SSZ: iRacing IMSA Open Series Update No.5 + Petit Le Mans

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 Road Atlanta, which I used as practice for the weekend’s Special Event, the iRacing Petit Le Mans. I’m decent at the track, so I was looking forward to some good running.

The first race I did on the Tuesday was incredibly intense. I messed up both qualifying laps which put me starting 12th of 13 in the no.6 car…yikes.

The start was decent, I climbed a few positions but unfortunately had slight contact with another car that I thought I had cleared and ended up in a half spin that lost all the spots I gained since the start. I put my head down and got back to work.

I passed half the field before my pit stop. Pitting from what the iRacing standings showed me as being 6th. I came out in 4th place, and directly on P3’s rear bumper. This turned into P3 for me and fighting with P2 after somebody else pitted. What ensued was maybe the most intense battle I ever had on iracing.

The next 10mins I tried so hard to pass the guy – he was on a bit of a lower downforce tune, whereas I’m on a high downforce tune. I almost got it done a few times but my tires were failing me. I had the best opportunity on the penultimate lap coming out of 10b where P2 was stuck behind two GT cars. I wanted to get a good launch but the tires had given up and I just lit them up on exit. I lost all momentum and hoped for bad traffic on the last lap.

It almost happened, as we caught a GT car in the esses but unfortunately at a fortuitous time for P2. I got right up on P2 coming into turn 6 as we caught another GT car but I overdrove turn 7 and half spun the car on my own. I lost P3 and ended up in P4, netting 129pts for the effort. Not bad, but I know I can do better, especially since I had p2 had it not been for the earlier spin.

An important thing to note is that this resulted in me matching my total points from last season, with 2 more rounds left to be counted. This is an incredible achievement for me, and shows how much I’ve improved over last season.

Next race started almost exactly like the last. I set a time in qualifying but was .9s off in one sector, the other I aborted because I almost spun on cold tires, so started 9th of 11.

I came back to WIN! I don’t know exactly how I got up to P2 and then the leader lost it all on their own when they had a 4s lead. Also, this race yielded 194pts!!!! This will be huge for the season championship for me. Incredible result!

Based on these results, I felt really good heading into the iRacing Petit Le Mans as part of the Simcast Racing Team. My teammate was doing pretty well, pace wise, as well.

I was in charge of qualifying, and managed to put it on Pole Position! I led the race early on and came into the pits at the end of my first stint in 2nd place. Unfortunately it went down hill from there. An inexperienced GTP car essentially brake tested me and I unfortunately smashed into them, resulting in a lengthy pit stop. Multiple accidents later, we finished 10th and many laps down. It was not a good race overall for us, but I got the fastest lap as a consolation prize.

This coming week the iRacing IMSA series races at Silverstone Grand Prix circuit. It’s not a circuit I am fond of, but I will do my best as always.

Here are my full season stats below (As of Oct/20/2024 8pm EST (end of Week 6 of 13):

Races Completed:	16
Pole Positions:	3
Class Wins:	5
Class Podiums:	9
Top 5 Finishes:	11
Championship Points:	913
Championship Position (All Divisions):	4th
Championship Position (Division #2):	1st

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

Week #	Split / Position Finished:	Points Awarded:
1	Split 2 / P1	137
2	Split 1 / P1	137
3	Split 1 / P2	159
4	Split 1 / P4	144
5	Split 1 / P2	142
6	Split 2 / P1	194
7
8
9
10
11
12
13

---

Thank You again for taking time out of your day to read this. If you liked it, feel free to drop a comment, like and share within your circles! If you are a user on WordPress, also feel free to subscribe to get updates first!