Idos Motorsport Throwback: Celebrating Two Years of rFactor 2
The Idos Motorsport team originally began many many years ago on an old kids game with some leagues which, at the time, were taken relatively serious. However after a couple of years on there many leagues moved to rFactor coming into 2015 and 2016. This meant that teams also had to evolve and follow, Idos being one of those. Moving alongside the MRTI series run by Eric Kukenberger the team entered a two car effort in Season 0.5 and then in season 1 the team fielded a four car effort with Jacob Reid, Rory Macduff, Lorenz Dougherty and Alex Skinner being the headline drivers in the effort. With Alex ducking out towards the end and Lorenz focusing on FSR it meant that Rory and Jacob ended up together as a very competitive force to be reckoned with towards the end of the season.
However. Whilst this was being carried out Alex had other ideas. Having been working with Lorenz Dougherty since mid 2015 the two ended up together in the Formula Simracing series in the PRO division with Invictus, run by Matthew Tuson. Running the Hockenheim, Monza and Hungary rounds of the championship that year the pairing managed amazing qualifying spots but in races were plagued with bad luck. Most noteably at the Hungaroring in which Dougherty qualified P8 on the grid and was taken out at turn one by three Avid Chronic Racing cars causing large suspension damage that proved un-repairable and not worth finishing due to the pace drop and degredation increase.
Shortly another event came around the corner. A series that interested both Alex and Lorenz. This event being the 2016 Xtreme RPM Xtreme Formula 2016 season at the Circuit Spa-Francorchamps. With a livery created by Miles Wheway the two were set to begin their journey under the Sussex based banner of Idos Motorsport once again. With a setup provided by one of the very willing drivers on the grid Lorenz qualified pretty poorly with little experience of the car. Come the race, naturally, Alex went safer than anything on the fuel and ended up overfilling the car by about 20 litres of fuel. With the team finishing P13 it was points on debut in rF2 and XRPM.
With the team being unable to field any drivers for the remainder of the races they pulled out fully and whilst IS1 brough no noteable results as well the team held their efforts on rF2 with Alex focusing on engineering in Formula Simracing PRO.
2017 came around and it was all change. New drivers, cars, series and hopes arose inside the team when the rFactor 1 successes died down (even with the Seacrest GT3 series being VERY poditive for the team with their Jaguar) meaning rF2 was more looked into. With FSR being the original goal it was too late to enter the 2017 season excluding the fact that Alex was unable to source drivers especially with being soo new to the series. This meant that a new series had to be sought out. Shortly after looking the team came across the GPVWC series after being tipped off by Will Barnes a year prior and Drillers Motorsport manager Joey Vroljik. Joey had plans to enter the series and convinved Alex to come and join with Idos. Hence the Idos Motorsport ITC programme was born with Stein Fidder and the familiar Ed Williams being signed for the first season. This providing some amazing successes inside the team with an outstanding season and a podium finish with experienced Swede Tobias Olsson at the wheel of the Ford Focus.
After the teams title finish of P11, Alex had decided to enter the Formula Challenge series in 2018. With the team then having a more in depth knowledge of drivers and also being known by the community it was easier for drivers to be sought as Alex was also involved inside the broadcasting of the GPVWC Career Ladder and Disciplinary Committee during the 2017 season. After multiple commentary jobs alongside a, quite comedic, Young Drivers Test for formerly known Vod:Bul (now ACR Zakspeed).
Alongside the ITC season the team had plans to enter the Virtual Endurance Championship. However, after missing the sign ups the team found themselves against time to sign up for the "Junior Series" called the Virtual Le Mans Championship. Also run by the same group as the Virtual Endurance Championship (Simracing.Club) it gave the team a chance to become recognised and potentially enter late into Season 10 or enter at the beginning of Season 11.
After managing to barely find drivers for the season. The team set their sights on points each race. This seemed to become a simple task as David Jundt, Marc Veit and Thomas Hinss showed they were a match for the big name teams in the series by consistently being inside the Top 10 and on a few occasions even fighting for the podium spots, with the most noteable race being the 4 Hours of Silverstone in which Veit was involved in an intense fight with the Swedish Simracers car until a game crash cost the team the podium with 20 minutes left on the clock... Then with Sebring and Le Mans being abysmal races it gave a sombre goodbye to the VLMS effort.
Also during this time there had been a VEC entry. Thomas Lenz, Michael Wilson, Joe Nathan and Chris Williamson had signed up for the Idos Motorsport Division 3 Chevrolet Corvette GTE effort for the Sebring 12 Hours and Le Mans 24 Hours events aiming to finish as high as possible against an extremely competitive GT field. With early mistakes in Sebring costing the team a high points finish (and a points finish in general) sights were set on Le Mans. However, issues with the car early on after going off at the Porsche Curves whilst being lapped by an LMP2 meant that it was job done not even 5 hours into the 24 hour race. A sad end to the effort in which left Wilson downhearted but most certainly not demotivated for the next season as he moved to his regular team of Breslin for Season 11 along with Thomas Lenz whilst Joe Nathan was retained to line up alongside ex Atlantic Motorsport LMP2 driver April Carlsvard of which will be talked about later.
As this led into the mid part of 2018 there was plenty of racing going on alongside this. The team had been accepted into the 2018 GPVWC Formula Challenge series with Ed Williams returning alongside ex MadCape Superleague driver Michal Galka. However, with Ed having multiple other commitments Cameron Rodger, who had been the team's reserve driver for the first 3 rounds, was kept on from the Silverstone round onwards in which he scored the team's first podium of the year in Race 2 finishing 2nd place. Hockenheim brough about a 3 race ban for Galka due to him running out of license points after a series of incidents cost him multiple of those points. Meaning Tom Lombaerts was to be signed for the Spa, Monza and Singapore rounds of the championship with Lombaerts scoring a debut podium in Race 2 of the Spa round after a giant crash on lap 1 sparked controversy about whether the race should have been red flagged or not.
Formula Challenge was not the only GPVWC series being run at the time. GT racing was a hot topic with the recent unveiling of the Official Studio 397 GT3 pack which featured the Callaway Corvette, Bentley Continental (2016), McLaren 650s, Mercedes AMG GT3 and the Radical.
With the team being partial towards the Callaway Corvette, that became the car of choice with drivers Alistair Long and Peter Schulze being drafted in from the Flag-to-Flag team with Michael Wilson becoming reserve driver. With luck being fully against the team throughout the entire season the results were nowhere near what could have been achieved in the team's opinion.
The team also partook in a few other events. WIth two of those being at rF2WEC in their GXPC WEC series. With the team fielding a singular GTE Corvette of Marc Veit and a Singular LMP1 car of Lazaros Filippakos, both races granted a podium and a win for both drivers with Lazaros finishing on the podium at the chaos filled Long Beach round and winning the Mid-Ohio round whilst Marc Veit took his maiden victory in simracing at the Long Beach round and finishing a VERY close second place just behind the Rookie Monsters driver of Ryan Vadera at Mid-Ohio. After departing from the series.
CFEG was another major series of events that took place inside the start and mid part of 2018.
The WSCC season with rookies Joshua Penny and Fabian Rudde provided a great friendship and partnership inside their Mercedes AMG GT3 with a highest finish of 4th place at the finale at the Daytona Road Course.
Later in the year the team would enter three cars into the CFEG Le Mans 12 hour event. Marc Veit and Jean-Pierre Helpap in the LMP2, David Jundt, Alex Skinner and Brandon Dollar inside the LMP3 and Fabian Rudde, Joshua Penny and Peter Jones inside of the GTE Corvette. The race was long, brutal and heartbraking for two of the three cars with the LMP3 losing the lead, and podium, within the final two hours as Brandon Dollar went off the circuit at Indianapolis after a vital error into the braking zone costing multiple minutes. The GTE was filled with issues as Fabian Rudde got launched into the heavens after a track bug caused the car to then be DSQ'ed but recovered by the amazing admins who worked tirelessly throughout the event. Joshua then had issues managing the car so his brother, Peter Jones, was called in to help and bring the car home. This he did successfully and to this day we can't thank him enough for his last minute help!
The LMP2 on the other hand had a very up and down race. With issues in the start and mid part being counteracted by Veit and Helpap's speed throughout the rest. Even with a late race nose problem at Tetre Rouge, the pair managed to drag the underpowered Ligier JSP2 up into third place at the end of the race as the team they were fighting made a crucial error and lost the car entering the Ford Chicane just after lapping the LMP3 of Brandon Dollar.
A few months later the team entered 5 cars into the CFEG Petit Le Mans event. Two LMP2s, a singular LMP3 and two GTE Aston Martins. The ORIGINAL line ups were as followed:
LMP2 Oreca - April Carlsvard, Kyran Parkin, Allie Ferrie LMP2 Ligier - Marc Veit, Jean-Pierre Helpap
LMP3 - Nick Newcome, David Jundt
GTE #33 - Rory MacDuff, Brandon Dollar
GTE #66 - Adam State, Ryan Walker
With Ryan Walker becoming unavailable towards the race and Brandon Dollar being removed from the team alltogether the #66 car was dropped in favor of the more Contemporary Liveried #33 made by Vee Designs. Rory lined up alongside Adam for the race whilst the Veit, Helpap Ligier LMP2 failed to turn up due to driver illness.
The race went flawlessly for both cars for the majority of the race. With Newcombe and Jundt giving the team a TWO LAP lead as the flag dropped to give the Idos team their first EVER win on rFactor 2 in an official series. Much to the joys of the LMP3 camp who had worked extremely hard to make their tyre strategy work.
The GTE car of Macduff and State managed to finish P4 in their class which for an entirely rookie line up was an outsanding achievement with the Winning GTE being from the Speedymite camp and the 2nd placed car being from the Simracing Poland camp. Two EXTREMELY experienced teams of whom we had no hope of beating. However the GTE did manage to lead a fair part of the race early on of which definitely gave the team some hopes of a podium early on but crucial mistakes towards the end dropped the team down which was a massive shame but it was expected. Still an immense job by both crews to get to the end of the 10 hour race. One victory ticked off the team's bucket list and focus set towards the upcoming WSCC season very much present.
Finally, The 11th Season of the Virtual Endurance championship is right around the corner with the Pre-Qualifying event being on the 8th of September. Our lines ups for each car are as follows:
LMP2 Car A - April Carlsvard and Joe Nathan (Division 2 for Pre-Qualifying) LMP2 Car B - Kyran Parkin, Allie Ferrie and Lazaros Filippakos (Division 3 for Pre-Qualifying)
GTE BMW - Adam State, Fabian Rudde and Michal Galka (Division 4 for Pre-QUalifying)
With the line ups for both LMP2s being confirmed towards the end of the VLMS season the GTE line up was confirmed closer to the sign up period. A full rookie GTE line up will definitely mean a lot is to learn going into the very long season with the new Studio 397 Endurance Pack.
There, however, is one final driver that wasn't mentioned in this article yet. She gave the team their first win in an rF2 series yet it was no an "official" one. Nor was it broadcasted (sadly). Lining up alongside Alex Skinner in the 2018 CFEG Porsche Carrera Cup series was Annita Kelly. She had shown immense pace after coming back to simracing after a gigantic break due to personal issues in her life meaning she was very rusty. Coming back into the PCC events at sebring gave hera victory and a podium in the two sebring races with Alex having a quad downshift on Lap 2 costing them a potential podium in that race.
After the race Annita left the team. The reasons of which were personal to both her and Alex. However. After multiple months we can announce she has managed to resolve her issues personally in life and find time to settle back down and return to the team. The events that she will race are yet to be planned but it is definitely something that team boss Alex Skinner has been very elated about.
Alex Skinner (Team Boss): "It's genuinely amazing to have Annita return to the team. After the multiple issues she's had throughout the year it's amazing that she has decided to come back and return with us to come and race her heart out like she did back in the Porsche series early this year. There's definitely a long road ahead but we're sure we can make her welcome and feel like a second family to her like we try to be with everyone that races for this team. She's a very fast driver who definitely has a lot going for her so there will definitely be more of her on track in the future."
"In regards to the rest of the team and the progress we have made in two years is outstanding. Going from a team that had no-one to drive for them throughout 2016 to then suddenly having a driverbase boom in 2017 and early 2018 has been something oustanding to be piloting coming into the end of the year. With Season 11 of VEC coming up with our three cars of Nathan, Carlsvard, Pkarin, Ferrie, Rudde, State and Galka there's definitely some fun to be had and we're very much looking forward to it. With how the FC season is currently going i'm indifferent about next year. Obviously we want to continue but unless there is a drastic change in the standards then there isn't much of a point when some amazing drivers get caught up in pathetic accidents caused by people who are very much only doing it to cause chaos (as has been known for some drivers).
ITC has been seriously close in Division 1 at Poznan. It was a serious eye opener and still amazing that we were relatively on pace with some of these guys. We're looking even stronger for Le Mans on Thursday so heads down and let's see where we can finish!"
"As we move on to the late part of the season i want to thank the entire team for the past 2 years of racing. Even if said members haven't been around since the start. It's been an amazing journey and we've got plenty more time to go! Let's make the end of 2018 and the entirety of 2019 a blast!"
With the team now at their 5 years of racing mark the 2019 seasons (and CFEG WSCC) will feature special throwback liveries to the older car schemes of rFactor 1 and said Kids game. How these liveries will look is another question. However we can definitely look forward to watching each car, no matter which drivers are behind the wheels of them, being pushed as hard as possible around the track.
With Thursday being the second round of the GPVWC ITC season at the Le Mans Bugatti Circuit you will be able to watch three races of intense action in Division 1 whilst Jack Mayor and Matthew Clipp aim to score extremely valuable points to keep themselves above the relegation zone and maybe higher. Make sure to catch that on the GPVWC youtube channel on the 6th of September 2018 at 7:30pm BST.
For now, Here are some photos of the team's cars throughout the years of racing. Enjoy!
