My 2009 Season 4 had been a tough one. I moved from Massachusetts to Illinois part way through and took a vacation in England (working at the Autosport Show where we announced licensing of Williams F1 in the process). When I left for England I was in the top-3 of both the Skip Barber Series and Late Model Tour for my division, but when I returned I was nowhere. I really had worked hard to find the time to race this season and – being the person who creates and sends out the certificates – really wanted one for myself! Going into Saturday I knew that if I could just eek out a Podium I’d have one…

Saturday morning was spent (much like the Autosport Show) running laps in qualifying mode. I didn’t really care where I started the ROLEX 2.4, I just wanted to beat the laptimes that Steve Myers (iRacing’s executive vice president and executive producer) kept taunting me with! I’d left Autosport with the upper-hand, but Steve ended up beating my final qualifying time of 1:41.253 by a tenth. As annoyed as I was that Steve had beaten me (and yes, I was truly annoyed), he had inspired me to knock a full second off my previous best and had also allowed me to become comfortable going that pace.

With my wife fully aware not to call home between the hours of 11am-2pm, I watched the clock count down to zero and saw a whopping 949 others would be racing with me. After getting into my split (one of 24 races containing 39-40 participants) I checked the entries and qualifying order to find that although I was rated as being the 17th best driver in the field, I had managed to qualify seventh. I suspected a lot of this was because some had chosen to start at the back, or start from pitlane, but I was fine with that!

Clean getaway

On lap two Coleman and I flew past Andrew Hayes on the banking while I settled into what would become my first battle of the race: The battle for fourth-place with the #2 car of Glen Jerome.
Jerome and I ran nose to tail from lap two until lap 30, exchanging position three times. We had a great fight and gave each other plenty of room during those ‘sideways moments’ the Daytona Prototype throws at you. Then on lap 30, to my utter amazement, people started to pit! I checked my predicted fuel usage and it still said I was on-track to make it half-way, so I just reveled in the fact that not only had I moved into second-place, I had also lost Jerome in traffic.

As the laps wound down and I approached the half way point, I had run a remarkably clean race with just a couple of off track penalties at the chicane. My tires were really starting to struggle though and by lap 43 it became hard to keep consistent. I decided to try to save fuel, so started to run all the first-gear turns in second and the chicane in third. Coleman, who had pitted out of second-place earlier, had closed me down and I pulled up on the banking to let him by before I eventually pitted on lap 46.

Coming out of the pits I found myself right infront of fourth-place man Augusto Gabaldoni. Gabaldoni became my second major battle of the race as we sparred even closer than I had with Jerome. We ran for 16 laps together, swapped position twice and pushed each other to our absolute limits: It was Gabaldoni who went over it first with a slow, lurid spin coming out of the infield.

Gabaldoni spins, Wheatley in 17

Unfortunately, on lap 69, my concentration broke. I lost the car coming into the chicane and had to let Coleman by before rejoining the track, I started to obsess about how much that slide had worn my tires and really, that was it: Concentration was not going to return.

The rest of the race, for me, was about survival. I lapped as carefully as I could and watched Dan Caskanette and Chad Coleman pull away from me while I kept making small errors. I knew that if I didn’t make a large error – I’d be fine – I’d finish on the podium, so I just settled into the third-place finish.

Finally, a certificate!

Most Successful Grand-Am Prototype Racer To Be Included in Motorsport Simulation

BEDFORD, MA (July 18, 2008) – iRacing.com will add the Riley Mk XX Daytona Prototype to the stable of racing cars available to users of the company’s motorsport simulation software and service. The agreement was announced today by Bill Riley, president of Riley Technologies and Scott McKee, iRacing’s vice president of marketing.

“Riley Technologies is one of the world’s foremost designers and manufacturers of racing cars, and the Mk XX continues Riley’s long line of winning prototype sportscars,” McKee said. “Several Daytona Prototype drivers have already made use of our service as part of their pre-race preparation for Grand-Am events; with the top car in the class becoming available, and so many of the tracks where they race already in our inventory, we expect even more teams and drivers will decide to take advantage of our simulation service for race rehearsals.”

“I drove a pre-release version of the iRacing software last December at the Performance Racing Industry show in Orlando,” Riley said. “The accuracy of the tracks and the cars was just amazing. One of the secrets of our company’s long-term success has been the level of support we provide for our customers. I look at our association with iRacing as an extension of that service; now the drivers for our teams can get meaningful behind-the-wheel practice before a test session or a race. That’s a big advantage.”

Ian Berwick, vehicle dynamics engineer at iRacing, noted that working closely with Riley’s engineering staff and having access to their design and performance data will permit iRacing to produce an extremely precise digital representation of the physical race car. “That’s one of the benefits of licensing all of the content in our simulation – tracks as well as cars,” said Berwick. “To be useful to real-world racers, the level of fidelity needs to be really high; approximations just aren’t good enough.”

One of the keys to making the Riley Daytona Prototype perform in the simulation precisely as it does in the real world is reproducing the car’s aerodynamic qualities accurately. “Our general aerodynamic model is very good, and getting better all the time,” Berwick said. “But we’ll be able to check our values against what the Riley engineers have found in their real-world testing. For a high-downforce car like this one, that’s an important factor.”

The iRacing.com laser scanning team recently visited Riley Technologies’ Mooresville, N.C., facility to scan the Mk XX for modeling purposes. Additional data gathering is underway, and the same version of the car that the Grand-Am professionals will use for their race rehearsals will be available to all iRacing subscribers later this year.

Also announced as “coming soon” on the members home page, Barber Motorsports Park!