You can’t win them all - IVRA Clubsport at Road America
IVRA Clubsport is a fun league. Not all races can be fun, though. This was one of the less fun, unfortunately.
The new season of IVRA Clubsport started this weekend with a 2.4 hour race at Road America. We have described the concept previously, but in short the league shares some similarities to IVRA Endurance but with other car classes and other track choices.
We have qualified two Porsche 911 GT3 Cup cars to this league and it was time to show our pace in them. Last year, we finished P2 overall in the class so we had things to prove.
Well, without going into too much detail since the wounds have yet to heal, the race wasn’t a huge success. Both cars were involved in incidents, there were driver mistakes and all-in-all it was an experience that you try to learn from and move on. Not all races can be successes and the ones you typically learn the most from are the ones where things don’t go as planned.
So, did we finish last and second last? Not even close! P7 and P15 were our finishing positions and while it is not a disaster, it was not what we hoped for. But being the season opener and with several races to go, there is still time to redeem ourselves!
Hellracers takes the title - iRacing Endurance Series
That’s right, over four 12 hour races, we came out on top in the GTE class! A great final showing, where five of our drivers shared the BMW M8 GTE car and drove it over the finish line in second place, securing the overall title with a wide margin to second place in the table.
Just one week after the thrilling 12 hour race in the IVRA Endurance series, we found ourselves gridding up for yet another 12 hour race, the last race in the iRacing Endurance Series taking place at Circuit of the Americas. We came into the race with a good lead over the next team in points, so there was no need to push ourselves to the limit, but rather making sure to bring the car home in one piece. To be fair, that’s a valid tactic for all endurance races.
After a not so impressive qualifying session, we started in P6 but over 12 hours, the starting position is usually not a deciding factor. A few hours in, the GTE field was still only spread out over roughly 40 seconds, keeping the excitement alive. We got some unwelcome hits from behind due to a lot of traffic, but the BMW GTE is a sturdy build which can take a few hits and our pit crew straightened out our body panels during our stops in the pit.
The track went from a cold 17 degrees C when we started and warmed up when morning became mid day, but being an October race the track didn’t reach any extreme temperature, even though it resides in Texas. That meant that tires weren’t a big issue and we could keep our rather simple pit stop tactics and focus on collecting the laps instead.
As always, over 12 hours some teams drop out due to issues or collisions and in many races the field spreads out, but as it would turn out we got second place with only one second to spare to P3. P1 were too fast today and had a healthy 30 second lead over the line, but we cared more about the overall title than the race title this time.
Our stats for this series became 1 win, 1 second place and one third place, with the first race in the series being the outlier with a less impressive result (even though we started from pole). It shows again that consistency is key and that it’s better to not take every fight but to survive. Although, it doesn’t hurt to have the pace as well!
IVRA Endurance - 12 hours at Spa-Francorchamps
First race for the season in the IVRA Endurance League is now completed. As always there’s a lot of nerves in the hours and minutes leading up to the race. That’s one part that makes sim racing so much fun, the team has prepared for this for weeks, everything is in place to make the race as successful as we can manage but it all boils down to keeping the focus and having the pace when it counts. The pressure of driving fast while managing traffic and avoiding race-ending mistakes makes most of the drivers in the team feel nervous before the race. That nervousness is probably a good thing though, it’s a sign that the race means something and that we all want to perform well in the race.
The day started “early” at 13:00 with warmup, followed as per usual by a driver’s meeting and qualification. The actual race started at 16:00 and went on for 12 hours, making this a long day for most of the drivers. Qualification has quite a special format in the IVRA leagues, where the car is not allowed back into the pits once it has left the pits. So even if the qualification is 15 minutes per class, this rule means that the qualification becomes quite special since the tires often become too hot after a couple of qualification laps. Especially around Spa, where the length of the track makes each lap heat the tires more.
After qualification, our LMP Pro cars ended up in 4th and 20th place on the starting grid, the second car having some issues during qualification. The GTE Pro car started in 8th after a not so successful qualification. Spa is also a track where a lot of teams run it often enough to have a very quick pace, and the fight for pole position is even harder than on other tracks. It will be interesting since the calendar for IVRA Endurance will take us to some tracks that are very rarely run in other leagues, meaning that the playing field might become a bit more open when the track has not been trained over and over in other leagues.
Unfortunately, this race became the IVRA race where the Race Control really got to know our car numbers. Where in the previous seasons, we have rarely been on the wrong side of incidents or caused any ruffled feathers, this time around we ended up with quite a few penalties. Some of them were very unnecessary, such as the pit infractions where, in the heat of the moment, we just didn’t remember to obey to the pit rules that the league set up in a quite clear way. Being the first race of the season, Race Control made sure that everyone was obeying all rules, and we were punished not once, not twice, but… even more times. This is something we will definitely change for the next race, we prefer that Race Control don’t know our car numbers at all.
IVRA Endurance is one of very few leagues that uses Safety Car when incidents happen on the track, and this brings a very different mindset in the races where everything when it comes to tactics can be turned upside down at any moment by the SC. It’s something that you need to accept when racing in the league - sometimes it brings the car that is running away from you back to right in front of you - sometimes it messes with your hard work keeping the tires alive longer than the competitors. It’s all about adjusting to the things happening on track and having done your homework so you have the information you need to make the right decisions in each moment. There is no need to have a complete race tactic by the start of the race, it’s taking the correct decisions along the race that will lead to good results.
Over 12 hours, a lot will happen, but having a decent pace and keeping the car in one piece will often lead to good results and so also this time. At the time of writing this, the only results available are unofficial results and some decisions are yet to be taken by Race Control for incidents happening late in the race. With that in mind, our GTE Pro car came out with the best result for the team, placing them in P3 in a highly competitive field. LMP #29 had a good chance on a top three finish but an unfortunate mistake in the last restart of the race dropped them down to P11, while LMP #19 had a rough race and topped it off with some unfortunate timings with the safety cars, leading to a P23 finish in the LMP class.
Saturday ended and became Sunday before the race was over, our cars crossed the finish line around 04:15 local time on Sunday morning. A bit too late, most of us thought, but the racing made up for not having much sleep during the weekend. IVRA continues to bring some very fun and exciting racing, this year with a really competitive field in all classes.
Edit 2020-10-13: Official results are now posted for the league, since not all decisions were taken by Race Control by the time this text was written, the official results look slightly different from what is written above. Our GT Pro car drops to 4th in class, while our LMP #29 finished P5 in class and LMP #19 ended up with a P11.
Continued collaboration with tershine
We are very happy to announce that our collaboration with tershine will continue also next year. Our cars in iRacing proudly show off the tershine brand and our real-life cars are always glossy thanks to their awesome products.
Petit Le Mans 2020
Even though the autumn is filled with league racing, we still take time to compete in the iRacing special events. Last weekend, it was the 10 hour race of Petit Le Mans, which in spite of its name is run on the Road Atlanta track in the US. Its real-life counterpart is run under the Weathertech SportsCar Championship organized by IMSA, and the iRacing version also uses the cars normally seen in the IMSA Sportscar Championship on iRacing. That means, except for the GT3 and GTE classes, also the brand new LMP2 car, which was the weapon of choice for Hellracers this time around.
Hampus, Marcus, Stellan and Niklas divided themselves into two cars to maximize the driving time per driver and headed out onto the twisty and tight track where traffic management is key. A lap in the LMP2 car takes only around 1 minute and 10 seconds, meaning that over 10 hours you get to see the same curve quite a few times. It also means that there is a lot of traffic since so many cars are driving on such a short track at the same time.
After the first nail biting hours where, to be honest, it is mainly about keeping the car in one piece and avoiding mistakes, both cars saw themselves in P2 in their respective split. This, being a massively popular event with roughly 1300 teams competing, means that the field of cars is divided into many separate races simultaneously. Our two cars ended up in split 5 and 6 out of a total of roughly 30.
Just some time after passing the half-time mark, a horrendous rejoin by an Audi GT3 saw our split 5 car being forced into the barrier at high speed, damaging the car enough to force the team to retire. The car in split 6 powered on and even though it was not much to hope when it came to position changes unless something critical happened, the car was going for a solid P2 finish. With about an hour to go, the leading car put themselves in a hairy situation and spun on the main straight. However, with some luck and some skill the car didn’t catch any real damage and the leaders ended up with a comfortable win in the end. Hampus and Marcus had to settle for yet another second place, a finishing position we are getting a bit too comfortable with.
Being the first endurance race with the new LMP2 car, the most important take-away was that we have several drivers with a really good pace in the car. That gives us high hopes of an endurance season with some better results than a P2 finish!
Preparing for a new season
The big season 4 update has just been released on iRacing and everyone is currently busy with trying out the many new features, cars and tracks that were included. For many in our team, maybe the most important update was the new Dallara P217, an LMP2 car that will be used in several official series as well as endurance leagues.
One of these endurance leagues is the IVRA Endurance league, which last year was called DGFX Endurance and where we placed 2nd place in both the LMP1 prototype class as well as the GTE class. The organization behind the league has now renamed the organization and the leagues and we are looking forward to the new season, starting with a 12 hour race at Spa-Francorchamps in October. Before that, we will try to qualify a third car to the league, while we have a GTE car and an LMP2 car already qualified.
Speaking about qualification, the last couple of weeks several leagues have had their pre-qualifying days, where many teams fight about the chance to race in the league in the upcoming season. We tried out to qualify a GTE car for the Sports Car Open league, competing against some of the quickest GTE teams on the service. Unfortunately, we only managed a 20th place in a field of 40 cars, where only the quickest 11 teams were invited to the league. The result is not so bad considering who we competed against, but it is still a disappointment not to qualify.
Some brighter news is that only one week later, it was time for pre-qualifying again. This time, to the 24H SERIES ESPORTS (formerly known as NEO endurance) where we put a GT4 Cayman to the test. The biggest competition in this league is arguably in the GT3 class, but the GT4 class has some serious competitors in the very high iRating range. After some late evenings getting to know the in and outs of the Donington GP track, we managed a fifth quickest time on pre-qualifying day, qualifying us to compete in the full season. We are very excited about showing what we can do in this league!
Besides these big endurance leagues, team members are also participating in other competitions, such as the Apex Racing Leagues for TCR, GT4 and GTE respectively. Some really good results also there, against some top drivers. More on that in a later update!
iRacing Endurance Series Race 3 - Barcelona
Time to follow up the winning performance at Silverstone with another race in the iRacing Endurance Series, the third out of four races. Once again, the trusty Porsche 911 RSR was the weapon of choice and once again, we were to battle it out over 12 hours with three other car classes. Same old, same old.
With the summer weather finally reaching Sweden, only Wilhelm, Magnus and Marcus were representing the team in one car while the rest of the team were soaking up the sun outside, far from their rigs. The drivers chose to close the blinds and turn up the AC instead and prepare for a few hot stints.
This time, partly because our iRating is slowly creeping up but probably mainly because the series is not quite as popular in the GTE class, we ended up in top split! This means that we were to fight against the best GTE drivers in this event, something that triggered us to perform and bring home a good finish. We started off well, putting the car on pole, with just a few hundreds of a second separating the top four cars. After just a few laps, P2 overtook us and as it would turn out, never gave us the place back. They were just too fast.
The developers at iRacing are constantly updating the simulation software, and one of the biggest topics in the community is the tire model. Since the tire in the end is the only thing connecting the car to the road, the feeling and behavior of the tire in a racing simulator is one of the most important things in how the simulation is perceived by a driver. iRacing has historically struggled compared to the competitors in producing a tire model giving both a good feel when driving while at the same time having a realistic behavior when it comes to tire temperature, dropoff, wear, etc. Well, it isn’t perfect still, but this race gave us a good feeling that the current tire model on the GTE cars is at least the best so far!
Not only is the feeling of the car improved compared to previous tire models, but the wear and dropoff of the tire provided a much needed boost to how different strategies can be used in the race and opened up for different strategies in endurance racing (i.e. when to change tires, how many tires to change, etc). A very positive development to what used to be a pretty thin strategy portfolio, where only one strategy made sense based on the tire development over time when it comes to wear and dropoff.
Soon enough, iRacing will add the possibility to limit the amount of tires available for each race on the road side (it has already been introduced in the oval racing side), which will even further increase the strategy part of endurance racing, something we really look forward to!
Anyway, this was all a long-winded way of saying that we got to see a few different strategies being used in the race due to the latest tire model updates, making it more exciting and unpredictable than usual when it comes to the longer endurance races. We switched places with a car running a different strategy and were either P2 or P3 the bigger part of the race, until the pure pace of the other car put us firmly in P3 with about 3 hours to go. With a fairly comfortable cushion to P4, even though we had a few scares along the way, the last three hours were - to be fair - not that exciting and all about bringing the car home in one piece.
For us, P3 in top split is still a great result, especially when the car didn’t have as much as a scratch on it when crossing the finish line. Well, we might have to give a shout-out to iRacing’s netcode for that, to be fair we had contact with other cars but nothing major and nothing big enough to scratch our beautiful paint work.
Since this is an official iRacing series, championship points are counted both towards individuals as well as teams. With only one race to go in this series, we top the overall championship in the GTE class both individually and as a team and now the goal is to bring home those first places!
Philip takes second place in the Apex Racing Academy GT4 VRS Super Series
Staying true to the Hellracers long tradition of second places, Philip settled with an overall second place in the Apex GT4 series this summer. It is a league using the two GT4 cars (Porsche 718 Cayman and BMW M4) on the iRacing service, where the setups are fixed and provided by the Apex Racing Academy giving all competitors an even playing field. That makes Philip’s effort even more impressive - in all the races, he finished as worst in fifth place with a second place in the last race of the season as his best finish.
The league also used reversed starting order in the feature race for P1 to P10 in the first heats, producing some really exciting racing in the feature race. Followers of the excellent broadcast provided by Apex have been able to see some nail-biting action with a lot of close racing and overtaking throughout the race. We have been following the league closely and we are certain that more than one Hellracer will attend the next time! Thanks to Apex for a fun season!
Welcome to our new member Rickard Karlsson!
Even though fairly new to the service, Rickard has shown great pace and the right mindset so we are really happy that he decided to join Hellracers! He’s another great GT driver who joins us just in time for the upcoming season of the big endurance leagues.
iRacing Endurance Series Race 2 - Silverstone
After a disastrous first race in this series, we went into the second race with lowered expectations. This time, 12 hours at Silverstone was the plan and once again we started in the GTE class with our Porsche 911 RSR. However, since summer means that other important things except sim racing occupy people’s minds we only had enough team members available to run one car.
Once again we ended up in third split, mostly due to the very small number of GTE cars in each split. Unfortunately, with four classes the iRacing match-making system decided to only put 6-8 GTE cars in each of the top splits (8 cars in our split) while the other three classes (GT3, GT4 and TCR) made up for the rest of the in total 55 cars. The GTE field in our split was quite strong but it is inevitable that over 12 hours a few cars retire which left us with few cars to compete against.
Anyway, on to the race. We didn’t find quite the pace in qualifying that we wanted but ended up with a lucky second place anyway, just a few hundreds of a second ahead of third. The start was uneventful and we could find the rhythm quite quickly. It became apparent some time into the first stint that there were three main competitors running away from the rest, and our car was one of them. It’s quite something when there is only a few seconds between contending cars even after hours of racing, and it felt like this could be a really exciting race. We switched places among the top three a few times but about one third into the race, the other two cars had a moment and collided, giving us the lead.
As it would turn out, we didn’t give away the lead after that, except for the pit stops when we were on slightly different strategies. Our car crossed the finish line only 15 seconds before second place, but with the rest of the GTE field being lapped by us one or more laps. Finally an endurance race victory after some less fortunate races!
