With the up coming release of Grid Autosport I decided that it was time to buy a cheap wheel and get ready to give it a bash. I picked up a very cheap Genius TwinWheel F1 Vibration Feedback F1 Racing Wheel from amazon. It was $50 so I figured that I'd easy get my money's worth with just a few solid hours of racing enjoyment.
While waiting the week for Grid Autosport to be released I found a few other games to get my racing blood boiling. I've always been a fan of the SimBin games, so I grabbed RaceRoom Race Experience and put in a few laps. It seemed pretty solid, but it left me wanting some online multiplayer. It was then that I remembered reading about iRacing via the Facebook news feed of one of my friends who races in real life and plays iRacing somewhat seriously.
Oh my. Wow.
Even with my humble setup I was immediately hooked.
Of course I was an idiot and dived directly into a live qualifying session at summit point. I strapped on my mx5 and quickly racked up enough incident points to get kicked out. I managed to set a very poor time (somewhere around 1:34) and felt that I at least learned the track before being booted.
So I lined up for a live race. Obviously I didn't get to complete it before once again being booted for incidents. I was proud that they didn't involve anyone else. Just off tracks and spinning off.
A few time trail sessions later and I felt like I'd actually learned a few lessons. I sliced a second off my qualifying time and finished a race. Not even in last place!
Then I figured that I liked this game enough to actually put in some time away from the wheel and do some study about how the license system worked, watch some guides on how to hustle the mx5 around the summit point track in a faster fashion and..... learn about the safety rating system.
Oh my. What had I done.
My first few hours of newbness had pushed my SR down to 2.11.
I spent some time doing time trials and focused on just completing lap after lap incident free. I slice chunks of time off my qualifying time. I completed more races and scored my 1st couple of podium finishes. Still with more incidents than I'd like, but at least I can honestly claim that most were no fault of my own... well maybe "most" is a strong word. Definitely more than half.
I've managed to eek my SR up to 2.60. I'm pretty proud. I've got my qualifying time in the mx5 at summit point down into the 1:26's and can consistently lap in the 1:28's.
I obviously enjoy iRacing a whole bunch and have been so impressed with the community which has grown around it. So much so I thought I'd start yet another iRacing newb blog.
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