SSZ: 2024 iRacing Indy 6hr Recap

Hello and welcome back to the very first edition of Steve’s Simracing Zone! Today I will give a recap of my race in the Simcast Racing LMP2 during the 2024 iRacing Indy 6hr that happened this past weekend.

Having practiced a lot the last couple weeks and doing my regular IMSA series LMP2 races – which are also at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course this past week; I felt really good for pace. Being the first endurance race I will have done in my car of choice (I wouldn’t consider myself a GT driver) I really wanted to show what I could do.

I knew I was pretty fast within my irating cohort, so teaming up with Ross, (who is newish to iRacing, so his rating is well below mine), meant we’d be racing against teams with an average irating that would be in a split (read: lobby) below me during the IMSA sprint races. I know Ross is punching well above his irating so I knew we’d be in front running pace.

I was the faster of the two of us, so it was decided that I would qualify and start the race, Ross would take the middle stints and I would finish.

I qualified P4, two tenths off of pole, but less than one tenth from P2. So pace suspicions confirmed, as far as I was concerned. Now on to the race to be able to convert to a podium.

Things started a bit fishy, because when we started our formation lap, our pole sitter didn’t give much space to the GTP field. I was somewhat concerned, as GTP drivers in this cohort or lower have more difficulty handling the car, and have more crashes than the rest of the classes, especially on the first lap.

Oftentimes, I have to battle with GTP cars early on if there isn’t a lot of space given to that field. GTP cars corner and brake slower than LMP2 cars but have a much higher acceleration and top speed, so overall are quicker on the lap because of this.

So once the pole sitter gunned the throttle to start our race, I timed it perfectly to him and was able to leap around p2 and p3 to take p2 and follow the pole sitter down into the first corners.

Ross was finishing a work shift, so was not able to get on the coms until about lap 10, so I had to rely on the iRacing spotter early on. This unfortunately had some dire consequences for our race.

Braking into Turn 1 on the first lap of the race, I saw the yellow flag pop up, and my CPU spotter said “car stopped ahead” but failed to tell me where on the track. Normally they would say “go left/right” to avoid any spinning/stopped/slow car. I was cautious coming around the corner, but the A pillar of the LMP2 is so large that I can’t see anything once I’ve turned into a corner (I also race with a single monitor, so this doesn’t help either).

Unfortunately once I came around the corner at 3/4 speed, there were two GTP cars parked perpendicular to the race track on the racing line. A microsecond before making contact with one of them my spotter finally says “go left”, but it was far too late – I clattered the front right and broke the suspension.

I limped back to the pits and started my repairs, requiring a 6.5m pit stop. Got back out and we were dead last, 5 laps down. I got back out, finished my opening double, and Ross took over for his triple.

Ross did an amazing job, his pace wasn’t that far off mine and he seemed to get faster each lap. A few mistakes, but nothing that wasn’t unrecoverable.

We miscalculated our fuel load, so Ross ended up finishing the race for us after my 2nd double, but did a solid job bringing the car home.

Ultimately, we finished 10th in class, 6 laps off the lead (losing a lap due to the extra stop). However, we had blistering pace; both of us having unlapped ourselves multiple times during the pit cycles from all our other competitors.

Had I not gotten caught up in the crash on lap 1, I know we could have landed on the podium. It’s one of those deals where luck was not on our side. However it was very encouraging to know we were up there on pace.

We are looking forward to the next endurance event. At the moment, we are still planning – could be Petit Le Mans next month or perhaps the Fuji 8hr in November. Stay tuned here to find out!

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