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I’ve done an occasional Week 13 race but never went for a championship run, when I joined a race this past week at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the Spec Racer Ford it was primarily to bring my safety rating up and avoid being demoted to Class B but unfortunately, I had far too much fun.

After that enjoyable race where I gained a helpful 0.33 in safety rating I then had an appalling race at Laguna Seca. I was dodging cars left and right and knew that if I stayed in the race I was going to pay for it eventually with car contacts rather than off tracks, so I quit, and lost 0.27 safety rating for my trouble. I didn’t even save the replay, I felt so frustrated.

I joined another race and while this one was a little better, it was obvious that most of the drivers on track didn’t know their way around either the race track or the Spec Racer Ford. The race was again horrible and after 13 incidents and a loss of 0.14 figured that losing my Class A license was inevitable if I continued running these races.

So, with that in mind I turned up to race at one of my favorite race tracks within the iRacing service: Summit Point. This time I again found myself in a mess of a race and after a few off track excursions actually spun one time when the person infront of me had spun. I couldn’t believe I’d done that and again, utterly frustrated at Week 13, the safety rating, my inability to get away from what I’ll refer to as ‘those people’ – it was really getting me down. I’d lost another 0.03.

I figured I’d join another race. At this point I basically had lost my Class A license as I was at 1.19 safety rating (anything below 2.0 at the end of the season is demoted), the fact I like Summit Point so much was really my only draw and after joining and getting a pretty clean race, with a gain of 0.19, was delighted. It’s at this point I also noticed I was leading my division in points!

Things followed a pattern from this point out with me running two races each day for the remainder of the championship. I had one completely awful race followed by one that was less awful (but still bad). I wound up losing the lead of the division and basically felt like I had wasted my safety rating for absolutely no reason. Then it hit me just how good of an example Week 13 is that the safety rating works: Race after race it’s the highest class drivers who will most of the time finish near the front and finish with less incidents, race after race it’s the rookies who pull onto the race track infront of someone or spin off at every turn and that’s really something you have to understand if you run Week 13; these guys are learning.

Some rookies you race during Week 13 may even be in their first ever online race. I know that before I ran an online race I had a lot of experience running offline and obviously that is where iRacing is different, there is no safety net of A.I. cars you can obliterate without fear, there is always a license and the pressure of the safety rating bearing down on you and you either get used to it and improve as a driver, or you never will progress to Class A at the very least. I’ve been one of the cleanest drivers in my races during Week 13 and I still have 71 incidents for my trouble, I’m losing my Class A license because of it and I’d be surprised if even ten of those incidents were my fault – I’ve had just about every single thing people go berzerk about happen to me during this week.

In the table below you can see the races I entered, the incidents, safety rating adjustment and start/finish positions. During Week 13 four days from seven are dropped, so only the best three days count towards the championship.

I ran a LOT of qualifying sessions during the week attempting to bump the SR up between events, too.

Whether you think it’s fair or not that you get penalized for the on-track antics of other drivers, the fact is that cream always rises to the top. I chose to sacrifice my license by choosing to race hard for positions with rookies or not starting in the pitlane, but I know that I can get my license back and frankly I’m delighted to have finished in the top-3 for a division for the first time. Some of those I raced this week are going to have to alter their driving to even make it to Class D and the truly, truly wonderful thing is that I most often race in the Skip Barber Race Series, which is Class D – and I see so little of the problems which plagued these Rookie events that I’m delighted to see how well the safety rating works.

Anybody who is used to running Class D through A should sometime visit the Rookie events during Week 13 so that they can fully understand this. I don’t have a high iRating and I’m not the quickest racer, so I am often right back in the thick of things. I certainly understand just how much of a difference a little promotion can make, and I’ll be so very happy to see my license reflect what is mostly my driving once again instead of everyone else’s.