Robert Graf is approaching the end of his first full season in the iRacing DOM series (German NASCAR League) of simulated oval racing and he’s reached the speedway at Dover with this report – now back in sequence again after the technical snags that held up our previous posting.
As he opens his report, Dover is fun – with the right setup… Click “Read More” below for Robert’s full race report.
Dover is fun. If you have the right setup that is. And I hadn’t. In training I had the choice between safe and fast. After spinning even on pit exit I went for safe.
Surprisingly I was quite quick on first lap runs, so I qualified this time. Messed it up of course and found myself right in the danger spot in 10th at the grid.
On race start, I went for extra cautious, shuffling me back to 13th. But despite some rubbing around me the big one never happened and soon the field settled with me being last in a 4 car group. My closest rival was Stefan Schmidt, we would battle for position all day long (see picture).
78 laps in my fuel was quite low and I did my first pit stop. Stefan was a tad quicker on his, increasing the gap afterwards to 4 seconds. 30 laps into the second stint I was gaining positions, because some of the drivers favoured a 3-stop-strategy. I conserved my tires this time, so I could give the car a good push on the second half of the stint, closing the gap again. Stretching the fuel to its maximum, the engine began to cough on the back straight and a few feet from my pit it stalled completely. Talk about the last drop!
With fresh tires I had the edge over Stefan, got up to 8th on his stop and stayed there. With 40 to go the steady 4 second gap started to melt away and I pushed harder, not realising this was not Stefan but my teammate Andreas on new rubber. I tried to hold him for about 10 laps, but he was dangerously quicker and I let him by.
So after 235 laps of green flag racing I scored 9th, yet another TOP10, and I did the longest runs ever in my entire career without a hitch. What’s that saying in NASCAR? Consistency, consistency, consistency and a little luck never hurts.
