Tonight I reached what I consider a milestone here at R2P: my 100th race. I wanted to share some of my thoughts on this occasion, and express a few words of thanks. I joined R2P in December of last year, and I arrived here in part because of an article in Autosimsport and in part because one of the people I raced with in an other league took part in a F1 Historic event here. One visit to the web site and I did not need much more persuasion to sign me up, everything about the site spelled things I like: community, well-organized, real names, statistics, a multitude of events and sims supported at various times during the week and weekend. To be honest, I find it hard to believe that any serious sim racer would not want to be here. R2P quickly became my home page.

My first event was a fun-run race at Jarama, Spain in that beast of an Alfa-Romeo 1979. The whole race I spent battling with a gentleman who is one of the pillars of the community here and would become a friend: Joseph Di Pino. Before long, I was entering events in open-wheel, sports car, touring car, and recently – blessed be the fact I tried—stock cars. My real life racing has consisted mostly of years of kart racing, both 2-strokes (Rotax) and 4. Despite being fortunate with a very good job and being by all means comfortable in my economic status, racing in real life—even done as a hobby and at the karting level-- is a brutally demanding sport on the wallet. As a father and husband, I have had to make some cutbacks on my real life racing (my CRG Rotax 125cc sits gathering dust, though I have been refusing to sell it despite the fact that it belongs on the race track). What it means is that my sim racing, which I had done for years anyway and has always proved an excellent training tool, started filling some of my competitive needs and desire for racing. Ayrton Senna, my hero and the person I named my own son after, after all famously said that racing is in the blood—and that applies clearly to many of us both in real life racing and in our sim community. The only other category of people who I have seen have the same kind of viral attachment to what is an indefinable passion are mountain climbers.

It seems that I have run one hundred events, some I did well at, others I gave an abysmal performance. There are statistics, they are on my driver’s page in all their muted glory. What statistics and results do not tell is the much finer story surrounding all these races and evenings spent at a simulator of varying degree of sophistication. It is a story of friendships and a camaraderie that I wanted to spend a few sentences elaborating on. What I find very interesting is that the friendship and camaraderie developed here at R2P is very similar, indeed identical to that which I have found over years of karting on real tracks. Even the mindset of many of us here is exactly what you find out on any given Sunday around the world. I am specifically speaking of amateur racing, club racing; the professionals are in a different sub-world, one which is highly dependent on a number of factors that often deprive some purity from the very essence of what makes motor sports so great. What a great group of individuals we have here, of racers. What a fine collection of talented people from all over the world. It is great, on any given date, to be sitting there on TeamSpeak and talking during the warm-up about springs and wings to friends from South Africa, from England, from everywhere in the US, South America, Australia and many more places. We all speak the same language, don’t we? We all understand that a power slide needs no vocabulary, that Eau Rouge in the slipstream reaches somewhere deep within our core, that a fast lap at Monaco—the chicane, the swimming pool—capture a bit of the magic potion that so was very much in the spirit of the Sennas, the Villeneuves, the Petersons, the Rindts. Can we really find words that can capture what it means to be at 110% through the Nordschleife? I often say, much to the derision of some perhaps, that the closest thing to racing is for me is playing the keyboard works of JS Bach on the piano. You have to reach a state of complete submersion, be operating almost unconsciously, yet be aware of a myriad tonalities, be tactile and pitch perfect, allow multiple themes and inputs to be running concurrently and be anticipating everything: all within a space-time continuum where a thousandth of a second is an eternity. Racing is an art form, it doesn’t matter the means by which you choose to express it.

I wanted to thank each one of you for sharing track time with me, and a big thanks to my team CT (Connecticut) Racing. It is an honor to be racing with you. I look forward to many more races together.

Finally, I wanted to express a particular thanks to three individuals:

Tim McArthur, whose tenacity and unbelievable hard work is only matched by his passion and without whom none of this would be possible. Plus he smokes reds like me.

Bob Fay and Gregg Mulgrew: two of my teammates who week after week, and for most of the events, have to deal with my sick bathroom humor, high-pitched voice complaining about how—even if I sat my sorry rear on three cases of RedBull—I will never be able to find that extra tenth. Who have to routinely deal with my incredible technical wisdom; it must be frustrating having a teammate who still thinks anti-roll bars are heartburn relievers and boost is code word for flatulence. Bob, Gregg—cheers to you guys & a big thank you again.