Fuji delivered exactly the kind of race I keep showing up for: chaos into Turn 1, contact before the field had even settled, and fifteen laps that never once let me breathe. I started P9, finished P11, and enjoyed almost every furious minute of it.
Qualifying
P9 on the grid, a 1:42.229 in the pocket. Ninth in a 23-car field at 2211 strength is a solid launchpad — Fuji’s Grand Prix layout punishes anyone who isn’t committed through the long right-handers and rewards a clean exit onto that enormous front straight. I had top-ten pace. Holding onto it was always going to be the hard part.
Lights out, and instantly sideways
Turn 1 detonated on the opening lap — a crash before most of us had even picked a line — and the race basically never calmed down from there. Overtaking moves, switchbacks, wheel-to-wheel scraps lap after lap. It was relentless, demanding, and exactly the sort of racing that makes the hours worth it. My racecraft is sharpening and I felt it: in a few of the closer duels I chose to back out rather than force the issue and pad my own incident sheet. Discipline over ego — mostly. The net of all that traffic was two places lost to P11, still on the lead lap, 23.3 seconds behind Marcel Warrink, who simply drove off from pole and led every lap. My best was a 1:41.994, a couple of tenths under my qualifying time. The speed was there. The clean air was not.
About that contact with Kevin
The one that stuck with me was the scrap with Kevin. In the moment it was maddening — he would not let me go — and I’ll admit it got under my skin. To his credit, he was completely fair about it afterwards, and maybe he never saw it the way I did; maybe I could have left more room. But I went back to the replay: he had me pinned on the left-rear, I was already on full opposite lock trying to get right, and the car simply would not rotate because he was sitting on my inside rear quarter. There was no more steering to give. So I’m at peace with my side of it — he read it differently, and that’s racing. No hard feelings.
The rig finally behaved
The real star, as always, was the rig. The full-motion platform with D-BOX and the Cubic belt-tension system makes every one of those Turn 1 impacts land in your spine — immersion you cannot un-feel. The upgrade this round: the monitors actually stayed put. No more shaking themselves loose mid-stint, because I finally locked them down with threadlocker on the SimLab VESA mount. Fifteen laps of motion and not a millimetre of drift. Small fix, enormous quality-of-life win.
Where it leaves me
Six incidents is the honest headline of the afternoon, and the Safety Rating took a small 0.05 trim for it. But the field was strong enough that P11 still banked +13 iRating — 2078 to 2091 — plus 74 championship points. More than the numbers, I can feel myself getting quicker and sharper again, and that is the thing that keeps pulling me back to the seat. Same pace, fewer moments, and P9 becomes a top six. On to the next one — already looking forward to it.
| Series | iRacing Porsche Cup by CONSPIT – 2026 Season 3 |
| Track | Fuji International Speedway |
| Car | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) |
| Start / Finish | P9 → P11 (23 cars) |
| Incidents | 6x |
| Out | Running (lap 15 of 15) |
| iRating | 2078 → 2091 (+13) |
| Safety Rating | -0.05 |
| Strength of Field | 2211 |
| Championship points | 74 |
| My best lap | 1:41.994 |
| Fastest lap | 1:41.283 (Lawrence Luk) |
Full Result
The complete classification (my row in bold):
| Pos | Driver | Car | Inc | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Marcel Warrink | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 2x | Finished |
| 2 | Lawrence Luk | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 1x | Finished |
| 3 | Philippe Salinas | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 0x | Finished |
| 4 | Csaba Ungor | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 0x | Finished |
| 5 | Alex Meinzer | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 1x | Finished |
| 6 | Kevin Mead | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 2x | Finished |
| 7 | James Dowds2 | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 5x | Finished |
| 8 | Richard Phillips4 | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 7x | Finished |
| 9 | Robin Jacob | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 1x | Finished |
| 10 | Pedro L Santos | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 6x | Finished |
| 11 | Philipp Geppl | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 6x | Finished |
| 12 | Shawn T Thompson | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 5x | Finished |
| 13 | Rodrigo Luiz De Souza | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 1x | Finished |
| 14 | Patryk Kraszewski | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 4x | Finished |
| 15 | Hache Cabezuelo | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 1x | Finished |
| 16 | Austin B Greene | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 3x | Finished |
| 17 | Kerry F Corcoran | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 4x | Finished |
| 18 | Jason Tzaidas | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 10x | Finished |
| 19 | Jorge Hernández González | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 11x | Finished |
| 20 | Jim Valentine | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 6x | Finished |
| 21 | Xavier V Almeida | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 9x | Disconnected |
| 22 | Zhenghaang Zhaang | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 5x | Finished |
| 23 | Zhang Xianfeng | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) | 3x | Disconnected |
Livery by Jeremy Kerr (Trading Paints).
Catch the full race & behind-the-wheel shots
Full lap on YouTube, in-helmet snapshots on Instagram.