Idle Notes

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Won my first race on iRacing

Wooo! Last night I won my first race in iRacing. It’s also the first race I’ve won since my almost year break from sim racing.

Here’s the proof:

I was actually pretty lucky to win. The pole sitter jumped the start and had to serve costly penalty, and the guy who qualified second was easy to pass going into turn one, and couldn’t keep up with my pace from the beginning. After that, winning the race was all about putting in clean laps and avoiding trouble with lap down cars.

Wooo!

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Another 79 race, another crash

I just got through with my third race of the SimHQ 1979 F1 series. In the first race at Long Beach, I finished right outside of the points in 9th after a great back and forth battle with SpyDoc (who finished 10th). The second race at Kyalami was a major disappointment because I ran wide at turn one on the second lap and destroyed my suspension.

The third race this week was at Monaco, a notoriously dangerous track. I surprised myself this morning by chopping a good 3 seconds off my time in practice while still running a pretty safe line. Unfortunately, I’m making a habit of pushing too hard in the second lap of the race, and did much the same thing to my suspension as I did in Kyalami. So now two weeks in a row, I didn’t get to race for more than two minutes. I guess it’s time to start practicing for Dijon next Sunday.

Update: Here are the results from the race at Monaco. Only four finishers out of 17. Ouch.

Friday, February 20, 2009

iRacing Carolina Club Logo

Recently iRacing.com announced that they wanted their community’s help creating logos for the different regional clubs in their online racing world. In a post to the forums Brian Simpson said, “Our clubs need a way to brand their cars in-sim so that members can tell who is on their club and who isn’t at a glance.”

Since I’m a graphic designer by trade, I figured I’d give it a shot. By virtue of living in North Carolina, I got put in the Carolina Club which includes South Carolina. The area is the birth place of stock racing and has a deep tradition that grew out of moonshine runners.

With that in mind, this is my first attempt at a logo:

The typeface used is Marketing Script which I’ve modified a bit to give it more of an angle and convey more motion. I thought this script font was perfect for invoking that historical feeling.

Hello there

Welcome to Idle Notes!

I’m Chris “ChrisLTD” Johnson and this is going to be the new home for all my racing and sim racing related materials. Bear with me while I get the site designed and fully functional.