We catch up with Eliza Indriani and her women in sim racing blogs. She is a great person to check out in the sim racing community. Be sure to support and follow!
Bringing you another fantastic women in sim racing blog, Eliza Indriani is relentless with her racing and keeping the community posted.
Hello and welcome to my 45th blog! I hope you are well, last weekend we had a snow storm here in the US. It was -22 degrees Celsius in my city. I hope everyone is okay!
I spent most of my time at home doing sim racing, I had a great time racing and chatting with all the people on my streams. It’s nice to have wonderful people around you to support and grow together. I’m so grateful to have you all! Last week I had a race in Brands Hatch, I did a sprint and endurance race at this track. I can say I make progress in iRacing, my SR and iR is going up and down but I learned a lot about this sim, and that’s a good progress! I dedicated my time to learning and it starts to show some good progress, I will keep pushing!
Alright without further due, let’s get into the weekly updates of my sim racing journey!
GT3 Challenge and VRS sprint series at Brands Hatch
Last week I had a lot of races at Brands Hatch. We were racing at this track for the GT3 Challenge and VRS Sprint Series. Brands Hatch is absolutely a fun track to race and it can be challenging too. It’s a narrow track, there’s not much place to overtake in my opinion. Audi feels great at this track; both in fixed or open setup. I tried the Ferrari before changing to the Audi, and It was such a night and day. Audi felt great to drive, it’s not hard to control this car when you made a mistake.
I did a lot of 20 mins races in the fixed setup and the open setup last week and I gained iRating. I also improved my lap time here, on the last day of the 2nd week I could reach 1:23 low; which was 2 seconds slower to the alien pace that I met on the practice session. I gained my consistency and my confidence racing at this track, Brands Hatch is one of my favorite tracks on iRacing for sure
VRS Endurance at Brands Hatch
On Saturday I had a race in the VRS Endurance Series. This is a 180 mins race at Brands Hatch, same track like we have in the GT3 challenge and VRS Sprint Series. I drove with my friend Nick Dawson-Lathan in this race. It was nice having him to drive with me. We didn’t have any plans going into this race tbh, I was just texting him like “hey do you wanna race in VRS endurance next week?” And he said yes. Here we are. Lol I just wanted to enjoy driving the Audi at this track and gain experience in sim racing, same with Nick. So we took it easy, no pressure. Just keep the car on the track and avoid any incidents.
We qualified at P30, it was quite competitive on the grid. There were a lot of fast drivers on the track. Nick did the Q and the first stint, I did the second and then I gave the car back to Nick and did another stint. Nick did a great drive on his first stint, I learned a lot about racing from him. I also did a great stint, I didn’t send this car to the wall, lap time was consistent, we were in the top 20 and it was possible to be in top 15. It was an unexpected result for us. It was a fun and great race for us.
Too bad Nick got into an accident during his last stint, our car broke, and we lost so much speed on the straight. We can’t go to the pit and repair our car, There’s only 30 minutes left and we were at P21 at that time. So Nick decided to keep on driving and finish the race. We finished at P19, that’s a great result for both of us.
We are planning to do more endurance races together, we’ll do better next time!
GT3 Challenge at Spa-Francorchamps
On the 3rd week of GT3 Challenge and VRS Sprint Series we’ll be racing at Spa-Francorchamps. It’s a fun track to drive, everybody’s been racing at this track before. However, I don’t like the Audi in the open setup. I’m losing the rear every time I try to go flat-out on Blanchimont and Eau Rouge. I need to lift to keep my car stable and I find it kinda frustrating. I asked for advice from my friend about how to tweak the Audi setup and he said I might need to lower the rear ride height or rear ARB. I haven’t made any change on the setup yet, might give it a try later when I have time to explore car setup.
I decided to do a short race (20 mins race in the fixed setup) and I’m taking the Ferrari. This car feels okay in my opinion with the fixed setup, it’s stable and safe enough. And also I wanted to gain more experience racing at this track before I get into a longer race in the open setup.
I wasn’t the fastest driver on the grid, but it’s okay. It was the first day of 3rd week, my main focus for now is to try to not go off the track; less incident-more consistency. I qualified at 4, I was honestly surprised. But when I saw the result, half of the grid didn’t do the Qualifying. So I assumed most people are just trying to gain experience of what could happen in this week’s races.
It wasn’t a chill race, I saw a lot of cars get into incidents, and there were some aggressive drivers too. Sometimes I let them go, I didn’t want to battle for position and end up in a big crash. I better let them go and keep up with my pace, wait for them to make mistakes. Somehow it works! I did my own race, really just enjoyed my time learning this track and I was able to get the pole position.
Too bad I spun at the final lap, the guy in P2 and P3 caught me and it was a tough race at the final lap. It was a bit chaotic at the bus stop, those 2 guys crashed and they blocked the road. I had nowhere to go other than cutting the chicane. That’s a big penalty for me, that puts me in P9.
It was tough in the end, I could’ve won it. I was so close to the win. It still hurts until now, I blame myself for being ‘too scared’ because honestly that race was unexpected! I didn’t expect to be on the pole and I felt nervous. I put too much pressure on myself and that cost me a win. Tough pill to swallow; but now I know that I can win the race, I started from top 10 and finished in top 10 and even got a podium this last 3 weeks, I made a lot of improvements, and the most important thing is I’m loving sim racing even more now. Thinking about getting a podium can stress you out sometime, just remember to enjoy the race and always evaluate yourself. Take a short break and look how far you’ve come, acknowledge your mistakes and don’t give up.
I hope I can do better next time in this series! I will update it on my next blog
I will do lots of races in Watkins Glen and Spa Francorchamps in the 3rd week, and I will also have an endurance race in the IMSA endurance series at Watkins Glen this weekend. It’s gonna be fun and challenging because this will be my first endurance race in multi class. Wish me luck for that, and make sure to follow me on Twitch (www.twitch.tv/elzindriani)
