4X Racing are pleased to announce that they are supporting Texan driver Jeffery Ford from Frederica, Delaware in the 2016/2017 RSR Icebreaker Winter Series running the Xfinity Ford Mustang with 4X Racing support.

Jeffery has been an iRacing competitor since early 2010 and grew up 5 minutes from the Dover International Speedway, formerly Dover Downs Speedway and well known for the 46ft concrete mascot at the track entrance, "Miles the Monster".

For the 2016/2017 season Jeffery is running the RSR Icebreaker Series, a 12 round series on Monday nights from 20:30 EST.  The series is broadcast live by LSRTV and iRacingTV.com.

Daytona Temporary skin

New skin for rest of season

Sunday 27th November... The return of Marc Figueras After 3 weeks of moving house, Marc Figueras was finally back on track this Sunday to compete in the Absolute Beginners League (ABL) in Spa Francochamps with the Skippy. Below is how he experienced the night. 18:45 while having dinner, Andy messaged me to join the race, I had 1 hour till qualifying started, my PC was still in a box, my internet cable not connected to the patch cabinet yet, and dinner was too good to leave. 19:30 Having munched down dinner, fighting with the network cable in the patch cabinet and hooking up all my PC bits, I didn't have internet (or a working mouse). 15 minutes till qualifying so I hunkered down, and started fixing the problems. 19:45 Internet rerouted thought another room, my PC was now the only one in the house online!! The rest still have WiFi only, I stole the mouse off my kid and got on Discord to tell Andy I was coming. OF COURSE my sound didn't work and neither did my mic.... meanwhile I was trying to get iRacing to load which was being a slowpoke again. 19:55 FINALLY my sound worked, I got into the session, and when it loaded I had 3 min to check my steering and pedals (which I hadn't been able to test yet). Everything looked ok, so I ran upstairs to get a drink, some more pie, a cable for my Phone for irPitCrew and rush to the bathroom before the start. With a cool 43 seconds before gridding stopped, I got back and we were good to go. With 0 practice and 2 weeks of not driving, this was bound to be good. I started 33rd, but with some aggressive passing and pretending to be Max Verstappen I was quickly up to 17th. Although I could already see the incidents where going to be a problem (as per usual on SPA). I managed to stretch the 1st fuel run to over half the race, so wasn't to worried about fuel, and later in the race even got to 8th position due to all the people dropping off. I was still getting far too many off tracks, and started communicating to my team that I was scared I wouldn't make it. The last part of the race I got closer to Rodrigo Capeleto again, who had passed me earlier. and the previous lap on Kemmel Straight I got past him, but got re-passed on the same straight in the last lap. Then, with a good run out of turn 15 towards Blanchimont, I pretended to be Max again, by choosing the outside line, and with only 2 incidents left from a DQ. I did not want to crash. We go into the corner 2 wide.... CONTACT... I see a 0x appearing on my text chat and think to myself,  "Thank god it wasn't a 4x and we are both still going"... and as I watch in my mirror, I see Rodrigo losing control of his car, and the contact being upgraded from 0x to 4x... ending my race with a DQ... 1 chicane short of finally finishing a Spa race in the ABL... guess I'll have to try again next year...! The race itself was fun, action packed and moving through the field from 33rd to 7th at one point really was a good experience, I just gotta watch them offtracks @ SPA!

Another day... another car... this time the Xfinity Toyota Camry B car... a choice of four to choose from... all available now in Dropbox

There is a new 4X Racing paint available in the 4X Racing Dropbox.  The awesome Audi 90 GTO is now available in multiple colours... you choose the one you like.

Preparations

The 2^nd race in the GES series, and after a decent 9^th place at Road America, 4X Racing was hungry for more top 10 finishes and points in the GES.

During the preparations for the Imola event, it was quickly clear that Jiri Mojak could not make it this race, and Jack Turner was unable to leave the country to fly to Italy (something about a no-fly list, I do not know the details) that left Marc Figueras and Andy Morgan, the teams managers to defend our honor and bring back the car in one piece. With Andy battling the disease of Old Age (Rheumatoid Arthritis to be exact - AM), and Marc renovating a house during the preparations and the race, this was bound to be a challenge in itself.

During the hosted practice sessions, it was clear we would not be the fastest car on track, and instead we opted for a safe and stable setup that would take us to the end without much incidents.

Qualifying

Andy managed to almost not qualify last, when in his last lap, in Acque Minerali the car started pointing slightly off as you can see and he lost it. So last place it is! The only way is up from here, so no worrys, we expected to drive a steady pace and keep up with the back end of the field.

The start

By good timing and awareness, Andy managed to get 1 spot right at the start from WR Racing GoT and soon there was a major incident involving over 5 GT3 cars in T1, So instead of 14^th we managed to slide up some spots into 9^th! Knowing that there where some faster cars behind us, we quickly set our goals to finish in the top10 again.

Traffic

As always, the gentleman driver, Andy Morgan gives as much room as possible for the faster classes, just look at the spacing and awareness, as he completely go’s outside track limits, to let the leaders of the Prototype class by the first time they arrived. Even sacrificing a position in the process. Marc gently reminded him that its actually OK to keep the car on the track when racing. (Errrm... I actually missed my braking point because I was looking in my mirror - AM)

Truthfully though, this was Andy’s biggest mistake, and after this he drove an excellent 1-hour stint, keeping Martin Green from WR Racing behind him almost till the end, when his sickness of old age kicked in and slowed down the last 5 laps and he had to let Martin Green go a bit.

Hour 2

Marc took over the wheel, for a 2 stint run to the finish. After putting in 10 hour days in home renovations for 2 weeks and while shaking due to lack of sleep, he took over the wheel from Andy, who had handed over the car from a cool 10^th position and completed 33 laps without problem.

Looking out for WR racing, who managed to do 3 extra laps on the 1^st stint, we met up, and re-passed them in lap 38 as they came out of the pits, we had a real race on our hands it looked like.  Unfortunately for WR racing, they had 1 bad out lap, followed by another pit stop. Perhaps their pit crew forgot the tires? Or put on old ones? We can only gues, but this was the last we saw of them.  

Andy left to tend to other things, (FETCHING HER INDOORS TO BE EXACT - AM) leaving Marc without a spotter thanks to the spotter bug in iRacing… (seriously, that is annoying as hell).

Graphite Racing had to serve a stop and go, and exited the pits right as we blew by, giving us another spot and we were into 8^th now! A personal best in GES history! Pumped and excited about this, Marc continued putting down solid lap times and expanding the lead we had on Graphite while closing in on NAB racing #209 in 7^th 40 seconds up the road!

3^rd hour

Marc had closed the gap to NAB Racing #209 down to 16 seconds when exiting the pits, and was determined to get 7^th position with an hour left in the race. 11 laps later, in lap 80, Marc was behind Alwin Kloosterman, ready to make a move. And THEN!

Alwin was forced into a mistake in Tosa, Marc narrowly escaped a crash and took the position.

Alwin lost 30 seconds trying to get the car pointed in the correct direction again, and with that lead, Marc was SURE we had 7^th place locked down. To increase the lead marc kept pushing out constant lap times, with the team’s fastest lap being at lap 87.

With 20 minutes to go, it looked like nothing could go wrong, a strong lead, a driver that had time to slow down a bit and relax, and just make it to the finish without screwing up would guaranty 7^th place.

With 15 minutes to go though, Marc met as we say in the Netherlands “de man met de hamer”. Fatigue set in, and it set in bigtime. Unable to focus, Marc started making stupid istakes on almost every lap

A big moment at Variante Alta in lap 95 ended with the car pointing towards the wall!

But Marc held it. With the lead the team had assured, a 10 second loss was manageable. Still 20 seconds ahead of the next car so no problem.

2 laps later at Piratella…

Another mistake, this time with a crash into the wall, and over 30 seconds lost Marc was unable to maintain 7^th position… Instead, the goal had shifted to limping the car home without losing 8^th.

After 101 laps of racing, that is what he managed to do.

8^th position, a GES best for the team, but still felt like a disappointment because of the last couple of laps.

We will be ready and roaring for 7^th at Motegi. We hope to see you all there again and have another eventful race!

If anyone wants a Thor based Ford Fusion Gen6 car then I've just posted this one on Trading Paints...

4X Racing is running two cars in the upcoming Sauerland VLN Series at the Nurburgring.  The 5 round endurance series is being run over 4 x 4 hour events and 1 x 6 hour event.

David Sustello and Andy Morgan will run 4X Racing Orange and Erik Leukel is soloing the races in 4X Racing Purple.

Good old Marc Figueras... he came through for me when I asked for the GES race report... here it is in it's complete unabridged format...

"We started.. got hit T5.. were last.. didn't finish last... the end."

What more can I say...

Wednesday evening saw the first round of the new 60 Plus Openwheel Series aimed at the more senior drivers on the service 60 years old and older.  Don't be misled by the title of the series, this is no series full of old coffin dodgers out for a Sunday afternoon drive.  But a series full of talented and very rapid guys still with the drive and experience and a burning will to win.  The series, consisting of 2 ovals and 8 road courses, runs the Star Mazda and Formula Renault 2.0 with fixed setups which are carefully balanced to match the two cars evenly on track.

The first round of the series at Road America saw 16 drivers take the start of the 14 lap race, with 4X Racing's Andy Morgan in 5th spot and David Sustello lining up behind him in 7th.  After the rolling start behind the pace car Andy moved up a position to 4th spot going into T1 but then outbraked himself into T2 and went wide allowing a couple of cars to pass him and dropping him back to 6th.  During all of this David capitalised on this and moved from his 7th spot on the grid into 3rd.

Andy slowly regained his composure and began his fight back, slowly picking off the drivers in front until on lap 5 he passed David going into Canada Corner to take 3rd place.  A short while afterwards David lost control on the last corner when the back stepped out and touched the grass and fired David into the wall ending his good run.

The next lap saw Andy move up to 2nd place behind a flying John Unsbee when Jos van der Ven lost control on the exit of T1 and also fired himself into the inside wall.  The damage requiring him to limp around to the pits for repairs before continuing.  Andy didn't find it all plain sailing from there as he was being hunted down by Florida driver John Morgan, who Andy had passed to take 4th place from a few laps earlier.  Their battle was to see the two of them swopping positions in some very close wheel to wheel racing, with each driver giving the other racing room where needed.  It ended with a drag race between the two drivers to the line out of the final corner with John benefiting from the draft off Andy's Renault, but Andy held John off by the smallest of margins possible, just 0.002 seconds or around 4" in actual distance as the pictures show.

The next round on Wednesday 9th November is from Phoenix Oval which will see the series make it's first visit to an oval track.  As usual the series is being broadcast by MaxspeedTV.