t come here especially for the win,” said Loeb. “I wanted to score some points. It’s not my rally, I know. We can always get good results but it’s a difficult rally for me. Third place is not so bad for the championship.”
Dani Sordo, demoted to Citroen Junior to make way for Ogier in the factory line-up, was a top three contender at first before fading away to finishing a distant and confused fifth.
Matthew Wilson held on to sixth for Stobart Ford by just 7.1 seconds as Mads Ostberg – whose Adapta Subaru had suffered a puncture on Friday – surged back up the order. Having been two and a half minutes down on Wilson immediately after his puncture, Ostberg reckoned this had probably been his best ever drive.
Returning legend Juha Kankkunen (Stobart) took an excellent eighth in his first WRC round for eight years. He had hoped before the event that he could battle with countryman Kimi Raikkonen’s Citroen Junior car, and got his wish as they fought for seventh until Raikkonen went off and lost nine minutes this morning, leaving the ex-Formula 1 driver back in 25th.
Also missing out on points was Stobart’s Henning Solberg, who looked set for his best rally in a long time as he fought with Loeb on the cusp of the top five on Friday morning, only to crash out.
Intercontinental Rally Challenge points leader Juho Hanninen popped back to the WRC and came away with ninth overall and an S2000 class win. Jari Ketomaa had led the class at first until hitting electrical problems.
The Production class also saw an early leader strike trouble as Juha Salo made a mistake and lost the lead to Pirelli Star Driver Ott Tanak, who dominated thereafter.
Pos Driver Car Time/Gap
1. Jari-Matti Latvala Ford 2h31m29.6s
2. Sebastien Ogier Citroen + 10.1s
3. Sebastien Loeb Citroen + 26.0s
4. Petter Solberg Citroen + 30.7s
5. Dani Sordo Citroen + 1m45.0s
6. Matthew Wilson Ford + 5m43.7s
7. Mads Ostberg Subaru + 5m50.8s
8. Juha Kankkunen Ford + 7m49.0s
9. Juho Hanninen Skoda + 9m05.0s
10. P-G Andersson Skoda + 10m15.7s