SSZ: iRacing IMSA Open Series Update #2

Hello, and welcome back to another edition of Steve’s Simracing Zone! Today I’ll be updating my progress once again for the 2024 Season 4 IMSA Open Series Championship in the LMP2 class.

This week we headed to my home track, Canadian Tire Motorsports Park. iRacing yet again blessed us with 90%+ rain for a second straight week (semi sarcastic), so I was pretty pumped for some good results.

My first qualifying session went really well. For a second, I had provisional pole, only to end up 3rd about 3 tenths off of pole in top split with a SoF of ~3000, so I was really proud of that.

The race however, went horribly. I accidentally picked my Le Mans Wet setup for the race, instead of my Mosport Wet setup (I mis-clicked I guess). I struggled for grip in the ultra-low downforce setup, and lost 1-2s per lap to the front. I thought I picked up damage, it was that different from qualifying. To add insult to injury, my tires wore out too much, and weren’t going to make it the full race. This was after I decided to make an early stop. Instead of continuing on in misery, I just retired the car with 10mins remaining. That was when I realized my setup choice error.

I knew I had good pace, so I knew a good result was going to come, it was just a matter of when. Turns out the “when”, didn’t take too long, as my second race went… REALLY well.

The next day, iRacing threw the community a bone and lessened the rain forecast down to 28% on the Tuesday, which meant a high chance it wasn’t going to rain.

That race was a completely bone dry session, so I was a bit worried I might not do as well. However, I ended up qualifying on pole in top split by about a tenth of a second! I knew the guy in P2 was pretty quick, so I wasn’t sure if he just messed his laps up or something, but we’d find out soon enough.

I got a really good launch at the start – catching the field napping – and soared off to an early lead. My lead stayed at about 1-2s for the first third of the race until we encountered GT traffic. It temporarily closed up to hardly anything when I caught a gaggle of GT cars in the Turn 8,9,10 complex. Fortunately, I was never in danger of losing the lead. A few laps later the guy in P2 crashed with a GTD car, which meant my lead grew to about 5s instantly to the new P2. It grew further to about 8s before the pit stops.

I wasn’t fuel saving, but the guys behind me were doing that somewhat, so when everyone cycled thru on their pitstop I was only 5s ahead. However, it mattered not in the end, as I took home the victory by about 3-4s!

I did another race on Friday (which ended up being wet again), and was blessed with some famous iRacers in my split; Daniel Morad and Matt Malone. I was competing against Daniel in class, and Matt was in GTD. I put the car P2 in qualifying (0.1s off) and Morad qualified P4, a further second behind. During the race, I grabbed the lead early after a slight coming together with the leader in T10, and led the next few laps. However, the ace pro-driver bested me in the end, and I finished 18s off of him in P2 and we finished P1 and P2 OVERALL.

Even though I finished P2, because the strength of field was higher, I ended up with 159 points (vs 147 for the win in the earlier race), so that was exactly what I could have hoped for! Immediately after that race I was 5th overall and P1 in division 2 standings! It has since come down to 6th and 1st respectively.

This coming week I will be traveling for work, so I will miss a couple days, but will be back to run by mid-week when the iRacing IMSA series races at Spa-Francorchamps.

Here are my full season stats below (As of Sep/30/2024 8pm EST (end of Week 3 of 13):

Races Completed:	8
Pole Positions:	2
Class Wins:	3
Class Podiums:	4
Top 5 Finishes:	5
Championship Points:	433
Championship Position (All Divisions):	6th
Championship Position (Division #2):	1st

Here is the tracker for my counted results from each week (Pos / Points):

Wk 1

Wk 2

Wk 3

Wk 4

Wk 5

Wk 6

Wk 7

Wk 8

Wk 9

Wk 10

Wk 11

Wk 12

Wk 13

1 / 137

1 / 137

2/ 159

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