iRacing Porsche Cup at Barcelona-Catalunya — P20 to P18

Barcelona-Catalunya, P20 on the grid, and a brand-new Simucube 3 Ultimate on the rig for the very first time. On paper, a recipe for a long afternoon. In reality, one of the most fun races I’ve had in ages — flat out in traffic from lights to flag, always with someone’s rear bumper to chase.

Starting P20 — and Loving It

P20 in a 23-car field looks like bad news on paper. In the car it was the opposite. From the very first corner I was surrounded, and that’s exactly where the whole race stayed — mid-pack, nose to tail, always within striking distance of the group ahead. A couple of the spots I picked up were freebies, handed over when drivers around me overcooked it, but the rest was just close, clean racing lap after lap. It’s the kind of race that’s as much fun to drive as it is to watch — and I hope that came through on the video.

Up Front

Kuisheng Huang turned pole into a flag-to-flag win, leading all 14 laps with no cautions and no lead changes to disturb him. Marco González and Fonta Garcia rounded out the podium from P2 and P3, split by less than half a second at the line. Behind them the pack churned: Jussa Kunnas carved from P23 to P12 for the biggest gain of the day, while Theo Jernberg slid from P4 to P15 under a pile of contact. Clean and fast at the front — a good deal messier the deeper you looked.

The Honest Bottom Line

Let’s be clear about what this was: a training run. The goal wasn’t a trophy — it was finding my rhythm in traffic, keeping the silly self-inflicted mistakes at zero, and stringing together consistent laps while everything kicked off around me. On all three counts, mission accomplished. I can feel myself settling back into race pace, and it’s coming quicker than I expected. Give it a little more time and I reckon I’ll be properly fighting for positions again — not just surviving in the midfield, but racing for it.

The Rig — First Run on the Simucube 3 Ultimate

For the hardware nerds, the headline: this was my first race on the new Simucube 3 Ultimate. If you caught the Watkins Glen report, this is the “inbound — yes, Ultimate” wheelbase, now bolted on and turning laps. First impression: I’m hooked. There’s a clear step up in detail over the SC2 Ultimate — more texture, more information, more of the road actually talking back through the wheel. And I’ve barely started. For now I’m just running James Baldwin’s online profile, which is already excellent straight out of the box, but I want to sit down and experiment properly once it cools off here and I get a bit of quiet time. The D-BOX platform and the Cubic belt tensioner handled the rest, making Barcelona feel like a real place under the tyres.

Race Stats

Full Results

Livery design by Jeremy Kerr.