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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.

World Rally Championship

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Q and A: Hirvonen on his GB disaster

November 11th, 2011

Mikko Hirvonen’s hopes on clinching a first World Rally title were hit hard when he retired from day one following the Dyfnant stage this morning.


AUTOSPORT caught up with the Finn when he returned to service in Builth Wells.


Q. What happened?


Mikko HirvonenMikko Hirvonen: It was a pretty typical Welsh-type accident. Eight out of 10 times in those situations… okay, for sure I would have spun and lost 10 seconds for that, but it was unlucky that there was some tree stump or stick or something that made a scratch on the radiator and we lost all the water.


Otherwise there’s no damage at all on the car – the car’s mint. When I spun, I got the car going again and I was back flat out again. For five or six kilometres it was fine, no problem. But then there was a problem.


Q. Why did it take so long for the problem to become apparent?


MH: The hole in the radiator was so small, it was taking such a long time for the water to come out of it.


Q. Then the warning lights came on?


MH: Then we hit the problems and, yes, the warning lights came on. When the oil temperature [warning light] came up, I thought about the spin and thought that maybe the front of the grill is full of mud and things like that.


So I stopped and went to have a look, but there was nothing except for this one corner [of the front of the car] which was covered in mud and had this one stick in it.


Q. What did you do?


MH: We finished the stage and then kept stopping and filling it with water to try and get here.


Q. Before that, it was going pretty well this morning…


MH: It was going well. You know, before the start of that last stage, I said to [co-driver Jarmo [Lehtinen]: ‘This is okay, I don’t think we’re going too hard and we could even go on a bit more from here.’ It’s so frustrating.


Q. How do you feel?


MH: I’ve had a tough season. I don’t know. Some how I feel I’m not surprised this happened to me, but I’m just so sorry for the boys and all of the team because even though this was a tough season, we worked so well together.


Jari-Matti [Latvala] helped me so much this year just to give us a chance to fight for this title. I’ll survive, but like I say it’s such a shame for the boys that it’s ended like this.


Q. At least you went out fighting…


MH: We were fighting. For me, I lost this in the last two Tarmac rallies [Catalunya and France]. We have been consistent this season and the year hasn’t been too bad. We’ll be there again.

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