Glenn McGee, dalla simulazione a pilota reale

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Nel mese di novembre, Glenn McGee è stato incoronato vincitore della 2015 Mazda Road to 24 Shootout, guadagnando così anche una borsa di studio da 100.000 dollari ed il diritto a correre nella 2016 Mazda MX-5 Cup.

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Last year, iRacing Mazda MX-5 Cup champ Glenn McGee won the Mazda Road to 24 Shootout, which awarded him a $100,000 scholarship towards racing in the 2016 Battery Tender Global MX-5 Cup presented by BFGoodrich Tires.

Recently it was announced that Glenn joined last year's championship team Sick Sideways to train and compete with.

This weekend, the dream is finally realized. Glenn makes his pro racing debut in the 2016 Global MX-5 Cup at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, to show the world what sim racers are capable of.

Cheer him on and watch Glenn's debut LIVE at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca - April 29th and 30th on iRacing.com/live and http://www.ustream.tv/MazdaLIVE, and stay tuned for on-location updates leading up to the races!

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See if you can spot Glenn McGee on the corkscrew. He finished 9th in qualifying as the fastest rookie in the 40 car grid. Tune in and watch the first race LIVE on IRacing.com/live starting at 3:05PM ET!

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0 to 200 with iRacer Glenn McGee

 

iRacer Glenn McGee made an impressive debut last weekend in the 2016 Battery Tender Global MX-5 Cup presented by BF Goodrich Tires at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca Raceway.  McGee, who was awarded a $100,000 scholarship to race in the series as the winner of the 2015 Mazda Road to 24 Shootout, qualified ninth fastest out of 40 entries and came home ninth on Friday in the first of two races on the weekend.  Saturday’s race saw McGee finish P27 after an early incident put him a lap down.

McGee’s performance was all the more noteworthy given that, although he has logged thousands of racing miles on iRacing’s online motorsports simulation service, the races at Laguna Seca were his first as a professional race driver...

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Glenn McGee will represent iRacing this weekend in Rounds 5 and 6 of the Battery Tender Global Mazda MX-5 Cup presented by BFGoodrich Tires at Road America. Glenn finished 5th in the first practice session today out of 39 cars. Live timing can be found here: http://www.mx-5cup.com/

Glenn offers his take of Road America in his lap guide below. Mazda Motorsports Sick Sideways

 

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I Don't believe it! Another strong Qualy & a Top 5 finish for the Sick Sideways #23 "Mazda Road to 24 Scholarship / iRacing car", in one of the truly most competitive series in North America!

(pic:w/ one of many fanatical Canadian racing fans, Stephen. They make you feel like a rock star)

(check out the replay at www.mazdalive.com and click on "videos")

(sorry for the late update btw, my data plan was inconsistent in Canada)

Driving such a fast cornering Global Mazda MX-5 Cup car at triple digits speeds through corners and down hills at Mosport ‪#‎CTMP‬ was an experience I will never forget! (We were setting laptimes and cornering speeds much higher than the classes above us!) Its just such an amazing car to drive with the BFGoodrich Tires...ridiculous the pace around there...lol, as you can tell I still can't get over it!

After another fantastic qualifying, starting me 4th! (only 1/10th from pole!) I was able to back-up my top5 from Road America (where I Qualied 3rd, Led, and finished Top5)

Race1 Recap:
I got a terrible terrible start and fell all the way back to 17th or so by turn 5, but the race began to get really interesting when it started to rain on only one end of the track. It was the coolest thing flying through fast corners than going through Moss Corner trying to put power down in the wet! After settling in after a few laps, I realized Sick Sideways Racing prepared me a great car and I was able to move quickly up the pack (the camera barely caught some of my passes.)

Eventually I caught points leader, Dean Copeland who is an extremely fast, hard driving veteran in the series and we went about having an Epic fight for 3 laps. I think he really wanted to show the "gamer" who was boss, and I wanted to show him right back that I deserved to be here. Eventually I made a move into 3 that stuck and managed to also get by the next car in front of us down the following straight with an outside pass into turn 8. I pulled away from there to catch the lead pack, but a full course yellow came out, bunching up the field.

On the restart I was mired once again in a battle with Dean and we were going side-by side through every corner and three wide into 1, but eventually it ended in bad luck for both of us into turn 3, where I got the worst of it; hitting the tire wall. The resiliency of the Long Road Racing built Mazda MX-5 Cup car was incredible though and I was able to drive away from the incident with mostly cosmetic damage.

My Rookie Title challenge was severally hurt, along with my car, but I still just couldn't wipe the smile from my face having so much fun fighting Dean for so many laps on this fast track...I just wanted to get back out there!

Race2 Recap:
For Race 2 I was very happy w/my 4th place qualy and my Team-mate, Nathanial Sparks "Sparky" setting Pole! From the green flag I managed to get a decent start going side-by side with Mark Drennan into 1 & 2 and sort of got bogged by the cars ahead which allowed Drennan to stay in 3rd and for Ara and Tim Barber to attack me into turn 5. I was bocked on the inside of 5 and Barber took advantage making a great move around the outside.

We had a short full-course yellow and got restarted. Still learning, I was caught out a bit by how early the leaders got going and got a hard challenge from Ara going into 1, but I stuck to my guns and ran the outside line to stay ahead.

From there I tried to settle in taking advantage of mistakes ahead to move up to 4th and try to challenge Barber in 3rd. I managed to hit some huge stone on track though through trn2, which towed out the rear slightly and made for difficult (but manageable) oversteer in turns 1,2,3. This hampered my ability to really attack, but there were still opportunities that came up.

Going into the tight Moss Corner, my team-mate Sparky and Barber went side-by-side and I held back to get a big run on both of them down the back straight; however, after popping to go for 2nd place in the race, I realized quite quickly that I was losing straightline pace with no draft, and instead of going to 2nd I fell incredibly to 7th!

As the race progressed, taking advantage of other drivers fighting, I moved up to 5th with my team-mate, Champion, John Dean scoring yet another podium, and Sparky taking the lead of the
championship!

Really happy how far iRacing, Team JJRD, & Mazda have already developed me to thus far and I feel i keep getting stronger each race. I think both Pole and the Win were possible at this track for me and I know I keep getting stronger, so i'm excited to see what the next track holds for us in late Aug.

Thanks to Battery Tender, iRacing, Mazda, BFGoodrich Tires, and Sick Sideways for believing in me and making this experience from Sim-to-Real possible. Loving life!

Thanks for the support Everyone!