iPanic Over a New Season - iRacing Blog, Day 6

Day 6: May 30th, 2013

I didn't look at the calendar closely enough, apparently. I thought I’d have more time to become familiar with the cars and tracks before I needed to race. Now I know that I have to race this weekend, and I haven’t even received my wheel yet.

This can only end horribly.

Let me explain how the iRacing seasons work. Save for the absolute top tier series, each calendar year has four seasons, with twelve races in a schedule. The rookie schedules are broken up even further, and consist or shorter four-week seasons, one of which just started earlier this week.

I said last week that my mission was to pick up speed at Lime Rock. This would be a great plan, were the first race not at Summit Point.

Well, shit.

I quickly cobbled together a testing video after realizing the season had started. I’m babbling for twenty minutes, all worried about how my first race is going to go. I’m still a little insecure over the whole idea.

Here’s the other thing about most of the iRacing series that makes them different from a traditional racing series: The race for a week runs several times in a day. So does practice and qualifying. In fact, users are encouraged to race more than once for their weekly race. Points are scored based on the strength of the field and finishing position, averaging the best half of races a user ran in a week (rounded up). Basically, this means that if I run a race five times in a week, my best three performances are averaged together for my weekly points. This also means it’s to a driver’s advantage to always race an even number of times, since there’s no risk of hurting their average.

This seems a bit convoluted at first, and it’s still a little strange to me, but I’m more concerned about whether I’ll be prepared for a race. Safe racing factors in heavily to driver progression, and being a part of a lap one, turn one wreck would stunt that progression significantly. I’m a little uneasy about being caught up in the pack during a race and driving a different racing line that causes an accident. I’m informed by my iRacing-experienced Forza crewmate that starting from the pits is always an option, but that’s potentially sacrificing the chance at an excellent race finish for extra safety. It's something I'll have to consider for my first outing, regardless.

In the meantime, my lap time needs to be close to a 1:25 to be fast at Summit Point. In my initial practice session, my time drops from a 1:30 to a 1:28.2. It’s rather slow, but for still using a 360 controller in twenty minutes of driving, it’s acceptable for today.

Give me a wheel and an hour, and I can make something happen.

Side Notes

A bit of housekeeping is in order. To the user on Twitter that clued me into the utility that allows for easy loading and viewing of custom paint schemes, thank you. I don’t know if I’m going to use it yet, but it looks awesome.

ColdPhone also commented on using a PS3 controller for driving in iRacing, and I’ll say right now that it’s going to be tough, especially given the sticks on a Dualshock are relatively loose. Still, if you’re comfortable with that controller in a game like Gran Turismo 5, I think iRacing might be manageable with a decent amount of practice. It’ll just be rough with precision, as my videos have highlighted thus far.

Finally, I’m testing streaming from time to time on Twitch.tv. I’m still not sure one way or another if it’s entirely feasible, but I’m probably going to try it on Saturday night, once I’ve hooked up my wheel (which has hopefully arrived by then). My bandwidth is barely adequate, but I’m hoping it’s enough for both online practice and streaming. I doubt I’ll stream any races live, though, just so I don’t risk creating lag issues for anyone involved. Recapping races afterwards, live or otherwise? Totally a possibility.

One slight gripe regarding the streaming, though: It appears my Twitch channel is stuck on the first title I ever used when streaming. Guess everything I ever show there will be associated with Forza 4 Driving for Extra Life.

As if I needed to be reminded of that horrible mistake I made a few years back. Never trying 24 hours of Forza on short notice again.