Race Info Update

I've completed what I'd consider version 1 of my Race Info app. It now works for multiclass races and handles special characters in names. My next step is to package it up as a self contained app which will make it simple for other people to use.

Here's an updated example of the output:

Approx SOF: 1090
Approx PTS: 1st: 68 | 2nd: 58 | 3rd: 49 | 4th: 39 | 5th: 29

+----+-----+---------------+---------+------+-------+------+------+------+
| #  | Car | Name          | License |  iR  | Races | SPos | AFin | AInc |
+----+-----+---------------+---------+------+-------+------+------+------+
| 2  | sol | C Alain       |  B 2.21 | 2504 |   176 |   13 |  3   |  4   |
| 1  | sol | K Deslauriers |  A 3.33 | 2565 |     2 |  365 |  3   |  4   |
| 3  | sol | J Werveke     |  A 2.30 | 1888 |     2 |  709 |  5   |  3   |
| 4  | sol | D Isaenko     |  D 3.31 | 1863 |     7 |  215 |  3   |  7   |
| 5  | mx5 | R Soto2       |  D 2.36 | 1697 |    61 |   33 |  5   |  7   |
| 6  | sol | C Wesemael    |  D 3.58 | 1512 |     5 |  753 |  5   |  5   |
| 7  | sol | M Barcelos    |  D 3.29 | 1485 |     2 |  863 |  7   |  0   |
| 8  | sol | F Hough       |  B 4.40 | 1378 |     3 |  254 |  5   |  2   |
| 9  | mx5 | M Leo         |  D 2.44 | 1320 |     5 |  945 |  5   |  5   |
| 10 | mx5 | J Davis2      |  D 2.61 | 1045 |     4 |  705 |  4   |  7   |
| 11 | sol | M Nötzelmann  |  D 2.64 | 471  |     3 |  721 |  5   |  7   |
+----+-----+---------------+---------+------+-------+------+------+------+

SPos = Series Standing Position
AFin = Average Finish Position (for races in this series)
AInc = Average Incidents Per Race (for races in this series)

Mount Panorama Under Pressure

2015 S1 Week 6

Week 6 of 2015 Season 1 was a blast. I was very eager to drive the Solstice around Mount Panorama in the Grand Touring Cup. I made a crucial mistake in the first attempt; I failed to realize it was a 40 minute race and didn't put in enough fuel. On the 2nd attempt I thought I'd added enough, but ran out of gas on my last trip down the mountain and finally came to a halt about 3 meters short of the finish line. The 3rd attempt I got taken out by spinning back marker Jettas. It all came good on my 4th race though, I took down a 133 championship point win. I'd spent the first 11 laps (that's almost 30 minutes) with 2nd place pressuring me, sitting between 0.3 sec and 1.5 secs behind me. I'll post up a video of that shortly.

I had good races in the other series, but nothing compared to that win at Bathurst.

Series	Races	Wins	StartPos	FinPos	PTS	iR	SR
Grand Touring Cup MC	4	1	15.2	16.0	59	-8	0.06
Mazda Cup	4	0	8.2	8.8	50	-16	-0.04
Adv Mazda MX-5 Cup	3	0	5.3	7.3	58	-9	0.03
Production Car Challenge MC	2	2	4.5	3.5	100	70	0.28
Street Stock Series	1	0	10.0	15.0	7	-65	0.02

---

License	B
Safety Rating	2.61
Corners Per Incident	34.31
iRating	2147
Total Driving Time	6 hrs 21 mins
Race Starts	13
Race Finishes	10
Disqualified	0
Disconnections	3
Qualify Sessions	9
Time Trials	0
Wins	0
Podium Finishes	1
Top 5 Finishes	4
Average Finish Postion	9.8
Total Laps	130
Incidents	62

Race Info

I've started working on a new little application which uses the iRacing Session and Telemetry SDK to provide a simple table which displays some helpful information about the other drivers in a race session, along with an estimate of the Strength of Field and the number of championship points which will be awarded to the winner.

I simply run this while gridding up in a race session.

To begin with this is just their iRating and License levels, I've now extended it to also use the iRacing Web API (which I have previous experience with through the development of my iRacing stats app). It now reports where each driver is currently placed in the series championship, how many races they've run, their average finish position and average number of incidents per race.

As it is still in very early development it is simply outputting the information in a DOS window. Here's an example:

    Approx SOF: 1237    
    Est winner PTS: 77
    
    +----+------------------+---------+---------+------+-------+-------+--------+--------+
    | #  | Name             |  Q Time | License |  iR  | Races |  SPos | AvgFin | AvgInc |
    +----+------------------+---------+---------+------+-------+-------+--------+--------+
    | 1  | Stephen Nobes    |         |  C 3.35 | 2045 |   10  |  208  |   6    |   5    |
    | 2  | Mike Swenson     |         |  A 4.99 | 1803 |   17  |  493  |   8    |   1    |
    | 3  | Johan Hallberg   |         |  B 3.40 | 1636 |   55  |  545  |   8    |   5    |
    | 4  | Jorge de León    |         |  A 1.72 | 1566 |   5   |  1615 |   9    |   3    |
    | 5  | Diego de Abreu   |         |  C 3.31 | 1542 |       |       |        |        |
    | 6  | Jesse Boyd       |         |  A 1.93 | 1473 |   1   |  1804 |   3    |   5    |
    | 7  | Lucas Baweda     |         |  C 2.78 | 1441 |   8   |  1720 |   6    |   5    |
    | 8  | Eric Stamp       |         |  D 2.67 | 1366 |   20  |  574  |   6    |   9    |
    | 9  | Tyson Williams   |         |  B 1.33 | 1318 |       |       |        |        |
    | 10 | Neil Yates       |         |  C 2.52 | 1202 |   28  |  479  |   7    |   7    |
    | 11 | Rafael Falvo     |         |  B 1.13 | 1197 |       |       |        |        |
    | 12 | Gerrard Daly     |         |  A 3.31 | 1190 |   95  |  283  |   8    |   2    |
    | 13 | Jose Queiroz     |         |  D 3.32 | 1139 |       |       |        |        |
    | 14 | Troy Hood        |         |  A 3.52 | 1097 |   31  |  621  |   8    |   2    |
    | 15 | Jan Ribas Mundi  |         |  D 3.32 | 1047 |   5   |  2680 |   11   |   9    |
    | 16 | Wesley Winterink |         |  B 3.56 | 936  |   6   |  738  |   9    |   4    |
    | 17 | Chuks Nwankwo    |         |  B 2.60 | 804  |   32  |  997  |   11   |   3    |
    | 18 | John Hamblin     |         |  D 3.20 | 694  |   37  |  1040 |   9    |   8    |
    | 19 | Yves Pelland     |         |  D 3.37 | 683  |   2   |  3300 |   10   |   1    |
    +----+------------------+---------+---------+------+-------+-------+--------+--------+

2015 S1 Week 5

I've been rather unwell this week, so I'm only just now getting around to posting last week's wrap up. I enjoyed racing the MX5 at Interlagos, less so at Jefferson Reverse; though I did have a decent result there too. I won 2 out of 4 starts at Lime Rock in the Solstice and enjoyed following behind Mike Best in the others; one of the fastest guys in the Solstice in iRacing.

I also spent some time working on my Oval license rating. I still don't enjoy it as much as Road racing, but it is fun for a change and I think I'm getting better at it.

Series	Races	Wins	StartPos	FinPos	PTS	iR	SR
Street Stock Series - R	7	0	9.3	8.9	46	2	0.04
Production Car Challenge MC	4	2	3.0	4.0	84	46	0.03
Grand Touring Cup MC	3	0	12.3	12.3	55	1	0.02
NASCAR National Series	3	0	7.0	12.0	37	-15	0.21
GT3 Challenge Series	3	0	16.3	21.3	17	-70	0.01
Adv Mazda MX-5 Cup	3	0	4.7	5.0	86	32	-0.11
Mazda Cup	2	0	4.0	4.0	86	34	-0.03
Star Mazda Championship	1	0	12.0	13.0	9	-93	0.04

---

License	B
Safety Rating	1.92
Corners Per Incident	28.61
iRating	2132
ttRating	1569
Total Driving Time	9 hrs 19 mins
Race Starts	16
Race Finishes	13
Disqualified	0
Disconnections	3
Qualify Sessions	8
Time Trials	3
Wins	0
Podium Finishes	3
Top 5 Finishes	7
Average Finish Postion	9.6
Total Laps	263
Incidents	111

Lesson Learned

Jumping into a GT3 race on a track you've never even loaded before, "just to potter around and trade some iRating for Safety Rating" isn't a good idea.

Ended up losing 50 iR and .15 SR.

Idiot.

The only upside was that I realized that Zandvoort is an amazing circuit.

Some Solstice Lap Videos

I started 2015 Season 1 wanting to race the slowest cars on the service. I quickly fell in love with the Solstice. This is a fast lap from a race in Week 1 of the iRacing Production Car Challenge. At this stage I was still learning the car.


In other series I've always found this track to be too tight to be any real fun in a race. But the slower speeds of the solstice really suit it. It was the first time I enjoyed racing here for Week 2 of the Production Car Challenge.


Charlotte's road course has never been my favorite track and I certainly wasn't very quick here in only Week 3 of my journey into Solstice town.


By the time Week 4 rolled around I was beginning to feel like I had a good idea of how to coax the Solstice around a track. It was this week that I realized that I could be very competitive in this series.


Week 5 of the iRacing Production Car Challenge solidified that I was pretty damn quick in the Solstice and decided to focus a lot of energy on securing the best possible result in the series.

Oval D License

As my iRacing Stats application becomes more and more polished I realized that I had to consider that not everyone focuses purely on Road racing. While I'd never really had much desire to get into the Oval side of things I took the plunge in order to generate some data and test how my app manages each separate pool of information. This has allowed me to make design changes and fix issues which crop up when dealing with displaying stats for Road and Oval.

One change which iRacing implemented late last year was to completely hide the iRating of rookie drivers. Previously my app was able to get these "hidden" values because while they weren't displayed on the normal results webpages it was included in the data the app accesses. Now that it isn't included at all I had to hack around it so my iRating graph and other stats which rely on that figure wouldn't explode.

Then I also had to deal with what happens when someone gets promoted from rookie to D license. Of course that meant that I needed to get promoted. I'm happy to say that I've completed this arduous task and never have to run a rookie Oval race ever again.

I didn't hate Oval racing as much as I thought I would. I think I may buy the National car and run races at the tracks I have when they come up in the season, in order to earn promotion to C License so I can run in the truck series. I have a few friends who do these races, so it could be fun to join them.

Series	Races	Best Fin	Points
iRacing Street Stock Series	10	2nd	73

---

License:	D
Safety Rating:	2.49
Corners Per Incident:	14.77
iRating:	1502
Total Driving Time:	2 hrs 49 mins
Race Starts:	10
Race Finishes:	10
Disqualified:	0
Disconnections:	0
Qualify Sessions:	6
Time Trials:	1
Wins:	0
Podium Finishes:	2
Top 5 Finishes:	3
Average Finish Postion:	7.0
Total Laps:	312
Incidents:	53

2015 S1 Week 4

Just a quick, belated week wrap up post.

I really enjoyed the Production Car Challenge races this week at Summit Point Short. I was very quick around there in the Solstice, generally able to keep up with all but the fastest MX5 drivers.

In contrast, I really didn't enjoy the Advanced MX5 races around Motegi East. It took me 3 starts to get a decent result.

My one and only Mazda Cup race netted me a decent amount of points, so I didn't feel compelled to find more time to dedicate to Laguna Seca. As much as I enjoy the track I found other things to entertain me, this included a run in the Star Mazda purely to farm some Safety Rating.

Series	Races	Best Fin	Points
iRacing Production Car Challenge MC	3	1	117
Advanced Mazda MX-5 Cup Series	3	5	83
Skip Barber Race Series	1	15	4
Star Mazda Championship	1	7	58
Mazda Cup	1	2	102

---

License:	B
Safety Rating:	1.80
Corners Per Incident:	26.52
iRating:	2087
ttRating:	1524
Total Driving Time:	6 hrs 6 mins
Race Starts:	9
Race Finishes:	6
Disqualified:	1
Disconnections:	2
Qualify Sessions:	9
Time Trials:	1
Wins:	0
Podium Finishes:	2
Top 5 Finishes:	5
Average Finish Postion:	7.2
Total Laps:	138
Incidents:	60

iRacing Stats App Update

I've continued to beaver away on my iRacing Stats App; I am happy with the way I'm supporting both Road and Oval racing and recently adding a tab to display information about qualifying sessions and making changes to the time trials tab too.

I've snapped some current screenshots and created a separate page to explain what the app can do, you can check it out over here: iRacing Stats App

If you happen across this post and are interested in helping me test it, drop a comment and I'll see if we can line something up.

2015 S1 Week 3

Once again I found it hard to set aside much time for iRacing this past week. I managed to get in 6 races.

It took me 3 attempts to post a decent result in the Mazda Cup as I found myself in the mid pack of the top split. Being surrounded by aggressive drivers while trying to get around Lime Rock was a new and frustrating experience. I'm glad to find that I'm now around 80th of 4578 in the Mazda Cup.

I enjoyed the 1 race I did in the Solstice for the Production Car Challenge, winning a tough battle for 2nd in class. I'm extremely pleased to find that I'm ranked around the top 25 of 1350 drivers in the Production Car series.

The single race I did in the Advanced Mazda Cup was all I could stand of the Silverstone Club track. I was punted off at the 3rd corner by an idiot. Thankfully I battled back through the field and finished 5th. I can't claim an amazing drive though, I did manage to work my way back to 6th but then ran off the road at T3 two laps in a row and dropped back to 8th. I got lucky when the guys in front of me either made bigger mistakes or got disqualified. Yes the DQ'd guy was the same clown who punted me at the start of the race. Thanks karma. I remain firmly in the top 50, around 35th of 1092 in the Advanced Mazda Cup.

The Skippy race was a total joke, I was in the top split of one of the last races of the week. I'd done no practice or qualifying and generally spent my time spinning off the track. Gross.

Series	Races	Best Fin	Points
Mazda Cup	3	1st	105
Skip Barber Race Series	1	11th	14
iRacing Production Car Challenge MC	1	2nd	100
Advanced Mazda MX-5 Cup Series	1	5th	80

---

License:	B
Safety Rating:	1.35
Corners Per Incident:	20.05
iRating:	1975
Total Driving Time:	3 hrs 16 mins
Race Starts:	6
Race Finishes:	5
Disqualified:	0
Disconnections:	1
Qualify Sessions:	7
Time Trials:	0
Wins:	1
Podium Finishes:	1
Top 5 Finishes:	2
Average Finish Postion:	6.3
Total Laps:	95
Incidents:	49