As I said in my blog http://40yroldgamingtriathlete.blogspot.com/2014/06/iracing-using-f1-williams-to-recover-sr.html , I have been watching the 24 Heures du Mans for the past 15 years or more. I would get up and swap out VCR tapes in the middle of the night so I would have the whole race recorded. But this year I would do something that I have never done before, stay up 24 hours and watch the whole race on Fox Sport 1 and 2!!!
Their coverage of the race started at 8:30 am on Saturday and ended at 9:30 am on Sunday. They had a break in coverage between 5:00 pm and 6:30 pm. So in between this time I switched over to RadioLeMans.com to listen to their coverage. So I got up at 8:15 am on Saturday to begin my Racing Grind. I completely forgot about the 30 minute pre-show before the flag waved at 9. SO THAT WAS 30 MINUTES THAT I COULD HAVE BEEN SLEEPING LOL. Fernando Alonso Ferrari F1 driver was the Tricolor waver, which in layman terms mean he waved the green flag. I was sitting up on the couch so excited for the next 24 hours of nothing but racing on TV. Now I can go on and give a some what detailed description of what happened every hour but instead I will just give my thoughts and impressions from the race.
The Toyota Driver of the #8 should not have been going that fast in the rain. I was a stupid mistake that took out the third Audi and come definitely have been avoided with a clear head. It is such a long race to be thinking that you could have gained that much in those conditions.
It was so good seeing Dempsey Racing sitting on pole of the GTE AM class at the start. Patrick Dempsey, Joe Foster and Patrick Long make up such a good team. Patrick Dempsey and Joe Foster have been partners for a long time. Adding Patrick Long to the team for the second year is a no brainer. Do to an unfortunate penalty for spinning the tires the team dropped down to 6th and fought hard and steady to finish 5th this year. I look forward to seeing them there again next year. I think the strategy they had this year combine that with some good luck and we could be seeing the Winners of 2015 LeMans GTE AM class. Speaking of that class, it was very nice to see Allan Simonsen's team from last year win this year and honor he in doing so. In case you don't know Allan died last year on only the third lap of the 2013 LeMans driving for Aston Martin Racing. Aston Martin went on to withdraw after his death. So it was great seeing them on the top spot of the podium this year.
Having Porsche race in the LMP1 class this year brings more competition to Toyota and LeMans dominating Audi. The car looks great, unfortunately had some very bad luck at the end with Mark Webber's team car and lost the drivetrain. Can't wait till next year when Nissan joins back and racing in 2015.
So back to me and my Grind. At about 2 am I decided to get online and try and get some more of my SR back on iRacing. I was so jonesing to race after watching so much quality racing on TV. So I booted up the computer. Threw on my Piloti Lmp PRO 17 racing shoes, my Alpinestar Tech 1-ZX gloves and my Turtle Beach X12 headsets and I was ready to go. This is where I learned that I can not listen to the race on RadioLeMans.com and race a F1 car at Silverstone cause everytime I would hear the noise of the race in the background, I would think it was my car. Plus it made me realize how much I use sound to drive on iRacing. But it was still fun to get those laps in finally get back over 2.00 in SR. So after doing the math I realize that I would have to do 10 more time trials to get to 4.99. This is a learning experience and punishment at the same time. So next season season me and Jon have decided that, if we lose SR in a race that we will jump on the time trial to recover what we lost instead of thinking we would race our SR back up like we did this season. It is going to be long and tedious but a good learning experience. We are also contemplating using the Star Mazda practice to work on car control to get ready for the DW12 road series. I was very happy I watched the whole race and I also recorded it on my DVR. As soon as the cars crossed the finish line, I was asleep 5 minutes later. I am hope that next year I will be able to make a trip back to France and watch the race in person. If not I think I have found my 24 hour of LeMans tradition now, and that is Grinding out for 24 hours of Racing Bliss.
So thank you again for reading this post. I am still on the fence if I am going to do 1 or 2 more about this weekend. Definitely 1 more but possibly 2. Until a couple hours later for the next one LOL.
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