SSZ: iRacing IMSA Open Series Update No.8

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 Sebring, with the races occurring during the night hours. I am decently quick, but not terribly consistent.

This week ended up being a very difficult week, for a few reasons, but I still feel positive about how this set me up for the drop round weeks ahead.

I’ll lead things off with that I absolutely hate daylight savings time. With the clocks rolled back 1 hour versus GMT, that means my 8:45pm EST is now either 7:45pm or 9:45pm. I now have to either rush dinner, or stay up late on a work night to do a race on a week night.

Curiously what seems to be my fastest setup is one I hand made myself, and I managed to match my qualifying time from S2 but with a full tank of fuel (another piece of evidence of my ongoing improvement). Unfortunately, my setups are not the greatest for tire life (more on that later).

Another observation, is that I couldn’t get close to my TB time (currently 0.5s off), so I’m not sure if I did a sector or two on a lower downforce tune a few seasons ago. Regardless, Sebring being a very technical track (and more importantly bumpy), makes it very hard to run consistent and complete lap times.

The first race I attempted was on Wednesday. In qualifying, I messed up turn 1 thru 5 but managed to beat my old PB by 0.5s anyway. It was good enough for 6th in a stacked top split (3900 SoF). I picked up a position at the start, but I lost out when somebody trying to pass me got loose and I had to check up, which lost me a couple more positions. I tried to defend a pass into the final corner the following lap and just scrapped the outside tire wall and it broke the rear suspension. I pitted and it required a 13min repair so I just DNF’d.

My 2nd race was on Saturday morning and got into 2nd split, but an SoF of 3000 and a full grid still means a good potential points haul.

I qualified 3rd but might have been good enough for 2nd. Beginning of the race I was just behind P2 and managing to keep a decent gap to 4th. I lost a spot during the pit cycle, but after the pit stop the leader right in front of me got spun by a GT car and allowed me to catch up but unfortunately couldn’t get by. I made a mistake with really worn tires at the end and allowed P5 to go by. I couldn’t catch back up so that’s where I stayed, but luckily he ran out of gas so I ended up 4th. 123 points and a clean race meant a lot of SR my way. I know I can do better, with points so hopefully I can improve later in the weekend.

My next race was Saturday afternoon and I made a very stacked top split. Although I had a clean race, it unfortunately did not go well. I qualified at the back (thanks to not getting a well-together lap in qualifying again), and was stuck behind slower traffic at the start of the race.

I went to pit early to try to undercut the guys ahead of me, but unfortunately caught GT traffic afterwards. I ended up a distant 10th, so hopefully my final race of the week will go better.

My final race, I decided to do on Saturday night went almost exactly like the first one. Started 4th, but scrapped the exit tire wall at T17 due to aero wash and broke the suspension. It should have been an easy top 5, but I ruined it. Another DNF for the week, meaning I end with the race being my lowest score of the season, period. My SR is also just below 3100, with it almost 3300 at the beginning of the week.

Going into the drop rounds, I still hold 1st in division 2, with my overall position in 4th. However, there are less than 100 points to P2 in division 2, and they have an extra race still to count. It will be very close to try to keep the division lead. I will need to have some good points races in the last month to try to increase my points total.

This coming week in the iRacing IMSA series is at Suzuka, a track I enjoy, but have not raced on in the IMSA series yet, so I’m not sure how I’ll stack up until after the week gets under way.

Here are my full season stats below (As of Nov/10/2024 8pm EST (end of Week 9 of 13):

Races Completed:	25
Pole Positions:	3
Class Wins:	5
Class Podiums:	11
Top 5 Finishes:	15
Championship Points:	1313
Championship Position (All Divisions):	4th
Championship Position (Division #2):	1st

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

Week # (Track)	Split / Position Finished:	Points Awarded:
1 (Indianpolis)	Split 2 / P1	137
2 (Fuji – No Chicane)	Split 1 / P1	137
3 (Mosport)	Split 1 / P2	159
4 (Spa)	Split 1 / P4	144
5 (Zolder – Alt)	Split 1 / P2	142
6 (Road Atlanta)	Split 2 / P1	194
7 (Silverstone)	Split 1 / P3	137
8 (Interlagos)	Split 1 / P2	140
9 (Sebring)	Split 2 / P4	123
10 (Suzuka)
11 (Road America)
12 (Monza)
13 (Daytona)

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