"Hey man, can you share a setup with me?"
It's a fairly common request for help on iRacing, but in this instance it's how a team was started. The Xtreme Motorsports Ricmotech SportsCar Series was at Bathurst in early 2018, and I was a new driver to the series - completely and totally overwhelmed by having to set up the car, and by the level of competition.
I had been working with Chad Parker, now also a team member, in the open iRacing series to build skill as I returned to sim racing after an extended time away. Our team - The Friday Knights - was really only for giggles, and Chad was unable to fully commit due to work. As luck would have it, we decided to enter the Production Car Challenge in the Pontiac Solstice one weekend. Chad and I took turns driving and spotting for each other, and in one of my races I was lapped over and over again, yet gentlemanly, by the man Matt Malone once referred to as the nicest guy on all of iRacing: Kevin Ford.
What happened next can only be understood by Deep Thoughts and Kevin himself, because based on how I raced, Kevin decided to invite me to the Ricmotech Sportscar Series. Jumping at the opportunity, I immediately requested that the invite also extend to Chad - which it did, but Chad was unable to commit and felt little desire to compete in the Mazda.
I was on my own.
As the season began, I quickly realized how off-pace I was. Battling for wins at Lime Rock and Okayama in the rookie class Mazda series had skewed my sense of how far my skill level had developed, and I was shocked to find that I was actually pretty slow compared to proficient racers. Fast forward to Bathurst, and I noticed a driver running extremely fast in practice: Jim List. The question was asked and answered, and I couldn't believe how much more comfortable I was with the car immediately; it felt as if the setup had been built just for me. I didn't even know what I needed in a car, and yet I was instantly able to lap the track more confidently and at a better pace. I will never be able to apologize enough to Mike Dam about how that race went for me*, but the foundation for the team had been laid.
The next several races were the same; I not only sought Jim out in practice for setup help, I began to work with him to tweak the setups and receive coaching. In the meantime Chad committed to entering the original iteration of the Ricmotech World Challenge with me in the Mazda (TCA class), but was unable to make all the races - so I asked Jim to fill in. At the end of the season, I finally popped the question:
"Why don't you and I start our own team?"
Jim mulled it over pretty quickly, and agreed. I asked what he thought the team should be called, and he said "let's call it D2D Motorsports like my real team". It was then that I discovered his name is actually Andrew, and he drives the number 61 car in the Battery Tender Global Mazda Series for his family's team. I knew at the point this was the start of something that could be big if nurtured properly.
Our first additional driver was Eric Violett, a great painter and a competitor in the original version of the Ricmotech World Challenge. Like myself he had reached out to Jim for some assistance, and based on that he absolutely demolished the TCA field at COTA. We started chatting and working together in races, but Eric was a hard sell. Finally after a season of "coopetition" Eric broke down and officially joined the team.
Next was David Paton, Driver Assistance Program instructor in the Ricmotech Sportscar Series and all-around good guy. We were always impressed with David's pace and race-craft, and initially asked him to join us for some iRacing endurance races. That grew into realizing we all got along very well and worked well together, so we finally made the overture - to which Dave responded that he was already building a team and he would only come if we also accepted his teammate: Chris Thorman.
It was a no-brainer for us. Chris was a good and clean racer, so there was no objection whatsoever to extending the invitation to him. Unknown to us was Chris' dedication to sim racing: he is extremely committed and is quite good at helping to set up the cars, looking at the setups from a unique perspective and helping to create stable setups that keep the car quick through an entire run. As our relationships strengthened, Chris became so impressed with what we're trying to build and our dedication to run the team professionally that he got us the PROforma ETG sponsorship.
We have since expanded out beyond the Street Tuner class and have brought aboard Grand Sport and GT3 driver Brandon Whitworth, and Chad Parker has also joined the team to compete in the GT3 races and has begun competing in Grand Sport. We also made the move to re-brand the online presence of the team as D2D eSports, as we want the team to grow along with the sport. Thanks to my team I won the Open Division Championship for season 13 of the Ricmotech SportsCar Series, D2D eSports' first title as a team, and both D2D teams were in title contention in the 2019 Ricmotech World Challenge series with Eric and Chad falling just shy of the title. Eric and David have also stepped up their level of competition in the RSCS, both scoring top 5 finishes in the season 13 and 14 championship battles, and Jim won races in each of those seasons.
The future is very bright for this team, and we remain committed to pushing ourselves and each other farther and further, and to have fun doing it.
- Bobby Childs Jr, team manager and driver of the #88
* Coming over the top of the mountain I slammed into a Mustang which had wrecked. I then attempted to limp my car to the pits, and as I started down the back straight I found out the hard way how broken my steering was as the car suddenly veered right, directly in front of Mike Dam - who was leading the race.
