This interview originally took place on December 4th, 2021

VSCAracing.com: Hello Neil!

Neil: Hi!

V: Nice to meet you! Thanks for taking the time to take this interview with us.

N: No problem.

V: So, let's get right to it. This is our second installment in the interview series “Ten Questions with...”. Again, we really appreciate you taking the time, Neil. We know the holidays are just ahead of us, so we really appreciate you taking the time.

N: That’s good. I thought that could be fun.

V: So, our first question: How did you find out about VSCA and what did go into your decision to enter competition in the SportsCar Championship for 2022?

N: So, Kyle (Birnie), one of the organizers, I’ve raced with him for almost six years now. I first got involved and first met Kyle when I was running in DGFX season four, I think it was. This was just after the Cup car came out. And we’ve raced DGFX seasons ever since then until the end of it.

And he’s got started up with IVRA and we’ve joined him with that, so we’ve been racing there since. And we’ve just got to know Kyle reasonably well and he mentioned this was happening a few months ago, to be honest.

And I was immediately like: “Oh wow, this sounds really interesting, because it’s the same vibe as DGFX which we really enjoyed. And there is lots of similarities between the two. VSCA of course is much grander in terms of that it’s the first iRacing league, I think, that lasts for a whole year, instead of a six-month season, which is really interesting. And it’s got the safety car element, which is something that misses from a lot of different leagues.

And for us that makes it interesting. You know, it makes for a race that is not just a flag-to-flag sprint. But it makes for a lot more strategy involved and stuff. It’s definitely something that’s very interesting to us.

V: When we’re looking forward to the SportsCar Championship in 2022, what race are you looking forward to the most, if you had to pick one?

N: I’ve got to pick two, actually. One is the Glen, purely because I go well at Watkins Glen. It’s one of the tracks I’ve always been good at and I’m always drawn to the tracks that I do good at. The Glen is always quite fun. And from what I understand iRacing has got the track re-scanned now, so that one will be an interesting one for the first time.

The other one is Mosport (Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, CTMP), which I think is the one immediately after the Glen. I think Mosport does not get enough love. It does not seem to pop up that often and considering it’s an IMSA track you don’t see a lot of stuff running there, which is really strange. But I really like that track.

V: Yeah, it’s definitely a household name in IMSA. So it definitely has its place on our schedule. Interesting choice! So, looks like you’ll have both your favorite races in the middle of summer.

N: Yes, that will be certainly interesting, but it means it is bookended by ones that I’m not a massive fan of, which is Mid-Ohio and Road America. I guess we’ve got to get through the dark times to get to the good stuff (laughing).

V: So, let’s get a bit more personal here. How did you originally get into sim racing, yourself?

I think, I’d like to think this is like most other people. I'm currently 43, so I was brought up on 8-bit consoles and stuff when I was younger. But at some point I got involved with play stations and stuff and along with that TOCA Touring Cars, Colin McRae Rally and the first Gran Turismo, the first one or two of those. And those were really cool.

I just always thought racing games were the most fun games. And then I sort of skipped forward a few years. I started getting into motor sport for real, like following F1. I don’t think I’ve missed a Formula One race in 15 years now.

I sort of went through the whole process of kids and stuff and so gaming went to the back of things. Sort of ten years ago, I got back into Gran Turismo and then I started seeing “Empty Box” on YouTube. And I was like “Oh, this looks really cool! This is like proper racing!”

So I gave it a go. I remember having my work laptop and this rubbish old DGT wheel, I believe it was, clamped to my desk, just trying that out with iRacing for the first time. And it snowballed from there and got considerably more expensive. But it’s great. It’s why we do it.

For me, getting into it (sim racing) is a great alternative to doing it for real, because of costs primarily. You know, you can have a really good setup in iRacing or sim racing in general for what, 5K or something, whereas you’re looking at a grand a weekend for racing anything real. And then there’s the fact that it costs even more when you bin it.

V: It's interesting that you mention that, because my next question was going to be: What is your rig? Can you tell us a little bit more about your rig, what wheel and pedal set you’re using for your races?

N: I've got a Sim-Lab GT1. It was a GT1 when I bought it. It’s numerous bits of profile added and removed that sort of thing. I got triple screens mounted on that. I have tried VR in the past. I tried the Oculus when it first came out, ran that for about a year, went back to triples, because I find endurance racing isn’t fun with VR, because you either have to wear a headset for many, many hours or go in and out of the sim to change between monitors and VR. It just gets complicated.

I’ve got a SimuCube 2 with a 20 NM motor on it with a Fanatec Formula wheel mounted on that; Fanatec V3 pedals which are great, they seem completely indestructible.

And then in terms of PC, I just try to remember what’s in here. I’ve got a (Intel) 10000 series (CPU/processor). I’ve got a (Geforce RTX) 2080 Super in there, 32 GB of RAM.

It does its job. It doesn’t allow me to run everything on full fidelity on iRacing but it’s reasonably high. It does its job for sure.

V: That certainly sounds like an impressive that you’ve got yourself there. Really nice!

N: Yeah, it’s taken a while to build it up. I definitely wouldn’t have gone out and just bought it all, because it would have broken me financially. I’ve put sim racing first for six, seven years. Every year you get something. And you end up with a pile of sim rig stuff that is really nice and you end up with a pile of stuff in the corner, that you don’t use anymore (laughing).

V: If you had to pick one thing that you like the most and one thing that you dislike the most about sim racing, in comparison to real-life motorsports, what would those two things be?

N: There is two things that I like the most. One is the accessibility, really, and the fact it doesn’t cost as much as real racing and that you’re able to run cars that you’d never be able to run in real life, like the LMP2 Prototype for instance. So that’s one thing.

The other thing is is the fact, that you’re able to race real people, real world racing drivers. And the most recent at that, we did the 24 Hours of Spa last year, I think it was, we were in split 8, we were racing against Fernando Alonso, Rubens Barrichello, Tony Kanaan, all in one team. And that’s kind of cool, right?

You think about all these people who queue up for autographs at the circuits, waiting for their driver to possibly come out and give them an autograph.

And here you are racing a double World Champion in F1 for 24 hours. And I don’t think there is many other places or even other sports, where you can do that.

In terms of dislike: The one thing that bugs me slightly compared to real world racing is the very top echelon of iRacing, all the pro drivers, is very saturated with the same people.

So whether you’re doing the Porsche Tag Heuer Esports Supercup, or whether you’re doing top split endurance racing or the other type of top level racing leagues floating around – it’s the same names in all of those.

Whereas in reality, you take someone like Lewis Hamilton, he races in Formula One, but you won’t find him in an IMSA race or something else, because of how contracts and stuff work in the real world. For him, he has to focus on one thing, whereas on iRacing if you take someone like Josh Rodgers or Max Benecke, you see them in so many top splits, top series, whatever.

To me, it’s not diluted enough. You haven’t got different people in different groups in every league in different series.

I’m not one who massively worries about iRating. If I lose some, I don’t care. I’m there to race, not look after some numbers. But it is just, how quick some people are. It’s sometimes quite depressing.

You think you have done 400 laps of practice and someone just walks up and goes one second faster than you.

V: It can be truly mind boggling, can’t it?

N: It can be really hard to not let it get to you I suppose. You can go in with supreme confidence and then someone walks up and just decimates you. I can certainly see a lof ot people say “Sod this! I’m not doing this anymore! I want to win.”

And for me, I think I’ve got like 19 wins or 16 wins total or something in six years, which is really bad. But I’m here to race. I’m not necessarily here to win. I’m here to do better than I think I can do.

If I think I can only get tenth because of who else I’m racing against and I get fifth? That’s brilliant, I love it!

V: When you meet someone that doesn’t know what sim racing is, first of all: How do you explain what sim racing is? And second: What are the reactions you usually get from people out there, who don’t know sim racing?

N: Yeah, It’s always tricky. The first reaction you always get is “Oh, so it’s a computer game.” Like it’s the same thing as me sitting down playing Forza or whatever.

If people are still listening, once you’ve explained it’s not that, then it’s being able to say you just jumped into an endurance race and there is 50 other teams in that race. And each team has three or four people. So you’re looking at a hundred, two hundred people around the world all racing together for a long period of time. That is something that definitely peaks people’s interest a bit.

And then I’m explaining it’s not Forza, it’s not Gran Turismo and you don’t get drifting points or anything like that. It’s modeled as close as really, really can be to real world racing.

And that tends to get people more interested, especially when you mention you could be racing real world pros and stuff.

It’s also usually a lot easier to explain it when you can sit someone down in the rig and say “Here! Have a go!”

Like, drive a Mazda MX-5 around Silverstone and see how they react when they got decent force feedback and decent screens and stuff.

Because a lot of people’s experience is buying Forza on the Xbox. I just think sim racing, while it’s still about driving a car, it’s compeltely different in every other way.

V: You’re running for Torque Freak Racing. In fact, you’re the team manager for Torque Freak Racing in VSCA. I happen to know that your team has been around for some time. But there have also been a lot of changes throughout the years. Can you tell us a little something about the story behind Torque Freak Racing and what your expectations are for the 2022 season in VSCA?

N: So, I’m quite new to Torque Freak (Racing). I’ve only been with them for about over a year, as a result of merging two other teams. Torque Freak Racing or “TFR” have been around, I think for about ten years now. There is about 15 or 20 of us.

I’m the team manager for VSCA because I’m the one who sort of got us all organized for it. We’re not as strict as a lot of other pro teams. We’ve got reasonably experienced people. We’ve got guys who are up in the 6K, high 6K iRating and some who are down in the 2K to 3K region.

But we ideally like endurance racing. I’ve been racing against Torque Freak Racing for five, six years in DGFX and IVRA and it was last season, maybe the season before, when were racing as Adequate Racing. It was four of us, who were left over from a previous team that had fallen apart.

And I noticed we were always racing around Torque Freak. And I know David from Torque Freak Racing quite well from before. So we said: “Look, we’re doing the same thing all the time. Why don’t we just do it as the same team?”

And it came to that. So yeah, the four of us who were Adequate Racing are now and have been TFR for about a year now. We have been entering stuff this year, IVRA specifically and we’re doing quite well there, I think.

But next year in VSCA, we’ve got one GT3 entry that I’ll be in and another P2 prototype entry. And it’s kind of our plan to just have fun, have a go and see where we end up.

We’re not the fastest guys in the team, because the rules in VSCA say these guys aren’t allowed to come with us, but we’re still able to have a bunch of fun. And I think we can be reasonably competitive. I don’t think there is anyone close to 4K iRating, which is the cutoff, but there is plenty of us with around 3K but also bags of experience as well, which I think matters a lot in the long multiclass races.

The fact that we have done multiple years of long endurance events should help us. We hope! (laughing)

V: Outside of sim racing and motorsports, what else are you passionate about? Is there something you could talk about for hours?

N: I’m reasonably into music. I’d like to think I can play guitars and drums. I used to be a drummer when I was younger. I was in a band and we did some gigs. We played at some theaters and things. And then kids and stuff happened.

I’d like to think I can sort of pass the time by playing guitars. I wouldn’t say I’m very good at it, but I’m reasonable. So that is one thing.

Other than that, I’m a software engineer by trade. A part of being a software engineer is, you have to keep up with other stuff, so I have to spend a lot of time looking into that kind of stuff. But you have to be interested in that kind of stuff, in order to be successful, I think.

V: Do you have an idol or role model in life? Someone that inspires you or that you look up to in life?

N: There is probably two, I think, for different reasons.

One, I’ve always followed Lewis Hamilton’s career. He is obviously extremely quick and extremely talented, all the rest of it. But that’s not why he pops into my mind.

It’s the fact that he, even after winning 7 world titles, he still puts in the work. From what I read, there is no complacency at all. He knows he has to do the work to do his thing.

And I think a lot of people, particularly in competitive scenarios, they feel they get to a certain point and say “Well, I can do this now.” and then they back off a bit. And that’s when somebody else starts to beat them. And I think that must be really hard to do for so long, at such a high level.

And the other one is, I sort of followed him all my life, Dave Grohl, guitarist, drummer whatever you want to call him now, from Foo Fighters and Nirvana.

I got into Nirvana when I was 15 or 16 years old. I started playing the drums around the same sort of time. He’s just sort of been there in my Spotify list and stuff all that time.

And he seems to be unique in the way that he is a celebrity but also not an idiot. He seems to be a quite nice guy. He’s generally widely liked and he’s especially really talented. I can’t think of many people who have been able to switch between two hall of fame bands in their career.

So yeah, it’s probably those two guys.

V: We’re already down to our final question. The 24 Hours of Daytona is only 49 days away as of this moment when this interview is taking place. As a team how do you prepare for a race? Is there anything you do different in preparation for Daytona, compared to other races?

N: No, Daytona we treat like any of the other races. To be honest, we probably only start thinking seriously about a race, a week or two beforehand. I probably wouldn’t even do a lap before 10-15 days before the race. Partly because of time (or lack thereof), partly because you can probably over-prepare, run too many laps, do too much practice, I suppose. For us this seems to work.

Generally what will happen is,  we’ll just get into our solo practices, just lapping, just getting to know the track and getting down your lap time, that sort of thing.

Then we’ve got a few setups that we know work, from a few different places. Then we start working on these setups a bit. In the case of the GT3 team, where I’ll mainly spend my time, we’re never looking at making massive changes, because our baseline setups are pretty good. It is just about tweaking. So we might have a few sessions where it’s just two or three of us just lapping and trying different things and see where it takes us.

But because of the setups these days, with the tire model, it requires five to ten laps to get a proper handle on it time-wise, you do find you do tend to end up doing two, three maybe four hundred laps of practice for a race, depending how much time you put into it.

The key thing we’re looking for – at least I’m looking for it – is, being able to get a reasonable lap time, but being able to do it so consistently and without having to think about it too much.

Because, when the race is happening, you need to be able to race without having to think too much about driving the car. There is just so much other stuff going on.

You’re trying to think about where your strategy is, what you’re doing in terms of trying to pass other cars, what traffic you got coming from behind or in front of you even when you’re in the fast class.

So, it’s just getting to that point where the lapping itself becomes muscle memory. Then you can sit in the car for a two-hour stint, you can do the same lap time over and over again, but your mind isn’t completely consumed. So you stay a bit fresher and more aware of what’s going on around you.

But we’re definitely not a team that’s diving into massive amounts of telemetry or thing like that. I always do setups by feel. If it feels better and it makes me go quicker on the time, we’ll use that. But we won’t look up on the damper histograms or whatever else.

Saying that, that might not be the best way of preparing that we can possibly do. There might be people who are doing stuff in different ways, that means they’re better and quicker than all the rest of it. But everything works differently for different people.

V: Thank you taking the time for this interview. I just want to wish you and your team happy holidays and some quiet time and to refresh the batteries for the new season coming up. Thank you for your time and we’ll see you at Daytona!

N: Sounds good. I’m looking forward to it! This should be interesting. Cheers!