Last weekend I was invited along by a small team of simulator races working within Jaguar Land Rover to participate in the Simply Race Endurance Series 12hr race around the Nurburgring GP circuit.
Having not been on a simulator for well over a year, I thought it would be a nice casual event to get my eye back into the sim racing world.
On arrival I soon realised that this was not an event for simply "getting my eye in" as 90% of teams turned up in their full team uniform and even with their own wheels to attach to the Thrustmaster T300 wheel rigs used by the Simply Race team.
The 1st experience I got of driving on the Rfactor 2 version of the Nurburgring was in an hour long practice session, allowing our team of 4 to get a bit of time settling into the day ahead.
I was the 1st of the team members to go out for practice as I had the least experience of how the simulator handled, and unsurprisingly it was an eye opening 15 minutes, with plenty of spins and of track excersion (hopefully there won't be so many at the 1st practice session at Pembrey next weekend)
Once the hours session was complete, it was becoming very obvious that we were going to be propping up the foot of the grid. However, team mate Will Richardson managed to get us off the bottom of the leader board in practice, and putting us only a couple of tenths away from the top 10!
Starting from P14 was a great opportunity to put me straight into the firing line and become more settled and used to the simulator and get into a rhythm on circuit.
The 1st stint started fairly badly, falling off the track after being slightly over ambitious going down towards the Dunlop curve (Turn 7)
However, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as it allowed me to get into a consistent sequence of laps, giving me plenty of free time to get familiar with the set up... and suddenly the lap times began to drop and the gap to the teams infant with it.
Before I knew it we were battling for 14th place, and gaining on the rest of the pack ahead.
By the time the second 45 minute stint came around, I had climbed to 12th place, with the pace getting quicker and quicker.
The next 2 hours and 15 minutes were all about getting the team into a strong position for the remaining 9 hours once my stint was complete, and upon my final pit stop, team Scuderia Novizi were running in 8th place, with my lap times having gone from a 1:50.964 to a 1:46.273, with the potential of further improvements without the damage sustained by a few clumsy incidents.
From that point on it was down to the remaining 3 team members to complete their stints, with the team eventually finishing in 13th after a few unfortunate mishaps towards the end of the race.
Hopefully this could be the start of getting a bit more experience with the sims at Simply Race, after they put on a fantastic and well organised event. Sim racing doesn't quite have the buzz of racing a real car, but is an excellent and cost effective way for people to enjoy and experience racing 1st hand.
And finally I would like to say a huge thank you to Edson, Pierce and Will for being extremely supportive and excellent team mates throughout the race! Hopefully I will be able to join you for another round in the not too distant future :)
Jack
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