Road Warriors At Lime Rock

The Global Challenge portion of the iRacing Road Warriors series took competitors to Lime Rock. Here Julian Rodriguez Moreno leads the howling mob into Big Bend.

The Road Warrior series returned to multi-class racing at Lime Rock Park for 50 laps in the Global Challenge. A total of 144 sim racers took the green flag in Connecticut this weekend across both cars. The Cadillac CTS-V R saw 105 iRacers score points, while the Kia Optima had 39 drivers for the weekend. The sim racing is always intense around the bullring that is Lime Rock Park and this weekend was no exception.

The Saturday 1:00 GMT race saw Karel Vorechovsky get the hat trick in the Cadillac claiming pole, the fastest lap, and leading all 50 laps. Noel Luneberg started second and maintained that position at the finish, albeit narrowly ahead of Jörn Jens in third place. Troy Schuester scored a solid fourth place being relatively mistake free. Sean McBeth made a very impressive run from 11th on the grid to fifth at the finish.

The Kia contingent was led by Aday Coba Lopez as he set the fastest lap, started from pole and won the race. American ace  Anthony Roselli finished second with no incident points, while Paul A Nelson claimed the final step on the podium after starting third. Andrey Loginov and John M King rounded out the top five.

Lopez heads to one of his two Kia wins.

The 20:00 GMT time slot had the highest SOF of the weekend and some of the closest racing. Julian Rodriguez Moreno would triumph in the Cadillac just ahead of Karel Vorechovsky by a margin of just two tenths of a second. Francisco Esteve Albert secured a European lock-out of the podium, finishing eight seconds behind the leading duo of Moreno and Vorechovsky. Troy Schuester drove from seventh to fourth ahead of Massimo Artiglia, who improved four spots over his grid slot to round out the top five.

Coba Lopez won again ahead of Roselli (again) in the Kia Optimas. The racing was extremely close as the two had average lap times only seven hundredths of a second apart. Simon Trendell grabbed the final podium step after starting on the second row. Vit Salomon and Jamie Wilson rounded-out the top five in a very competitive field that saw the fastest lap in the Kias set by Jeremy Bouteloup with a time of 52.312s.

The story wasn’t so black and white in the Sunday 1:00 GMT race.  Luneburg would claim the victory after leading only 14 laps. Pole sitter and second place finisher Tripp Isbell led 36 laps and set the fastest lap in the Cadillac. Manuel Sanchez improved two spots over his grid position to claim the final spot on the podium with Rob Kodey and Samuel Adams rounding out the top five.

In the Kia Optima Roselli ran another incident-free race, claiming the victory with the fastest lap of the race. Nelson and Hugo Barbosa held their starting spots and finished in second and third respectively. Sean Woodhouse gained one spot over his grid position to grab fourth place ahead of Blake Reynolds, who advanced two spots over his starting position to claim fifth.

“Air” Vorechovsky wheelies over the hill.

The Sunday 12:00 GMT race saw Manuel Sanchez narrowly edged Jörn Jens for the win in the Cadillac. Sanchez led the final nine laps after Jens lead from the start. Michael L Willard made up one spot from the start and claimed the final podium spot. Martin Carroll started ninth and finished fourth while Chris E Pence made-up a very impressive nine spots after starting 14th to finish fifth.

Sylvain Pommarede took the win in the Kia. Bob van Katwijk started second and finished in the same spot. Luke Hogan claimed the final podium spot followed by C,J,J, van Zon in fourth.

The next round of the iRacing Road Warrior series takes us across the virtual pond to Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. There the Road Warriors will do battle in the Ruf Track, BMW Z4 and McLaren MP4 for 2.4 hours around the famed Ardennes circuit.

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