SSZ: iRacing IMSA Open Series Update No.6

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 Silverstone, a track that, much like Spa, is not suited to my driving style. However, unlike Spa, I particularly dislike driving Silverstone in the LMP2.

I practiced Monday and Tuesday and became very frustrated because I wasn’t getting the lap times I needed them to be to be competitive. Particularly, the first sector was incredibly poor for me. I couldn’t figure it out; I studied on Garage61 and tried to replicate it, but could never get it right. For context, I hadn’t posted a clean laptime under a 1:48.000 all week, when I wanted to be in the low-mid 47’s.

I trudged on and signed up for a race on Wednesday, after more struggles in practice beforehand. I somehow qualified P2 in top split, 0.3s off pole with a 1:46.5xx. I have no idea where that came from. I even out qualified the guy leading the championship standings overall at the time. I was incredibly confused.

However, the race did not go well. I dropped a couple places after about the 1/3 race distance, which I was expecting, given my race pace in practice. Unfortunately, I made a bit of a divebomb into Brooklands corner trying to quickly pass a GTD car and my car started to spin. I couldn’t catch it and ended up backwards on the exit curb, where the next LMP2 car came by and slammed into me. I DNF’d; P11 with 16 points.

Next race did not go that much better. I qualified P2 again, but lost my braking point into the chicane before the green flag even waved and spun the car. I recovered to 7th but it was far from a clean race.

Third time though, was in fact the charm. I qualified 4th, and based on the results it looked like I might end up in a bit of a pace island. Sure enough that was the case. By the time I pitted, I was 12s back of 3rd and 7s ahead of 5th. I ended up P3, 19s off of 2nd and a full lap ahead of 4th, thanks to being the last car ahead of the GTP leader on their last lap. I guess someone on the podium had an issue, but that’s racing.

That race was super clean and my pace finally got in the window I wanted, posting several laps in the 47s, with a best of a 47.4. I picked up a boat load of SR points as well. Critically, I ended up with 137 championship points, which is exactly that my goal was to achieve. This brought me back up to 6th in overall standings and 100+ points clear of 2nd in Division 2 standings.

This coming week in the iRacing IMSA series races at Interlagos Grand Prix circuit can’t come soon enough. Interlagos is a fun track, I can’t wait to get out of Silverstone.

Here are my full season stats below (As of Oct/27/2024 8pm EST (end of Week 7 of 13):

Races Completed:	20
Pole Positions:	3
Class Wins:	5
Class Podiums:	10
Top 5 Finishes:	12
Championship Points:	1050
Championship Position (All Divisions):	6th
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	Split 1 / P3	137
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!