Virtual NASCAR driver wins second straight championship, real money

 

While the NASCAR season-ending Chase for the Sprint Cup won't end until November, the world of computer-simulated stock cars crowned its champion this week, with Paul Alfalla driving his No. 2 Chevy Impala to a fifth-place finish on iRacing's virtual Miami-Homestead race track. His prizes include $10,500, championship swag delivered at the actual NASCAR race and having his name join a growing list of desk jockeys who could see time on real pavement.

Simulated racing has grown far past the point of just another networked game; iRacing's top series has backing from NASCAR, Formula 1 and other racing bodies, and the contests can be as competitive -- and nearly as complicated in vehicle set-up -- as those on a real track. Dozens of professional racers use iRacing rigs to practice unfamiliar tracks, and while the system can't model every moving part of a racecar, its approximations are close enough for most. One example: Earlier this year, real-world NASCAR teams started picking up speed by putting more "skew" in their rear suspensions, letting their cars slide through corners faster -- a trick the iRacing teams stumbled onto nearly simultaneously.

Alfalla, a student at Florida Gulf Coast University, has ranked among the premier iRacing members since winning the top-level NASCAR league last year. Many young racers also use iRacing for training, but the service has not turned desktop-only drivers into track heroes; iRacing road course champion Greger Huttu first turn in a real car ended with car sickness. Other players have made the leap, namely from the Nissan-sponsored academy for gamers of Sony's Gran Turismo. Alfalla has said he'd like a shot at a real ride, and given how much practice he's had behind the wheel of his monitor, he'd have more experience than some stock-car wannabes.

 
Here's Alfalla's winning ride, shot from his three-monitor home setup:

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Wait, that's a real car in a corkscrew jump?

It may look like a toy, but the car in mid-barrel roll above is a life-sized, 2,600-lb. dune buggy built by Hot Wheels and driven by Brent Fletcher attempting to set a world record for a corkscrew jump in an automobile. It looks fun in mid-air, but the landing shows these kind of stunts aren't child's play.

The latest in a string of big stunts from the toy car concern, the trick follows the six-story double loop-the-loop stunt at this year's X Games and the world-record 332-ft jump by Tanner Foust at last year's Indianapolis 500. This stunt runs much shorter by comparison at 92 feet, but it's much more difficult to control how much the car will rotate during the ride. Tracy had to hit the ramp at exactly 54 mph to make the calculations work, rotating 230 degrees per second and hitting the orange ramp with his tires instead of his roof.


At 92 feet, Hot Wheels says this bests any previous corkscrew jump, like the one Chevy did for a Super Bowl ad earlier this year, or the progenitor of the move, the James Bond stunt in "The Man With The Golden Gun." See for yourself from every conceivable angle below.

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Mechanics will love Ram

Mechanics will love the 2013 Ram 1500, newly blessed with Chrysler's corporate 3.6-liter V-6. Not because of any inherent reliability issue, but because it has more room under the hood than any vehicle I've ever seen. The V-6 Ram has so much spare real estate that I was able to climb into the motor bay and stand on the ground, my feet ahead of the front axles.

Designed to handle Chrysler's 5.7-liter Hemi V-8, the new 3.6 V-6 was designed to power many of Chrysler's cars and SUVs -- making it a smaller package than the old 3.7-liter V-6 that was once the Ram's cheapest option.

Which brings me to another interesting observation: with the front of the V-6 tucked behind the centerline of the front driveshafts (this particular truck is a 4x4), it would seem that the Ram might be our first mid-engined pickup truck. Discuss.

 

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