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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.
Q and A: Hirvonen on Japan and title
September 8th, 2010
Having almost beaten Sebastien Loeb to the 2009 World Rally title, Ford number one Mikko Hirvonen’s 2010 season has proved to be a huge disappointment, and he is now out of contention for this year’s championship.
But as he prepared for this weekend’s Rally Japan, he told AUTOSPORT why he was still upbeat about the next event and determined to finish the year on a high.
Q. Having won this event twice, is it fair to say you’re quite a fan of Rally Japan?
Mikko Hirvonen: It is, yes. It’s fast and interesting roads, which I like – but also the place: the country, the culture and the people. I like it here, it’s so different. Okay, things like this don’t affect my driving, but I like it here and enjoy this place.
Q. How does it feel not to have a championship to think about any more? Does it take the pressure off you a little bit?
MH: No, not really. For sure it’s a shame, but the whole season has been a bit disappointing and now we just want to finish off the year in the best way we can. I just want to finish the season with good rallies and, hopefully, fight for the win here.
Q. The last time we saw you on gravel was on Rally Finland, where you were very quick before the accident. Does that speed give you extra confidence coming to another soft-surface gravel rally?
MH: I think we should have good speed here, especially if it stay dry. And why not if the conditions become more muddy? It’s going to be so tricky here if it does rain, there will be lots of deep mu and water splashes as well.
Q. If it stays dry and hot, how will the soft compound Pirelli work?
MH: Fortunately it’s quite a soft surface, so it should be fine, no problem. It’s so soft in some places we can still see our ruts from the last time we were here two years ago. In some places the roads can be quite badly destroyed on the second time we are going there.
Sunday shouldn’t be so bad because they are the new stages. The roads on Friday and Saturday have been fixed with the organisers laying some soft gravel and that will get destroyed. And then some sections, still have ruts.
Q. What do you think of the fact that you come here with no test because you’re not allowed to test outside of Europe and the shakedown is on asphalt – which means the first time you drive the car on gravel you are going off the start line?
MH: Unless you are Petter [Solberg]. Because he’s not running as a manufacturer, he’s allowed to do what he wants and he has tested. It’s not really fair. He is there fighting with everybody else, but he can do what he likes with testing. Okay he’s not taking manufacturer points, but he still has an advantage in quite many rallies.
Q. How tough is it to come here and drive the car for the first time on gravel when you’re going into the first corner on the event?
MH: It might take a while. On the first gravel stage it might take a few corners to get the feeling, but hopefully not longer than that. It’s not really ideal, for sure it would be better to have the shakedown on gravel to get that feeling, but I don’t mind shakedown being in the [Saporo] Dome because it’s so slippery in there, there’s no grip at all. If we can’t be on gravel that’s the second best choice.