SSZ: iRacing IMSA Open Series Update No.7

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 Interlagos, which I had some limited success at during Season 3. I practiced for a bit in the wet before hopping into the first race session of the week on Monday night thinking that was enough…..and I was wrong.

There were only 7 entrants, and I was 5th rated, with the split having a SoF of 3500, so I didn’t think the race was going to go well. 4th was realistically the best I could do. Although I qualified 5th and got a good start, I had 2 spins and a curious couple of contacts throughout the race that made my SR plumet back down to what it was before my last race at Silverstone. P5 and a whopping 59 points.

Realizing that my pace would be good enough for 2nd split (which I wouldn’t get into, given my SR north of 3200 now), I spent Tuesday night trying out some different setups to try to get faster lap times. I found one that was better than what I had been previously running and was happy enough with my pace that I felt I was ready for another race.

The next race I did was on Wednesday, and it went pretty well. I tied for 2nd in qualifying, just 0.15s off pole, but started 3rd because I had the lower iRating (the other guy was 6100 iR). It took me about 10 laps to pass P2 and afterwards started to very slowly catch the leader.

The leader was the guy I tied in qualifying earlier but he never really got that far away from P2 and myself. I caught a bit of traffic at a good time and was able to make up 3s on the leader in a single lap. At that point I seemed to be quicker and we proceeded to have an excellent battle. I made an attempt to pass on the front straight but aborted the pass by turn in just a few laps before coming around the GT cars for the second time.

As we came up on them, it was also when the optimal pit window opened. I could gamble and try to undercut the leader hoping I didn’t come out behind slower LMP2’s, or stay out and hope to get through traffic with ease. As we headed onto the pit straight, the leader decided to pit. I had decided to pit, but at this point I decided to do the opposite and pray that traffic wouldn’t be too bad.

I did about 5 laps and thankfully the traffic wasn’t too bad. However, I ended up coming out of the pits right on the leader’s bumper again and so the battle continued on for a number of laps. I wasn’t able to get enough momentum to pass into either the first corner or the next braking zone, so was essentially stuck behind him.

In the end, traffic was the decider of the race. I lost traction coming out of the Senna Esses, and then we caught a twosome of GT cars. The leader got by, but I was too far behind him and had to wait another corner to clear those two cars. This was a few laps from the end of the race, so I ended up finishing 2nd by 2.5s. A solid 140pts and an clean race, which undid the messy race from Monday.

I had time in my personal schedule to do a final race on Friday afternoon after work. I was last ranked in a heavily stacked top split (SoF 3900), but qualified and finished 8th. It wasn’t the cleanest race, but I had pace for a little higher I think. I posted the 4th fastest lap of the race, but I think I would have finished around 6th or 7th. The points wouldn’t have been as much anyway, so it’s time to prepare for next week.

Since the 8th week is over, this is a great time to reflect on how much I’ve improved over the last season. I had 849 points across my best 8 races, and 0 wins across top and mid splits. This season thru 8 rounds, I have 1190 points with 5 wins, some in top split. I have improved by about 46 points per race, which is normally at least 2-3 positions each race. I am thrilled with my pace. Interestingly, I would have won the Season 3 championship by 6 points with this amount, so I can’t be anything but happy about my results so far this season.

That being said, the points this season are getting VERY close. P2 in Division 2 has closed the gap with 78 points and has an extra race in hand left to do. It’s looking like it’ll be a hard one to hold on to. However, there is a good chance I could squeak out some good results. A lot of the races at the backend of the season usually have high participation, so there will be opportunities for some good points.

This coming week in the iRacing IMSA series is at Sebring International Raceway in the dark. Please dear lord don’t have it rain as well! I’ll have my fingers crossed.

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

Races Completed:	22
Pole Positions:	3
Class Wins:	5
Class Podiums:	11
Top 5 Finishes:	14
Championship Points:	1190
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	Split 1 / P2	140
9
10
11
12
13

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