iRacing delta challenge #4/20: Pocono East

There are a bunch of free tracks I’ve never driven in iRacing. Every few days I’m going to drive one with zero preparation and then post the fastest lap time here. That’s the delta time. Your mission, should you accept it, is to beat it (and then call me names in the comment section).

Here are the rules.

1. Global Mazda MX-5 Cup, baseline setup
2. Default Weather (78F, 2 MPH N, 55%, afternoon)
3. 30 minutes or 20 laps, whichever comes first

[Legacy ] Pocono Raceway 2009 East

Pocono Raceway is only 150 miles from my home town. I have never seen it in person, on TV, or in the virtual world. I think of Pocono as “one of those NASCAR tracks” and I don’t understand anything about NASCAR. So I basically ignored its existence. The only thing I  recall about Pocono is the advertising jingle they played on 1970s TV: “… at the Poconos, and beautiful Mount Airy Lodge”.

Delta = 1:12.321

The track has almost no elevation and the course is laid out clearly, so I didn’t need the racing line on to learn this track. There are several road configurations at Pocono, and the East shares absolutely nothing with North or South. Only a tiny bit of the East course is on the tri-oval. I found this track to be really enjoyable. There’s a lot of times I was asking myself “is this a 2nd gear corner or 3rd?” Usually, that answer was 3rd. There are good driving puzzles to solve here. I would love to check out this track in real life.

Track Rank

In this section I’m ranking the tracks in the order of my preference. I tend to like technical tracks with some elevation, short straights, and corners that are blind, off camber, decreasing radius, and connected.

1. [Legacy] Pocono Raceway – 2009 East (1:12.321, #12)
2. [Legacy] Charlotte Motor Speedway – 2008 Infield Road Course (47.637, #20)
3. [Legacy] Phoenix Raceway – 2008 Road Course (1:09.739, #17)
4. Tsukuba 1000 Chicane (0:42.149, #15)