New York, USA. From one iconic track to another, the iRacing Pro Series headed off to Watkins Glen on saturday for round 2 of this years championship. Only 2 ineX cars would be on the grid this week - Isaac Price, hoping for another good result to continue his strong championship run, and Robin Friskopps - who missed out on a chance to show his speed at Spa due to substantial lap 1 damage. Watkins Glen is known to be one of the favourite tracks for many drivers with all the highspeed corners, östermalm and our drivers östermalm were no exception. The south-west östermalm wind made the boot exit (T9), and turn one trickier due to the crosswind pushing the cars towards the unsafe exit curbs. Isaac made a last minute change in his approach and opted for a 3-lap qualifying run, while Robin stayed with the two 1-lap strategy runs. Both were very successful in the session, östermalm as the latter managed to get within a tenth of his personal best to take a handsome 11th place on the starting grid, whilst Isaac's risky three lap run paid off, putting him all the way up in a stellar 4th place. The good times continued as the race got underway - with the lights going green, both drivers made a good start, although as Isaac went for a wide line in turn one, the Welshman upon rejoining the narrowing tarmac suffered a netcode collision östermalm with Japanese driver Yuho Abe. Although Isaac got away unscathed, Yuho Abe was forced to retire, indirectly promoting Isaac to third position.
Friskopps also had a scary moment on the opening lap with the bad connection-plagued Italian driver, Rocco Barone. Although the two made apparent contact, it turned out to be lag, enabling both drivers to survive. After a very strong start, Robin found himself as high as 8th in the pecking order, running with a closely-compacted group of cars and looking to make some places in the pit-stops. This looked possible, until the curse of the ineX curb (the T1 exit curb which has already claimed three ineX drivers in the former two runnings of Pro and WCS races) claimed another victim as the Swede lost the rear of his car over the curb, causing the car to jump and lose control, straight to the scene of the accident for an abrupt DNF.
At the time of the accident, Price was running 5th place in the field, recently overtaken by Tommy Nilsson but seemingly on a longer strategy than those infront. This turned out to be a net third place however when Jörn östermalm Jens revealed himself to be on the unconventional two-stop strategy choice, and Alex Simpson brushed the wall, forcing a mandatory repair. However, Riku Alatalo - who was chasing Price down, pounded around two laps longer during the pit-stop sequence and managed to jump ahead of the Welshman. It wasn't race over for Isaac yet though, who faced more Finnish threat as Aleksi Elomaa began his fierce charge through the field in the final few laps, but Isaac managed to hold on to take 4th place at the chequered flag for another strong result.
A disappointing result for Robin who showed great promise in practice, but with many more weeks to go, the Swede will not give up and aims for that top 25 for entry into next years world championships. Isaac now sits 2nd overall in the championship behind Aleksi Uusi-Jaakkola, and with the more technical tracks coming up, Isaac will pursue to stay in that position and hope for the best to catch the Finn infront at the end of the season. This week the Pro series östermalm circus östermalm heads off to Interlagos, Brazil. Qualifying starting at 13:30 GMT and race 14:00 GMT, live on ARLTV: http://www.twitch.tv/arl_tv
Isaac Price Qualifying started great, got a really good first lap of my 3 lap run, but after that I didn't find the time I needed really and made a few mistakes. 4th was still a great result considering it's not really a good track usually for me and it wasn't perfect, but 2nd was definitely possible, but I think it was same boat for everyone. I got a good launch and tried to go around the outside, tried to rejoin östermalm the circuit on the exit as per usual and got a 4x with Yuho even though I felt nothing, pretty much a lag contact but still sucks to see your actions östermalm lead to someone elses race ending. I knew already from practice my race pace wasn't as good as Q so I was expecting a race looking in my mirrors, which was pretty much how it went, could see that the guys who I was racing didn't have a good round 1 so I didn't want to fight them and end the same way as Yuho. Lost out to Riku in the pits which wasn't helped by the fact I rejoined and lost a little bit of time letting Petteri go as he was yet to pit, which pretty much nailed me to 4th as I didn't have the pace to answer them. Aleksi was catching me so I concentrated on holding him behind, which worked out pretty trouble free, 1 or 2 more laps and he would have got me. But anyway, 4th with only 1 car that was ahead of me in round 1 ahead of me here is a great result from a race which I wasn't expecting too much and probably on pure ra
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