This should be easy, right? Everyone has raced at Lime Rock. It's one of only two circuits raced in the mandatory Rookie series
Well it should be easy but I found it anything but. Probably because I, like everyone else is initially super familiar with lapping this track in the similarly performing (in terms of lap times) Mazda MX-5. The braking points aren’t really different, but the inherent instability in the Skip Barber, coupled with the dynamics of the New Tyre Model make this a challenging track. My best lap around here is a 59.1 and I was shocked when the best I could manage was a mid 1:00. I thought I’d only ever driven the Skip Barber with the NTM, but that was definitely an OTM time because I’d previously only done a few laps around this circuit.
I did four races at Lime Rock and all four were abject failures. I didn’t post a qualifying time at any stage so I always started near the back end of the grid. At my last race I started 12th and last and was up to 4th by the midway point, before losing it into a wall. I’d had off’s in that race earlier, but that wall slamming event ruined my race chances, and the wall featured in all my other races too. The result, my SR dropped from C-3.39 to C 2.51, and my iRating is down from the mid 1700’s to 1548. I reckon I averaged 15 incidents a race. What a noob and easily my worst week since my first week of iRacing.
In my final practice session I got my lap times down to 59.6’s, which is with the other fast boys and placed me 4th in that session (from 21 runners). In the previous session I’d managed a 59.9 and placed 8th out of 31 runners.
