As requested elsewhere, I’ll give a little report on how my team fared at this years 24hrs of Spa race on iRacing.

TLDR; We dropped out after 12hrs due to making mistakes.

So a month or so ago I figured it was time for me to do the Spa 24 for the first time. I’ve done Endurance races before, such as Daytona, Sebring and Suzuka. But all of those happen in colder months, so Spa has been off the table until now due to me moving out of what amounts to an apartment sized oven.

Having wrung some amount of commitment out of 4 other team members. We got going on choosing the car and setup to use. After some back and forth we ended up with the Ferrari f488 GT3 Evo, instead of the BMW M4 GT3 or the Porsche 992 GT.R. We also debated the setup up until the race weekend and ended up on a somewhat playful setup that was more tuned for handling rather than top speed. We just wanted to finish, that was our stated goal. I planned to make a special livery for the occasion but couldn’t find time in the end.

Our schedule was dominated by life being in the way. I had work the morning after so I only had the first few hours available, others had kids to attend to etc. We figured we’d have to remix and reconsider on the fly as the race developed.

qualifying, I was the one to do qual and the first stints. I do a 2.19.5, leaving us almost dead last for those who qualified at p46. Had our faster drivers been in the seat we’d probably be midfield instead. Regardless, Endurance races rarely care about starting positions. The race start was oddly clean, I made up 10 or so positions via freebies. I kept creeping forward on consistency and luck alone for most of my first stint before I lost it at Blanchimont. almost catching it but eventually I slammed nose first into the right-side walls. Somehow this only meant 4mins optional repairs and a very slight steering damage, we were still competitive.

A few spins and little moments kept creeping into the race as it progressed. 4-5hrs in we were in p27 or so. We had another big accident, being hounded by passing drivers who thought they could lay claim to our precious time for simply blinking at us (I have many thoughts on how people think Blueflags work). Mistake made on a curb spun us around and then a car behind drove into us. 15mins in the pits including optionals. After that we were down on pace, doing 2.22s regularly instead of the 2.19 race pace. Some of our drivers were pretty rusty and made even more mistakes. In the end we figured it was not fun anymore and driving any more wouldn’t give us any reasonable chance at advancing in the ranks. And so we ended our effort at the 12th hour. Final result was p35, so still 11 positions ahead of our start.

In the end our demise was almost entirely due to our own mistakes and lacking practice. Some of us also got quite bothered by blueflags which pushed them into more mistakes. And then there was all sorts of little spins and problems compounding the time loss, we saw no point in continuing as we could not hope to gain other than other teams quitting before us.

We’ll get them next time.