So, it appears I’m back into this properly. I’m not a very good road racer so I picked the newly released low-powered
USF2000, which is considered the first rung on the Road to Indy ladder. I wanted to learn how to drive an open-wheeled car as my experience has mainly been driving oval tintops (aka NASCAR). They run a mix of road and oval courses at North American tracks, so I thought my oval experience would also help in this series.
I started the season very slowly, and while I still wouldn’t consider myself fast, I’m definitely making progress and getting increasingly better results. In 23 starts I’ve had one win (at the Homestead-Miami roval), 10 top 5 finishes, and 15 top 10s.
They’re only 15-min sprint races so my strategy has been to keep out of any carnage on the first lap and then just consistently run decent lap times while not trying to overheat the tyres. Wear isn’t an issue, but I was finding I was losing a lot of grip if I got the back end sliding too much. You can’t really spin the tyres as they’re so low-powered (175bhp), but you can really throw it into the corners with off-throttle oversteer, which seems fine until you can’t keep it on the track anymore. So I learnt to be smoother with my inputs. I’ve realised it doesn’t need a lot of steering input at all, and max 60% brakes or the fronts lock up. It’s a fun car!
I’m still driving NASCAR, focusing on the C-class trucks this season, plus the ARCA feeder series. I seem not to have lost any of my race craft or tyre-saving skills in these cars in the two years I was off the service. I’m catching people fast at the end of a run. My technique isn’t as useful in these shorter races, but if I decide to enter the NASCAR iRacing Series again, those races are 50-100% race distance, so I should do reasonably well.
TL;DR, I’m enjoying iRacing again.