IVRA Clubsport at Suzuka

Posted on February 6, 2021

We have now passed the halfway mark of the Clubsport series and the next to last race took place at Suzuka over 2.4 hours. So far, the races have more often than not involved some events that put our cars a bit further down the list than what we want, either by our own or other cars’ mistakes. This race started out in a very positive way, with our cars gridding up in P3 and P4 after a good qualifying session, and obviously having a competitive pace for this round.

Well, not long into the race things started to go south yet again. One of the cars got a drive-through penalty after an incident, not much to say about but it put them way back in the field after an otherwise promising start. For the other Hellracers car, things were looking more promising and they led the field for some time.

And then, the pace car emerged on track… Now, to be honest, the way things unfolded we can not put it all on the pace car, but it definitely would have been better for us to not have the pace car. Our car in the lead did their full service during the pace car, while many others just did a quick fuel stop and that led to the previously leading Hellracers car also dropping down through the field.

We finished in 9th and 11th, which is decent given how the race unfolded, but yet again, we come away with the feeling of not getting the result that we know that we can achieve. With only one race to go, the chances of an overall podium finish looks slim, but there being a lot of points at stake in the last race all we can do is try to get a better payback for our effort next time.

IVRA Endurance at Mid-Ohio

Posted on January 16, 2021

Another short and narrow track in the IVRA Endurance series! 4 hours on the twisty Mid-Ohio track was seen before-hand as a daunting task, but in general, the race turned out to bring some great racing. As always in the Endurance league, we put one BMW GTE and two LMP2s on the starting line.

The first half of the race went mostly in our favor, with our GTE and one of the LMP2s running in the top three and the fuel tactics going according to plan. Few safety cars in the first half meant that the cars could battle it out among themselves without too much disturbance. In general, this leads to better racing since the field is more split up and what settles the order of cars is pace and overtaking, and lack of mistakes, rather than unfortunate safety cars packing the field together.

During the second half, things changed a bit for the worse. Our GTE car got hit a couple of times and fell back in the field, more safety cars came out gathering the field and leading to some chaotic restarts, and with just minutes to go, our LMP2 car in the top three got hit from behind and fell through the field.

In the end, our LMP2 cars ended up in place 7 and 13 which is a bit of a disappointment based on how the race looked up until the end. The GTE car finished in 5th place which is also somewhat of a disappointment since there was a chance of a better result.

Now, we will take a break from the leagues for a while, but the endurance racing continues with Daytona 24 hours already this weekend!

Endurance weekend

Posted on January 10, 2021

Once again, two different endurance series clashed during the weekend with an IVRA Clubsport 4 hour race on Saturday and a 24H SERIES ESPORTS 6 hour race on Sunday. Our two Porsche 911 GT3 Cup cars did a good job at Spa-Francorchamps and our #26 car managed a 6th place in a tough competition, after having run the last stint with some serious fuel saving. The #16 car unfortunately didn’t manage to save enough and had to stop for an extra pit stop, putting them down all the way to 17th place, due to the close field.

For the long races in the IVRA Clubsport league, points are also awarded halfway through the race and both cars managed to get some good points at the halfway point, leading to a good amount of points for the full race. It brings some extra strategy into the race, especially this time with two safety cars just before halfway through the race, creating the need for some quick decision-making. An extra spice to endurance racing!

The other race for the weekend was 6 hours of Silverstone in our trusty Porsche Cayman GT4. Also in this league, the competition is fierce and it’s really a matter of putting the hours in when preparing for the race unless you want to be a backmarker. We had decent pace, but were slower than we wanted and just behind the big mid-pack of cars. At the time for pit stop, we were running in 8th after having an incident just before the pit stop, losing a position.

Not even 10 minutes into our second stint, our driver suffered a technical malfunction that put our car hard into the wall. The car was possible to repair but we parked it for the night to avoid being an obstacle on track, since even after repair the car is usually down on pace. An unfortunate ending to an otherwise fun race.

Swedish National Championship

Posted on December 15, 2020

For a couple of weeks now, several team members have been competing in the official Swedish national championship arranged by Svenska Bilsportförbundet. After three qualification races, each with a semi-final and a final, to determine who were going to compete in the grand finale, now was the time to crown the champion. To be completely honest, none of us aspired for becoming the champion, there’s some fierce competition in Swedish simracing and drivers like Carl Jansson from CoRe Simracing and Robin Östlund from GOTeam Racing are not only fast in general, but they also have way more experience than our drivers in the car that was used in the competition, the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup.

With that said, we still wanted to measure ourselves and be part of the competition so we squeezed this in with our other leagues and managed to put eight of our drivers on the starting grid for the final race.

Unfortunately, the racing was on a level that is below what you would expect in a national championship, which meant that if you were in the middle of the pack, you had to rely partially on luck to even be able to finish the race. This was taken up another notch in the final where a few major incidents involving a lot of cars and some unsuccessful passing attempts put some of our cars on the sideline.

One who didn’t get caught up in these incidents was Magnus who finished overall in P10, which was our best result. Just behind him was Hampus in P11, while the rest was further down the field. Given the high level of competition a P10 finish is an achievement, and the number of drivers in the final race from Hellracers once again show that we have a very high lowest level and a great width in the team.

IVRA Double header at Barber

Posted on December 13, 2020

Both IVRA leagues that we compete in, Clubsport and Endurance, went to Barber this weekend for one race each of just under three hours. Having two cars in Clubsport and three in the Endurance league meant that most drivers in the team had to participate to fill the seats. Fortunately, almost all could focus on only one of the races with Rickard being the exception who had to fill one seat in our Porsche Cup on Saturday and then drive the GTE car on Sunday.

Barber is not an obvious multiclass track but the IVRA leagues tend to go to that kind of track from time to time to introduce some extra spice into the racing. Most of the time, knowing that the track is not well-suited for multiclass racing typically sharpens most drivers and the effect is sometimes that the race becomes a very clean one just because everyone tries their hardest and does not push it too far. This weekend, the resulting races might have been closer to what you would expect if you put over 50 really fast cars on a tight and twisty track like Barber, but it’s still a fun break from all the Spa races you typically see in multiclass racing.

In the Clubsport race, our two 911 Cup cars managed a respectable 6th and 8th place after a well managed race where the tactics played out to their advantage. In the Endurance race, the vast amount of safety cars meant that the outcome was dependent not only on cunning tactics but quite a bit of luck. However, no luck was needed for our #29 LMP2 who drove a pretty much flawless race and deserved their P3 finish. The #19 LMP2 was involved in a first-lap incident and had less luck with the timing of the safety cars, leading to a P9 finish. Our GTE car had a podium in sight for a long time, but a late safety car meant that the, until then, promising tactics fell through and when that was followed up by a self-induced spin due to older tires, the P9 finish was a fact.

Next, after a Christmas break the Clubsport league goes to Spa (yeah, there it is again..) while the Endurance league tackles yet another track which you don’t often see in an endurance calendar - Mid-Ohio. We expect an even tighter and more intense race that time around.

Apex Racing League TCR - Rickard Karlsson takes home the AM win!

Posted on December 4, 2020

After a battle raging over 13 rounds in the second season of the ARLTC league in 2020, Rickard takes home the AM championship! The season started already in August 2020 and each round have included three races, meaning that the challenge is not only to be fast but to be consistent over a wide range of tracks and races. It’s quite an accomplishment with the high level of TCR racing in the league to take the win!

We have competed in several of the Apex leagues and are always pleasantly surprised by the arrangement and the wide range of competition that it brings. The ARLTC league is probably one of the most challenging ones, attracting what is probably the fastest TCR drivers on the iRacing service. The league is divided into PRO and AM categories where the fastest guys compete in the PRO category but the AM category is also filled with some fierce competition.

The format with three races in each round where the starting order of race two and three reverses part of the field led to some intense racing, and Rickard described races where he was physically and mentally drained afterwards since there wasn’t a second of relaxation in the race. The TCR cars invite close racing and it is not uncommon to see the field fighting closely in big groups even at the end of the races, which is a contrast to GT racing where the field tends to split up a bit more over a race.

Unfortunately Rickard’s partner in crime in the TCR series, Philip, had too many series ongoing so he had to step down from this one, meaning that the team championship slipped out of our hands. But that only means that we have a reason to come back and try to take home that as well!

Big thanks to Apex Racing League for a fun season! And thanks to Andy Taylor for the awesome picture!

24H SERIES ESPORTS - MAHLE 6H SEBRING

Posted on November 29, 2020

Second race in the 24H SERIES ESPORTS league took place at Sebring, the track at least partially known for how uneven the race surface is. It tends to be a real test for your sim racing equipment and even though we are racing at home it might be a small workout to do endurance racing here. The Swedish national championship is still running, so in the days leading up to the event our focus was a bit split. Normally, we would spend a number of days with practice and get really used to the track and car combination, especially for this series since we don’t drive the GT4 so much in other series. However, this time around we simply didn’t have enough time to put in the practice that we really wanted, making us a bit nervous about the whole thing.

Qualifying put us in P8 on the starting grid but a badly timed start quickly dropped us to P9 even before T1. What we learned last time in this league is that it mostly comes down to not be involved in incidents and keep the car clean, and so that was what we focused on. Our lack of practice showed, especially in the first half of the race where we simply didn’t have the same pace as our competitors. But with some of them making mistakes or being involved in incidents, we soon figured that we could at least start to aim for a top five finish.

With the race coming to its last hour, we ran in P7 with P6 within reach and P8 hunting us from behind. However, once again our lack of preparation became apparent. In the first race the fuel strategy was pretty much non-existent due to the tank size and fuel mileage of our Cayman GT4 and based on our first calculations that would be the case also in this race. However, slightly different weather conditions led to a higher fuel mileage which became apparent in our last fuel stint. That on top of the sun setting making the track pitch black, except for the reflexes that mark the track on Sebring at night, made for a quite interesting last hour of the race.

In the end, we had to pay at least one position for our bad preparations, instead of hunting down P6 and trying to overtake them we had to run into the pits with just minutes to go for a quick refill, losing out to the car chasing us. We ended up in P8 which was a bitter disappointment in the end, since we had it in our own hands to finish in a better position. However, based on the preparations it was probably not a huge surprise. This league does not give you anything for free and not preparing enough will lose you positions, it’s as simple as that. For the next race at Silverstone, we will for sure have done our homework!

IVRA Clubsport - Circuit of the Americas

Posted on November 21, 2020

Time for another IVRA race, this time in the Clubsport series on the COTA track in Texas. A wide track that still provides some challenges for multiclass with its sharp turns and mix of fast and slow sections.

With the Swedish national championship running in parallel, we didn’t have the normal queue of drivers who were willing to suit up for this race, but in the end we put a strong team on the starting line in our two Porsche 911 Cup cars.

The race started off ok, both cars settled in and started to put laps on the clock. This was a four hour race, so there’s no immediate rush to pick up spots but it’s usually better to get used to the traffic and the cars around you.

Disaster struck with 30 minutes on the clock, another 911 Cup car didn’t brake in time and hit our #16 car from behind, flipping it over in the process. Not the end of the race, but any hopes of a good finishing position ended there. The car was towed to the pits, fixed up and finished the race, however the damage from the collision made the car a lot slower and the car finished several laps down from the leader.

Car #26 had no such monumental issues and soldiered on, but this wasn’t our race to win. Spins and no luck with the safety cars ended the car at 14th place, far down from where we hoped it would end and far from indicative of the pace of our drivers, it just fell apart this time.

Not the greatest start of a season you could wish for, but there are still many races to come and we intend to learn from this and move forward and show ourselves and the other teams that we still are a force to be reckoned with.

IVRA Endurance - Pacing at Phillip Island

Posted on November 7, 2020

Race two of this season’s IVRA Endurance took place at Phillip Island, a fun Australian track with a lot of fast, sweeping corners. We had done our practice and positioned our three cars on the starting grid with a good feeling. The qualification round went ok for all three cars, no pole positions but in the upper part of the field which is usually all that matters for endurance racing. As the race progressed, things started to look good. All three cars were in contention for a good finish, and apart from some small contacts with other cars on the narrow track, the cars were in good shape.

Things started to go south, though. The race included no less than seven safety cars due to incidents on the track, and in total the cars spent more than one of the four hours behind the pace car. That in itself makes it hard to predict what is going to happen and to make the right choices in the pit lane. However, we were quite successful tactics-wise and continued to fight for the podium spots.

However, the further the race went on, the more situations arose. Race control had a busy day, and when the race ended there were more incidents to look at still, than what a typical race has during the entire race. A lot of the drivers in the race took unnecessary risks leading to collisions and our GTE car collected so much damage from other cars’ mistakes that it lost all speed and couldn’t compete for a top position anymore. On top of that, race control found an incident and punished the car with a time penalty after the race moving it down the order to P8.

Our two LMP cars looked good up until the very end, with just 15 minutes to go they were both on the podium spots and could even fight for the win. However, things went south yet again. A collision with a GTE car and post-race penalties put our two cars down to P4 and P6, a decent result but a disappointment given how it looked in the final stages of the race.

In the end, this race was not about pace but keeping the car clean and - to be fair - having some luck with both pace cars and not being the victim of other people’s mistakes. We are not quite satisfied with having those kinds of things determining our race, but at the same time we also made mistakes and ended up in the race control room again.

In a month, we’re going to Barber for another race at a tight circuit and we are eager to show that we belong on the podium.

First race in 24H SERIES Esports powered by VCO

Posted on October 25, 2020

Time for a new league! We have been wanting to participate in this league for quite some time, and we were really happy to secure our spot for the 20202021 season. As always with a new league, it’s hard to know what to expect and how you will stand pace-wise compared to the competition but we knew that there was going to be some tough competition.

The league is yet another multi-class endurance league, which is something we appreciate. It gives the team something to strive for together and the multi-class aspect usually brings some extra elements into the racing. The four classes are GT3, Porsche 911 GT3 Cup, GT4 and TCR. We race this season in a GT4 car, the choice falling on the Porsche Cayman GT4 which we feel slightly more comfortable with than the BMW M4 GT4.

Besides an experienced organizer in Niel Hekkens, the 24H SERIES eSports also have a collaboration with VCO which gives an extra spice to this league with some great coverage of the races. We can very well recommend tuning into the iRacing Esports Network on Youtube during the next race and watch the broadcast.

On to the race! We qualified in P7 which felt pretty much in line with our pace. Starting on the front row in this league requires pretty much world-class pace with some of the participants being in the top of GT4 drivers in all of iRacing. We are not quite there yet and settled with starting in fourth row.

As we have repeated several times, and keep on repeating, endurance racing is as much about keeping the car in one piece as it is about pace. This race turned out showing that to a great extent. Car after car were involved in incidents, got punished by race control or had other problems and about halfway into the race we found ourselves in P4 while we on track really only had done one overtake. The gap behind us grew more and more comfortable as well.

With about one hour left, we were within 15 seconds of P3 and gaining on them. A podium was within reach! Philip in the car pushed as much as he could, while still keeping a big enough distance to the GT3s zooming past our car. When the gap to P3 came down to 6 seconds, we ran into some heavy traffic and unfortunately, the podium slipped out of our hands in the closing stages of the race.

Quite quickly, we brushed off the sense of failure though, P4 in our first race in the 24H SERIES is for us a success. It’s a highly competitive league and we saw it as a triumph even to qualify. It happened to be one of the most fun races we’ve had in iRacing with some close and respectful fighting, skilled competition and an organization surrounding the event that put the silver lining to top it off. We look forward to the next race!