Qualified P13, finished P12. In between: launched out of Turn 1 before I’d completed a single corner, a collision the server invented on the back straight, eleven incident points, and a car that never once felt like the one I qualified. Total reward for sixteen laps of that — one position and exactly one iRating point.
The Senna S Had Other Plans
Interlagos runs downhill into Turn 1. Everyone knows this. Everyone brakes late anyway. I got maybe two car lengths into the Senna S before someone arrived from behind with considerably more optimism than braking distance, and the #14 was fired out of the sequence like a badly aimed shopping trolley.
P13 to P17 without completing a single corner. Overcast sky, 19 °C, eighteen cars, fifteen corners a lap — and, as it turned out, not a single caution all race. Whatever you lost on lap one, you kept.
Then the Netcode Wanted a Word
Through Curva do Sol and onto the Reta Oposta I was busy rebuilding. Settle the car, pick a target, limit the damage. Then the sim decided I had driven into someone on the back straight. I hadn’t. There was clear air on my screen and a solid object on the server’s.
Six incident points. Lap one. A personal record I genuinely wasn’t chasing.
Lap 3: One Step Forward, One Bent Nose
By lap three I was back up to P12, which sounds like a recovery until you hear how the last part of it happened. The car ahead spun himself into the inside of the corner. I was already committed, already alongside, already out of road — and I put my front end straight into him.
Nothing to argue about there. He made the mistake, I made the contact, both of us paid for it. P11 for one glorious lap, then reality: P12 through laps five and six, P13 from lap seven to ten.
Fighting the Car Instead of the Field
This is the part that actually bothers me. From the green flag the 992.2 Cup felt wrong. Not broken — wrong. The rotation wasn’t where I’d left it in practice, the rear moved earlier than it should have, and the pace I’d had all session simply wasn’t there.
The data agrees with the seat. My qualifying lap was a 1:33.265. My best race lap, on lap nine, was a 1:33.453. Nearly two tenths slower than my own qualifying time — in a car that by then was lighter on fuel and running on a more rubbered-in track. Multiply that across sixteen laps and you’ve found most of the 49 seconds I finished behind the winner.
Damage from Turn 1? A tyre window I never got into? Something that will only show up in telemetry? I don’t know yet. What I do know is that I spent the whole race managing a car instead of attacking a race. From lap eleven I got back to P12 and held it to the flag. Not heroic. But held.
The Most Expensive iRating Point of My Career
Final tally: eleven incident points, one position gained, and an iRating move from 2265 to 2266. Not plus one hundred. Plus one. Somewhere an algorithm looked at all that carnage, weighed it carefully, and slid a single point across the bar like a bored barman handing over one peanut.
Safety Rating went from 3.01 to 2.40. Minus 0.61 after a six-incident opening lap is, honestly, better than I deserved.
And I wasn’t the only one having a day. Petr Kartashov started P2 and finished behind me in P13. Wyllie Blair’s race was over after four laps from P5. Three cars disconnected outright. Meanwhile Ludvig Axelsson simply drove away from pole and led all sixteen laps — zero lead changes, zero cautions, and complete chaos everywhere behind him.
Why I’m Still Grinning
Result aside — and this result deserves to be set aside — the racing feeling was completely back. When the D‑BOX 4250i motion, the QUBIC belt tensioner, the Simucube 3 Ultimate and the Porsche Cup wheel all line up and speak the same language, the room disappears. No desk, no rig, no screens. Just a 911 Cup car, a bumpy Brazilian circuit and seventeen other people who all want the same piece of tarmac.
That is the entire reason this hardware exists. Interlagos delivered it in full, then invoiced me eleven incident points for the privilege.
Next Up: A Race in the Pimax Dream Air?
Some news on the partner side: I’m now working with Pimax as an affiliate partner — and if things line up, there’s a chance I’ll be putting a full race on the channel with the Pimax Dream Air.
For anyone who hasn’t followed the Micro‑OLED story: the Dream Air runs Sony Micro‑OLED panels at 3840 × 3552 per eye at 90 Hz, uses ConcaveView pancake optics, carries Tobii eye tracking for dynamic foveated rendering, and the visor weighs under 170 grams. The resolution is the headline, but for a sim racer the weight and the black levels are the parts that actually matter over a race distance — especially with a belt tensioner and 1.5 G of D‑BOX motion doing their best to move your head around.
The Varjo Aero has been my VR benchmark for a long time. Putting the Dream Air up against it over a proper race distance, in a full-motion rig, would make for a genuinely interesting video. Nothing is confirmed yet. But if the opportunity comes, you’ll see it here first.
Race Stats
| Series | iRacing Porsche Cup by CONSPIT |
| Season | 2026 Season 3, Week 9 |
| Track | Autódromo José Carlos Pace (Interlagos) – Grand Prix |
| Car | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) – #14 |
| Conditions | 19 °C, overcast, light wind |
| Field | 18 drivers |
| Strength of Field | 3,122 |
| Start / Finish | P13 → P12 (+1) |
| Laps | 16 / 16 – 0 cautions, 0 lead changes |
| Qualifying Lap | 1:33.265 |
| Best Race Lap | 1:33.453 (lap 9) |
| Average Lap | 1:35.018 |
| Gap to Winner | +49.386s |
| Incidents | 11x (6 of them on lap 1) |
| iRating | 2265 → 2266 (+1) |
| Safety Rating | 3.01 → 2.40 (−0.61) |
| Championship Points | 65 |
Position Log
| Lap | Position |
|---|---|
| Start | P13 |
| 1–2 | P17 |
| 3 | P12 |
| 4 | P11 |
| 5–6 | P12 |
| 7–10 | P13 |
| 11 → Finish | P12 |
Full Results
| Pos | # | Driver | Start | Laps | Best Lap | Inc | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Ludvig Axelsson | P1 | 16 | 1:31.358 | 5x | — |
| 2 | 2 | Charlie Summers | P4 | 16 | 1:31.594 | 6x | +5.251s |
| 3 | 3 | In Sung Choi | P3 | 16 | 1:31.697 | 6x | +11.317s |
| 4 | 4 | Pedro Da Silva3 | P6 | 16 | 1:31.894 | 8x | +13.120s |
| 5 | 7 | Marc Baingo | P9 | 16 | 1:32.276 | 12x | +23.032s |
| 6 | 12 | Joon Ho Kim | P12 | 16 | 1:32.910 | 7x | +32.422s |
| 7 | 15 | Nathan Chapple | P8 | 16 | 1:32.727 | 3x | +33.146s |
| 8 | 11 | Antonio Martino | P18 | 16 | 1:32.579 | 3x | +33.782s |
| 9 | 6 | Hjelte Hoffner | P7 | 16 | 1:32.126 | 13x | +36.302s |
| 10 | 13 | Artur Halemba | P14 | 16 | 1:32.895 | 5x | +47.631s |
| 11 | 18 | Simon C Larsson | P10 | 16 | 1:32.843 | 4x | +47.758s |
| 12 | 14 | Philipp Geppl | P13 | 16 | 1:33.453 | 11x | +49.386s |
| 13 | 8 | Petr Kartashov | P2 | 16 | 1:32.207 | 8x | +54.466s |
| 14 | 17 | Sheldon Xiang | P15 | 11 | 1:33.104 | 7x | –5 laps |
| 15 | 5 | Wyllie Blair | P5 | 4 | 1:31.922 | 4x | –12 laps |
| 16 | 16 | Joerg Heimbach | P11 | 3 | 1:34.203 | 4x | DNF |
| 17 | 10 | Stijn Kersten | P17 | 2 | 1:33.793 | 7x | DNF |
| 18 | 9 | Louis Hodge | P16 | 0 | — | 4x | DNF |
Livery designed by Jeremy Kerr — Trading Paints
Catch the full race & behind-the-wheel shots
Full lap on YouTube, in-helmet snapshots on Instagram.