Blog A Day - Day 17: Ovals: A New Chapter...

Since the dawn of time, humans have been absolutely obsessed with them - from running in the Olympics thousands of years ago, to chariot racing, to the building of the world’s first purpose built race-track - Brooklands - which might I add was an oval. A banked oval - we just can’t get enough of them…

And today, with my iRating (skill level) relatively stable, I’ve decided to embark on my next sim-racing adventure - oval racing.

I have never done a single official oval race in iRacing - so I was curious as to how I stacked up - and weather I was better on road or oval courses.

My journey begins here.

A legends car. Based on a 1934 Ford Coupe, the low-powered coupe is the perfect place to start my oval career.

As for the battle grounds?

For the first 6 weeks, the tracks will be short ovals - under 1 minute lap-times, here it will all be about just staying out of trouble, and a touch of luck - not getting wiped out.

Week 7 we’ll move on up to the Charlotte Motor Speedway Oval - the first medium sized oval on the calendar.

If all goes to plan, I’ll be D-Licence by the end of the season and will be looking at the CARS Late Model Series for Season 2 - but of course, it’s all about the safety rating - which is where the challenge comes in.

Safety Rating is based on clean corners completed (without incident/off-track/contact) - as an oval typically only has 2-4 corners - I’ve got to prepare myself for the fact that grinding through the licences might take longer than road - but that being said, it’s been noted that

“Even though oval uses a slightly more favorable formula than road”

(I.e - Incidents per 1000 corners as opposed to road incidents per last 1300 corners)*

*may not be accurate, but that’s where my research led me.

Starting off with 6 short ovals back to back will probably give my iRating (even though rookies don’t have a visible iRating) and indeed safety rating