Lionheart IndyCar Series: The Iowa "Corn Mash" 105 Race Recap

(This will be a post where I list things that I learned I need to work on in order to take advantage of my qualifying and many practice sessions)

Well what can I say. Fuel calculations you mean witch (to be PC!) I can not believe that this will be the 4th race in a row where fuel comes into play with my race. I am either having to splash and go with just a hand full of laps to go or I run out of fuel on the back straight and the car shuts off crossing the line like at Indy. And this time my mind is tell me one thing and the DashMeter Pro is telling me another.....and I listen to the stupid technology! Any way let get to what happened.

So another good qualifying session by me if I do say so myself. I qualified 3rd which I believe ties my best qualifying position so far this season. However it would be great if I could hold on to those spots. Being a very road race concentrated driver with about a season or 2 of Indy oval fixed under my belt, it makes one feel good when they out qualify people who have many more oval races under their belt. However what gives them the edge is the number of races under their belts. You can be the best qualifier in the history of any series but if you don't know how to handle traffic, draft, passing, clean driving and FUEL (HINT TO SELF!!) it doesn't mean anything. Got to first the race to have a chance at winning the race. So there I am sitting in 3rd thinking to myself. Alright given the fuel runs you have done, not in draft, you will run out of gas at 68 laps. So that is a one stop race. However the tires will last between 20 and 40 laps depending on how hard you drive and what line you take. From the practice rooms and listening to the other drivers, hugging the bottom burns up the tires quick. If you run a mid line around the track then they will last to about the 40th lap before you have to start lifting. Okay pace lap over, pace car in, leader goes and I floor it in 2nd!!! (I have to start practicing which gear is best for starting out based on which track we are at.) I hold my position with some luck but the front 2 get a jump on me probably starting in first. So again I will not give a lap by lap account of everything but the major points and what I took away from this race. Good clean racing till lap 26, the first caution of the race. Starting at about lap 20 maybe 21, Rick Music had caught up to me and we had a close battle for 4th I held him off up to lap 26 then the caution came out. However it must have come out the moment he passed me cause I got my position back. Okay Jeremy lets to math, 120 laps total minus the 26 we just ran leaves 94 laps left. I will run 67 laps then get gas. So that leaves me with 27 laps that I need fuel for after this stop. So a splash for about 7 gallons to be safe.

Alright so here is another part of work that I need to do, PIT STOPS!!  I come in sitting in 4th, fuel 4 tires I leave in 7th. And iRacing is good about simulations but all the "Pit Crews" are the same. So where am I losing time? Well after watching the replay that Tony Lurcock does for us every week on YouTube Lionheart Racing Series YouTube Channel (and sitting in 4th didn't hurt LOL) I can see that I come into the pit some what timid. I have the fear of overshooting the pit or sliding into the pit wall. Why do I have this fear.....cause I have done both multiple times. And why have I done both, cause I don't practice my pit stops as much as I should or even at all during practice sessions. And leaving the pits even with the pit limiter on I am nervous of spinning out and into said pit wall LOL. So losing .2 of a second could be 3 places easily. Also I am still getting use to the macro fuel settings you can do in the middle of a race. And after the race that I didn't take tires but didn't know that the tires were unchecked when I thought they were checked. So It is the lack of practice that causes me to lose these little seconds which add up. So out 7th....lets see what happens or I should say where my mind loses all of its smarts.

Up to full throttle again and we are going. Now all my fuel calculations this time are not taking the caution laps into consideration cause I look at those as laps in the bank. WRONG!!! Clean running, then caution 2 comes out. Okay lets run through the math again. Lap 49 plus 67 laps for a full tank run equals 116. Plus the caution laps should be enough to make it without stopping after this. I will just have to conserve my tires as best as possible to have some left near the end. I got this it is taking a chance but the math is sound (in my head). Again due to the same pit fears I come out in 11th. I lost 2 positions before the second caution. Okay starting 11th with a strategy that I feel like will give me a chance to win. Green flag waves and off we go again.. 22 laps later the 3rd and what will be the final caution comes out. Now this whole time I have been running the math for fuel in my head. This time for some unknown reason I look down at my DashMeter Pro, and it tells me that I have enough fuel to make it to the end. Lap 71 to lap 120 is 49 laps. I got this with the fuel I have left according to DashMeter Pro. So I stay out, back to 4th I know I can hold on to 4th so this is going to work. Green flag flies, heart is beating, could this be the first win for me in the series, could my fuel math finally work? HELL NO!!  I look down at my DashMeter Pro after getting up to speed and burning fuel. I look at fuel consumption and fuel remaining versus laps left = short 3 laps. But I look at fuel add (which is the fuel that DashMeter calculates I need to finish the laps remaining and it says 0). This is where the brain goes "Jeremy you have messed up 3 times with your fuel math so the DashMeter is right because it is taking caution laps into consideration.....AGAIN WRONG COME TO FIND OUT STUPID BRAIN!) And here I am for the next 45 laps watching the remaining fuel be 3 laps less than the remaining laps. Now I wonder if anyone caught the other mistake I made with the number of laps. In a race that has rolling starts according to DashMeter Pro, you complete 1 lap at the start of the race even though it is the pace laps before the green flag. So a 120 lap race is actually a 121 laps race according to DashMeter Pro. So I am thinking I am going to be 3 laps short actually I am going to be 4 laps short. So with 4 laps left I have to pit. I come into my pit stall with just .09 gallons left. Take 2 gallons and go back out. And where am I after coming back out.....2 laps down and in 14th place!!! I am so upset with myself. I watched the math on DashMeter Pro for over 40 laps and my brain explained what I was seeing was wrong and the add fuel to finish was right. I will have to try again in 2 weeks cause the next official points race will be on the iconic road course of Long Beach. FINALLY A ROAD COURSE.

Well even if I finished in 14th it did take me from 17th in the standings to 12th. I learn some lessons (I hope) and the biggest thing was I had fun (except at the end cause of my mistake). Please check out the video of the race at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqkk57yUMnk. And look out for next weeks race recap of Long Beach, wire frames and all LOL

CONGRATUALTIONS TO THE TOP 3 IN THE TOP SPLIT RACE:
1: Richard Behr
2: Jeff York
3: Danno Brookins

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE TOP 3 IN THE BOTTOM SPLIT RACE:
1: Chris Lanini
2: Korey Connor
3: Vincent Bluthenthal

Lionheart Series: And this is why we practice races first/www.twitch.tv/zachttrull23

Almost everyone who has decided to take iRacing seriously has thought to themselves, Hey I wish they had this kind of series so I will just run one myself. Before the Road Warrior series I was going to run a League series myself that would mimic at the time ALMS, WEC and Grand Am series. I researched tracks so that I would have the same track that was begin raced in real life, running that weekend in the series on iRacing. I started working on sponsors, points system, rules, qualifying setup, everything you can imagine to make it as fun and exciting. Over 40 people said on the forums that they were going to race. Even going as far as picking their own numbers. I was so excited! This is going to become the most popular league series in iRacing. Now come the day of the first practice race to test out the setup of the hosted session, the qualifying session and race. I was already to just look at 40 people in 3 different classes ready to take on the first ever Endurance iRacing Series. 5 yes I didn't make a mistake 5 people showed up. I was devastated! I even went as far as purchase a domain name and setup up a crude website just to get something up then would work on it before the first race from GoDaddy.com. And that was just me by myself. So I can definitely understand what the group of admins for the Verizon iRacing Lionheart Series are going thru right now.

When you have a series with so many different people at different levels of experience of racing, you can not make everyone happy. But it is up to the individual to understand that there is many different factors that the admins have to take into account. I have been looking at the profiles of many if not all of the racers from last nights dual practice, qualify and single race. It was such a wide range of experience of drivers. Now I am using just iRating as a standard to base this part of off. And trust you me that iRating isn't always nor is Safety Rating a telltale sign of a persons driving ability, however it gives you an idea. (Trust me after lasts nights race, my SR would have taken a beating and like in my other post I will take responsibility for any accident but last night not one of the accidents that I was involved in was my fault). In the series, you have one person that raced last night that is in the 4000 IR and someone who was 900 IR. From a Safety Rating of 4.99 to right at 2.00. Then there is me right in the middle LOL. With such a diverse group of members in the League, how do you appease everyone. The easy answer is you don't. You will have the racers with the high IR that builds their own setups that will want to either be able to build their setups or have a fixed setup that is very loose. Which if you decide to do that then what you will have is the same as the official Open Series. Which means you will have 3 to 4 people fighting for the win and everyone else seconds off of them fighting for the also ran positions. Which will kill the series after just a couple of races cause there won't be a chance of anyone from 5th on back fighting to win the series. On the flip side, you have make a setup that is fixed for the lower IR racers (which is the safest but has it's drawbacks which I will get into) which means you make it with a ton of down force, you have kind of where we are now. And here is where it gets tricky, safe and stable is always going to be the best for the majority of the racers on iRacing. It will drive away the high IR racers cause they will say, "the car has to much down force, it is boring, you can't pass" etc. Now that is a minority of the racers on iRacing. What it will do is it will get the word out to the mid to lower IR racers that there is a series where you can race, fight for a win and get some great seat time. Now the drawback which is where I feel like is where we are right now.  The setup is so stable and safe that you can run it anywhere you want which is what most racers you want but they also want to be close to the edge. So last night I realized very quickly, that if you go to the bottom of the track which is the shortest way around the track, you ALMOST can not be passed. Some people can pass on the outside but it takes the perfect scenario. And the admins can't spend all their time building a setup so you have to be understanding and just use what they give you to the best ability.

Now here are some things that I just observed. There is no malice toward anyone or the series just my observation of certain things that I saw. Somethings I say people could say I am sensitive others I think would agree with me. If you sign up for a series and it says "single file restarts" Don't bitch and complain about the single file restarts!! You signed up for the series already knowing there would be there. Which means that lapped cars could be mixed in with lead lap cars. Also lapped cars that are faster than the leaders are NOT going to slow down for the leader. They are fighting to get there lap back and since now the lucky dog is gone even more so. Also it is fun to talk about the race and small talk during the caution laps, but no one really wants to here if you have some much towing time, how much damage or if you are going to go away from the keyboard because of  you tow time left or damage or anything like that. As you race with the same people over and over, you start getting an idea of how people race. Now that can be a good thing or a bad thing. What I have noticed is who is safe to race around or who I have to be worried about. And I have started seeing the same people cause the same wrecks over and over. Some give a sorry, some don't say anything at all. But they are the same ones that can't hold their line, still can't understand the draft or try and put the car into a spot that they shouldn't be trying to. Now I am not saying I am a perfect drivers, I make mistakes and will cause an accident from time to time, however I will tell you that even to a fault I will get out of the gas so I don't slam into anyone, I will give up a position to someone who is faster than me non draft. I would rather finish 4th than cause a wreck to finish 2nd. I have seen some people that are high up in the league come down so quick that if I didn't lift they would have just slammed into me. Hey that is racing and you have to be on the ball. However most people are not like that! They will try and pass under the white line, on the grass, bump you, intimidated you by acting like they are coming down on you to make you lift. Again that is racing but it isn't skilled racing to me. But many people have expressed that they can't wait till the season start so that the quality of racing improves as people don't have unlimited rests.

Last nights race was a little hard to stomach to me. I want to say I was in the wrong place at the wrong time but I think it is more like people where racing in the wrong place given their skill level. I have witnessed the same person cause 3 wrecks and not get a bit of damage and not say a word. I have seen another person cause 4 wrecks but each time say sorry, which doesn't really overcome that they are a cause of the wrecks. You see this in any racing in iRacing however you might race with that person once a week in the series but in a league race you know you will always see the same person every week in a very small group of people.

Again these are just observation that I have seen. I am not unhappy with the league, the admin or the series. It is a new car that we are learning right now. I have felt very welcome from almost every admin and member in the league. You will always have some people who just don't take a new person coming into their world of friends which you have to understand and just be yourself.

I hope you take a look at this great League with some great people running it. I can't wait till the season starts on July 2nd. Also the race will be streamed live each race by Zach Trull his twitch channel is www.twitch.tv/zachttrull23! Also look out for a race streaming site doing reports Sportcenter style in the future.

My 24 and half hour 24 Hours of LeMans Journey Grind!/Dempsey Racing/Allan Simonsen Honored by win!

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.

iRacing: Using F1 Williams to recover SR/ 24 hrs of LeMans 23 hr Weekend Grind!!

So after taking a huge beating in Safety Rating (SR) by racing the Skippy at Brands Hatch, We have decided to use the Time Trial to build it back up to A4.99. Now in order to do this, Jon and I are going to have to do almost 200 laps in the F1 car at Silverstone this weekend. If we don't get all the Time Trials done this weekend, then we will have to do the F1 car next week at Suzuka (which I love and Jon hates LOL). I did my first Time Trial last night. The Time Trials are 30 minutes long and you need to get at least 4 clean laps to get on the leaderboard for Time Trials. However we are using this as a way to build our SR back up. So we are having to look at this as punishment for trying to race our SR back up. Also from a mentality stand point, I am now a test driver for a F1 racing team LOL. It is going to be at least 13 to 15 Time Trials to build up to where we need to be. The good thing is that once you hit a whole number on SR ie. 2.00, 3.00, 4.00 you gain .5 instantly. So when you hit 2.00, you go to 2.50, 3.0 goes to 3.5 etc. That will definitely help make the jump to 4.99 and keep my A license. If your SR goes below 1.00 you will lose your license and drop from A to B, B to C etc. F1 is the most detailed time consuming series in iRacing. It is the series that you can actually get a pro license in and compete for $10,500 each year. So needless to say all I did was make a setup that would be very stable and let me run lap after lap. 8 secs off the leaders time from last season is okay with me to build my SR back up. Most people who start racing the F1 start out anywhere from 6 to 10 seconds off the fastest time. It is just how it is with this series. Then each season you take off a couple of seconds. Well I will be having 2 grinds this weekend. First one I will be doing tonight will be the F1 SR Grind, the second one will be something I have never done.

The 24 hours of LeMans weekend grind will be attempted this weekend. Now a little bit of information about me and the 24 hours of LeMans, I have been watching this race for over 13 yrs. Back when VCRs where still being used, I would record the whole thing on Speedvision. I would set my alarm to go off a couple of times in the middle of the night so that I can swap out VCR tapes before they ran out. Yes that dedicated LOL. But what I have never done was watch every minute of every hour of the race that was televised. But this weekend between Fox Sport 1 and Fox Sport 2, I am going for the 24hr of LeMans 23 hour grind! The only hour that is not going to be on TV is the 5 to 6pm time slot. I am excited to see if I can do this. That means if I go anywhere during the day on Saturday, I will be wearing my headphones and listening to RadioLeMans to make up for not being able to watch it. I am excited to get up at 8:00 Saturday morning and watch this great event for 24 hours. Seeing Porsche race again is going to be excited. Of course I will be checking Twitter as well as watching just to get more detailed information about all the teams I follow on Twitter. I will let you know who I am doing on my Saturday and Sunday blog post.

Again I can't say enough about how much it means to me for people all over the country to take their time and read my blog post. Thank you and many more to come.

Gaming day/iRacing/COD/Optic Gaming

So day off from the TRI training gives me time to get some iRacing practice and some Call of Duty Ghost practice in. Yes I am a kid at heart, a nerd or geek or whatever your term for it is but I am proud of who I am. Be yourself don't let other people tell you what you should be cause of your age, job or anything.

IRacing practice this week is in Skip Barber is Mazda Laguna Seca and in the Indy Fixed Series is at Richmond.  Me and my Flying Squirrel Racing Teammate Jon Carrigan have decided to drop the Radical series cause for some reason this season has gone completely non USA time friendly. Which sucks for us. Jon worked hard during the week between Season 1 and Season 2 to come up with the schedule that they are running during season 2. So we did over 30 minutes of practice at Laguna Seca in the Skippy. I just uploaded the video to my YouTube channel ( www.youtube.com/bcutler71352003 ) so check it out. Just started to upload videos to YouTube so I am just learning lol. We are running easily in the top 10 of our division as far as fastest time is concerned. After Skippy practice we jumped over to the Indy Fixed Series Oval at Richmond. We did over 120 laps and we were right where we left off just tenths of a second off the fast times. I haven't run that series in almost a year and I can say I seriously miss it. Now when I upload the video to YouTube, you will see that it is the 2005 Dallara Car and not the 2013 DW12 car. Well they came out with the DW12 for the Indy 500 race last weekend. Unfortunately the site crashed and they had to cancel the iRacing Indy 500 but they will be changing the series next season from the 2005 Dallara to the DW12 so we are definitely looking for that.  If you love racing but can not afford the 10s of thousands of dollars required to real race, please look into iRacing. Great laser scanned not GPS plotted tracks.  Cars from the manufacturer or from the racing teams so all the details, you could want. A computer,  monitor,  preferably a steering wheel/pedal setup and a headset to speak and hear the noise of your engine, tires and competitors.  Speaking of headsets, I have a X12 from Turtle Beach. These are great beginners headsets. Very inexpensive, comfortable and clear sound.  They are stereo headsets and not surround sound. I wonder if going to a set of Turtle Beach SEVEN or the DSS stereo processor would make a difference. Would I be able to go faster if I could tell if the back right tire was slipping instead of just the right tires are slipping?  I think that would be a good review.

Jump on to Call of Duty Ghost practice next. Now I decided to play COD Ghost and Black Ops 2, cause my kids love to play these games. So it gives me just another thing to be able to do with my kids. Now you know me (or you are learning to get to know me lol ) I want to be very good at any game that I decide to play. So I went on YouTube and looked up videos to watch to get better or at least above bad lol. I found 2 that were very good. One was Drift0r and the other was Nadeshot. Well I also had to choose a team to support since I knew my kids supported a team but didn't know which one they supported.  So after watch Nadeshot on YouTube, I decided to pull for his team Optic Gaming. Come to find out it was the exact same team as my kids. So subscribed to Nadeshot channel, joined MLG, downloaded MLG app on phone, follow whole team on social media; H3CZ, Proofy, Scumpii and of course Nadeshot. Now to watch hours or videos, see they compete in Game Battles and Tournaments on MLG. And will of course watch then at the first Main non eSport event 2014 X-Games Austin. Now I know what people are saying a 40 yr old trying to learn videos games better to a competitive level watching kids that he could be their fathers, and you know what I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK. This is how I am. Now if I could just get better lol I have been practicing as much as I can and been creating new swear words lol It would be nice to get pointers from Nadeshot and the team. By watching them I have learned about Scuf Controllers and Elgato video capture cards. A www.scufgaming.com controller is a normal Xbox controller that they have modified with adjustable trigger stops and paddles on the back of the controller to push instead of taking your thumbs off of the sticks to push the X, Y, B, A buttons.  Now I wonder would a SCUF controller make a difference for me someone just learning the eSport competitive level of play like me? That would be a good review as well. So I am now looking at getting an Elgato capture card which I will do a review on that as well. Listen if watching gaming is right up your alley, go follow the guys at Optic Gaming. Hector Rodriguez is the team owner and has really taken eSport teams to a whole nothing level.

Well that is it for me tonight. More iRacing and COD Ghost practice tomorrow, hopefully the pool if weather is good, then of course the gym. I really miss TRI training on my days off. Praying my foot will be better by this coming Monday. Hope you guys who are reading this like it. Please comment or subscribe if you do. Till tomorrow