Winter update 21/22

Posted on February 20, 2022

Time for another update! Once again, it will be a collection of what has happened since last time. For more frequent updates, we post on our instagram @hellracers.se.

GSI Endurance Series by IVRA and VCO, 1000 km at Watkins Glen

IVRA Endurance now has a collaboration with Gomez Sim Industries and therefore the series has changed name, but it’s still the same format and we still compete with two cars, one LMP2 and one GT3 Pro. This week’s track was Watkins Glen, a track where our drivers usually are fast. The LMP2 had a rough qualification session and ended up almost at the back of the field but climbed fast and were up in P5 just a few stints in. A collision caused by the LMP2 with a resulting penalty put them back again, and the climb had to start over. Two safety cars helped them out and they ended up in P5 again over the finish line. A strong performance!

The GT3 Pro had a better qualifying and started in P4 and had a solid P3 after a few laps. That’s pretty much where the car drove almost all race until right at the end, where one of the faster cars got caught in a collision during the restart after a safety car period. The other main contender for the P1 position got two penalties in the end and had to go in for a stop and go, meaning that our GT3 had a pretty easy ride to the finish line and took our first IVRA win in the GT3. We have had victories in LMP2 and GTE before, but not in GT3. Now we can tick that box as well!

Simracing for ALS Norge (Norway)

Team SlowMo from Norway arranges one charity race each year and this year it was for the ALS Norway foundation. We started as the only Swedish team in a cloud of Norwegian teams. With the Club Scandinavia League and other communities we race quite a bit with Norwegian teams so it feels good to do it while contributing to a good cause. We put one Porsche RSR and our trusty LMP2 on the grid.

The race had connection issues on a level rarely seen on iRacing, we have never experienced something so bad. Unfortunately this disrupted the race several times and even though the organizers did their best, the racing of course suffered from this. In the end, the safety car was brought out a couple of times to give the disconnecting teams a chance to catch back up. This also meant that the standings in the race was hard to follow since teams went up and down the field during the disconnects.

In the end, we ended up with a P2 in the GTE field and P3 in the LMP2, not undeserved but maybe a bit unexpected given how the race developed. This also meant that Sebastian’s first race with us ended up with a P2, a good start!

24 hours of Daytona

One of the biggest events on iRacing, gathering teams from all over the world to fight it out on the Daytona road course. It’s also the first event of the year when a lot of people are hungry for racing after the Christmas break. We decided to start with only one car to avoid too long driving stints, meaning we divided the 24 hours on six drivers. A solid performance by all drivers with very few mistakes over the entire race meant we brought home a P4 in our split, with the last overtake being done by Niklas in the bus stop on the second to last lap. Awesome effort!

IVRA Clubsport

Two races have taken place in the Clubsport league, the 400 km at VIR and 700 km at Road Atlanta. We took P4 in VIR after a great performance on a fun track that is not driven enough! Road Atlanta was a tough mistress and a bit too eventful for us to make it possible with a top five finish and we had to settle for P9. We really enjoy the Clubsport series though, it is sometimes seen as the “little brother” to the Endurance series but brings another flavor of racing altogether and can definitely stand on its own.

It’s time for 400 km at Zolder already next week, another fun track that will definitely bring some intense racing!

Condensed News

Posted on November 9, 2021

Here comes a rather late update on the latest news related to Hellracers and what we are doing. We have been doing one update per race previously but due to real life commitments, it hasn’t been happening for a while now. And the two or three readers who actually read this are outraged, I assume. :-)

Collaboration with tershine continues!

We are happy to announce that our collaboration will continue for yet another year and we will continue to proudly wear the big ‘t’ on our cars!

IVRA Endurance 1000 km at Red Bull Ring

The 16th of October we went to the Red Bull Ring for the IVRA Endurance second race of the season. After a rather unimpressive qualification round for both cars, we had put ourselves in an unnecessarily difficult position where we had to climb through the field. This year’s competition is really tough, which is so much fun, but it also makes it harder to do just that - climb through the field. Even the AM cars have good pace, so no overtake comes easy.

We are really proud of the result though, after fighting for almost 6 hours both cars ended up P4 in the Pro field! That’s a massive achievement given the starting positions of the cars, and even though we might have been able to finish even higher with a better start, we are happy with that given the circumstances.

IVRA Clubsport 400 km at Mid-Ohio

Next race for us was another IVRA race, this time in the Porsche 992 GT3 Cup car and the Clubsport series. On the 30th of October we put our car on the grid and showed some great pace from the start. Once again the width of the team showed where we put drivers who are not so well versed with the 992 cup car behind the wheel and they still fought for a podium finish. Unfortunately, the race had a big number of punts and our car suffered a few of them. In the end, we also made mistakes and punted a few cars of our own, giving us a rightful punishment, clouding all hope of a podium finish.

We finished P8 after all of this, which felt like a disappointment given the pace and that it looked really good for a long time in the race. Again the result shows that besides pure pace, the races are won by managing the traffic and keeping the nose clean. This time, just a few mistakes cost us many lost points.

10 hours of Suzuka - Special event by iRacing

A few times every year, iRacing runs what they call “special events”. Some of them are sprint races or other events, but most of them are endurance races. What they have in common though, is that they generally gather very many of the iRacing users and the competitions get a lot of attention.

We have been competing in quite a few, but have never really come out on top. But for this year’s 10 hours of Suzuka, that changed! To be honest, we didn’t compete in the most popular time slot, but still we managed to claim victory in the top split of a GT3 endurance race on iRacing, which is not a small feat. After 10 hours of racing, the gap to P2 was only 4 seconds, which is a telling sign that the competition was tight! P1-P4 was really tight all race long and we switched positions back and forth a few times. But when day turned into night, our car put in some awesome stints with good pace and very few mistakes, leading us to overall victory!

Swedish championship sponsored by Porsche

To round off this update, we are currently competing in the Swedish championship sponsored by Porsche and in the first race, Philip managed a P3! The Swedish sim racing community just keeps on getting bigger… and faster! Awesome to see! We will compete in the championship for a few weeks to come and will make sure to post an update here and on our Instagram when we have a result!

Season starter - two IVRA races

Posted on September 24, 2021

The season has started again, finally! We kicked it off with two weekends of IVRA back to back, first the IVRA Endurance 1000 km at Nürburgring GP where we competed with two cars. One LMP2 that was invited based on a good performance last year and also a BMW M4 GT3 that we qualified for this year. It’s clear that this year brings one of the toughest starting fields that we have ever encountered in IVRA, which makes it really fun to race and it triggers us to perform well.

The first race gave some good answers on our pace, both cars were in the thick of it during the race and we had a good chance of a good finish. Unfortunately, the LMP2 car was involved in an incident that led to race-ending damage to the car, meaning that the race ended prematurely. The GT3 car was also involved in an incident when lapping another car, leading to a penalty which dropped the car in the field. In the end, we didn’t finish where we had hoped but we felt that the pace was there and that for the next time we need to keep ourselves out of trouble.

Only one week later, it was time to go to Motegi for the first race of the IVRA Clubsport season where we had a brand new Porsche 992 GT3 Cup competing, also here in a very competitive field. Magnus and Niklas piloted the car and showed in the qualifying session that there is no lack of pace when they put it on the second row in P3. During the race, running a slightly different strategy than most of the competitors paid off, but the race was filled with rear-ending incidents and our car suffered no less than four of them, spinning the car around. After that, it was hard to hope for a podium finish anymore, and the car dropped back through the field.

Overall, maybe not the season starter we had hoped for, but it’s promising that we show pace and given the long summer break some rust is expected in the driving. But for the next race, we have no excuses but to finish well!

Two years of Hellracers!

Posted on June 11, 2021

Another year has passed and today we celebrate two years together as Hellracers! Let’s skip the “in these unprecedented times” for now and just shortly acknowledge that sim racing in general took a big leap forward during last year. We noticed it mostly by the way the competition level rose during the year when more and more people of all skill levels entered the sim racing world. And not only that, the prize money, the level of professionalism and the focus on sim racing from the outside all took a leap forward. Competitions where professional race drivers drove races in the sim racing world took place not only once or twice, but full series was shown on big TV channels. We really enjoyed this increased focus and it made us even more motivated.

So, what has happened during this year in the team? We welcomed one new member to the team, Rickard Karlsson, who joined us last summer and has participated in a lot of races representing the team since then. Our biggest racing achievement during the year was probably winning the iRacing Endurance Series overall in the GTE class. That is, we were the fastest GTE car on the entire iRacing service in an official series over 4 races that were 6 hours each! Not a small feather to put in our hat!

We participated in the IVRA Endurance series with three cars but couldn’t repeat last year’s success, we ended up with one car in P4 in the total standings as our best result. We raced in the IVRA Clubsport with our Porsche 911 Cup car and in the 24H SERIES ESPORTS with a Porsche GT4 Cayman. Even though just qualifying to the 24H SERIES ESPORTS was an achievement, neither that nor the IVRA Clubsport ended with a fully satisfactory result overall, though we had some good races. We will come back with a new focus! Apart from those series, we also tried qualifying for the Sports Car Open endurance series, but we ended up too far down in the list of cars to make it.

We have noticed that with families, full time jobs and other things taking time, it is harder and harder to put in the practice needed to keep up. The time where you put in a few laps of practice and then raced with the possibility of ending up on the podium has passed, to get a podium finish in the big series now requires a dedicated effort most of the time. In the team, the slowest driver is really fast and in general, not many laps are required to get up to a speed that is fast in official races. But in these series, the level is just that much higher and most drivers competing in them are really dedicated to practice to find those last tenths or even hundreds of a second. It’s not always that we have the time for that given all the “musts” in real life, but we strive for having fun first and get good results second, and we are having a lot of fun!

Back to the results… Even though we didn’t end up higher than P4 in the overall standings, we did manage a win and several podium finishes in the IVRA Endurance series in some serious competition. We took several podiums and wins in the Club Scandinavia League series, where some of Scandinavia’s best drivers compete. Rickard won the AM Championship in Apex Racing’s TCR series. Philip came second place in the Apex Racing Academy GT4 VRS Super Series (whew, what a name!).

We also competed in the Swedish National Championship in the Porsche 911 Cup, which was mostly a fun experience. However, the competition organization wasn’t on the level that we expected from an official national competition, and the racing just wasn’t as fun as we had hoped for. With that said, it attracted some of Sweden’s absolutely best sim racers and the speed of the drivers was top notch, with a well deserved winner in Carl Jansson.

A new Swedish series started just after the national championship - the Time attack series by timeattacknu.se. Philip in the team managed a great result with P2 overall and the series made Rickard buy a car IRL and he is now competing in the Time attack series on the Swedish tracks in his BMW 135i. Awesome that we are seeing Hellracers drivers out on the real tracks!

Writing it all down made us realise just how much we have accomplished in a year. In every competition where we start, we are usually close to, or on, the podium. We have become good friends in the team, and talk everyday about everything and anything. Hellracers means more than racing to us, it’s a group where we can share things, help each other out, give input on everything from new stuff for the rig to the best type of tonic for your G&T, and above all, have fun together. Let’s continue having fun!

IVRA Endurance finale at Motegi

Posted on April 10, 2021

This year’s final race in the IVRA Endurance league took place at Motegi, a track that is not run so often in the official leagues on the iRacing service. A 10 hour race with a total of 150 points in play for the winner would determine the final standings. None of our cars had a chance bigger than pure theoretical (as in, full points for us and no points for the competitors) so the goal of the race was more to end on a high note rather than competing for the championship.

As usual, we competed with our two LMP Pro cars and our GTE Pro. With a 10 hour race, we put three drivers in each car to not put too much strain on each driver. It’s possible to do 10 hours on two drivers, but the chance for mistakes grows and the day after the race is not as pleasant as when the driving time is lower.

After a good qualifying session where the GTE car started on the second row and the LMP cars started in mid-pack, the race set off in the same direction as it would continue. Some tight racing, some cars in the gravel trap, some aggressive overtake maneuvers, some mistakes and very little time to relax. The track consists of a lot of heavy braking and straight line acceleration but none of the straightaways are long enough to really relax, especially in a multiclass race where traffic management comes into play on the straights.

Most of the race was undisturbed green flag racing and the field became spread out over time. However, about halfway through the race a safety car gathered the field and during the restart the race took a completely new direction. One of our LMP cars got turned and suffered major damage and had to retire. The GTE car saw itself in fifth place before the safety car but due to a major crash in the restart which was masterfully avoided by Jonas, the GTE car climbed up to second place in just one corner. The rest of the race was rather uneventful, the LMP car that survived came in as fifth and the GTE car defended its second place.

When looking back at the championship, neither car got the result we hoped for before the season. Partly due to really good competition, but even in that competition we think we should have placed ourselves better. Most of it is on ourselves, we made too many mistakes and saw ourselves having a meeting with Race control too many times during the season. That led to big loss of points and in the end, a quite unsatisfactory result. Our two LMP cars ended up in 6th and 8th and our GTE car in 4th. We believe that we are better than that, but it’s on the race track that you need to prove it, not in a text on our own site. :-)

What we are satisfied with is the professionalism that IVRA puts in their endurance league and even though we do not always agree with the outcome of decisions, we respect the effort they put in and appreciate the racing their league provides. We would also like to send our appreciation to Racespot for their excellent broadcasts this season. It’s not easy keeping the viewers interested over so many hours, but they made an awesome effort!

What a weekend!

Posted on March 21, 2021

With several big endurance leagues going on at the same time, it is inevitable that they sometimes end up on the same weekend. This weekend, we had IVRA Endurance on Saturday with 6 hours on Imola and 24H SERIES Esports 6 hours of Barcelona-Catalunya on Sunday. Since we run three cars in IVRA Endurance, this meant that most of the team had to step up and do some racing! Fortunately, we have a nice width in the team and moreover, most drivers can switch cars and perform well also in the cars that they drive more seldom.

Starting off with the IVRA Endurance, having won the last race in the LMP Pro class we came in with somewhat more confidence than usual. But each track has its own challenges, and teams often have tracks where they are more or less competitive. It’s always hard to know beforehand which team will have a good or bad day. As it turns out, we had yet another pretty good day for the same LMP Pro car which came in as 2nd car in class. Unfortunately, the #29 car had yet another bad day at the office and was involved in all sorts of issues, placing it way further back in the field than what we hoped for.

The GTE Pro car was in the lead with only 30 minutes to go and things were looking really good for a first win in this year’s IVRA Endurance series. Unfortunately, one tire in the gravel at the wrong time turned the car around and we had to settle for 3rd car in class. Nevertheless, a great result in the race!

In the 24H SERIES Esports, our car showed great pace in the practice sessions and we were eager to race and see how far that pace would get us. This series usually brings intense multi class racing since there are four classes where all four classes have some of the best drivers on the service, and over 6 hours things are likely to happen. The Barcelona track has some sections that are tricky in multi class and as it happens, that was really showing in this race. Our car was spun around twice over the course of the race, ending our chances for a podium, but we were able to hang on for a P4 finish which is still something we are proud about.

Both series have only one race left, and neither car has a real chance of a podium in the overall standings, but we want to end the season on a high note so time to practice for the next one!

IVRA Endurance at Virginia International Raceway

Posted on February 20, 2021

For most of us in the team, this is the second season in the IVRA Endurance league. Last year, we participated with a LMP1 car and a GTE car and managed P2 overall in both classes. But in that entire season, and including the current season, we only have one race win. Until now! Last weekend at VIR, Stellan and Philip did an excellent race and managed to take home the win in their #19 LMP2 car! Over the line, they had 50 seconds to the next car, really impressive given the tough competition in this year’s lineup.

Up until raceday, both the LMP2 cars and the GTE car were debating on the correct aero setup to make the most out of the long back straight at VIR while still remaining competitive in the roller-coasty sections leading up to the two main straights. Given the overall pace, all of our cars seemed to have found a good compromise, but it was clear that some competitors ran with a lot less aero, making overtakes tricky since the main overtake sections are definitely the straights on VIR.

We came into the race with high hopes, VIR being an awesome track to drive and most of us felt that we had decent race pace. The two LMP2 cars qualified P8 and P11 and the GTE car started in P3.

The race once again, unfortunately, became very disrupted by a large amount of pace cars due to a lot of incidents in the famous Oak tree corner. That led to some different strategies between cars and to be honest, it was hard to understand who actually led the race. Our GTE car managed to time their pit stops well and with 90 minutes to go, the car was in the lead and had a full fuel tank meaning that things looked pretty good. However, Oak tree claimed yet another victim when the brake point was slightly missed and the car slid into the barriers. We limped the BMW to the pits and ended the race there. Really unfortunate given how the race had progressed so far.

For LMP2 #29 things looked really good for some time, running in P2 most of the time but an unfortunate rejoin from another LMP2 entry ended their race prematurely. Without anyone really noticing, LMP2 #19 worked their way into the lead with some good strategy calls towards the end of the race. With 30 minutes to go, the lead was around 30 seconds and it increased further when the competitors struggled with each other or the track in general. A satisfactory ending to this weekend, awesome to claim victory in such a competitive field.