How to Stay in Rookie Street Stock

Here is a piece written by an iRacer by the name of Elliott Smith of the Australia/NZ Club. Apparently Elliott wrote this after watching the Rookie Street Stock split during Week 13. I found it very entertaining so I thought I’d share it here.

I wrote a list of how to STAY in rookies.

1) Drive hard. If you can’t hear your tires squealing, you’re not doing it right. Slam the brakes and throttle on every corner, and jerk the wheel. You should be sideways off every apex. If you start losing traction by lap 15, blame the tire model. If you spin, blame whoever was closest.

2) Fight for every position. What are you, a loser? It doesn’t matter if it’s the first corner of a 40 lap race or the last corner on the final lap and you’re being put another lap down by the leader. If you see someone in your rear view mirror, start braking late into corners and tracking out into the dirt on exits. Block if you have to. On the other hand, if you’re chasing, dive-bomb every corner. If they go high or wide, go inside them even if you don’t think you can hold your line. Remember – if they hit you, it’s their fault! You had the right of way. Make sure to tell them that.

3) If you hear someone wrecking, or your spotter warns you about a stopped car, this is your chance! Get on the throttle hard; it’s a lot easier to pick up positions when your opponents are sideways, stationary, and on fire around the next blind corner. Same thing goes if the guy next to you gets loose – he’s going to lose speed, so definitely don’t compromise your run by giving him room. Haven’t you seen Days of Thunder? Foot on the floor and drive on through!

4) You just wrecked. This sucks. You have a few options, though. You’ll want to save time, so forget about changing down gears or holding the brakes, just mash the throttle and slowly point it in the right direction. It’s everyone else’s responsibility to drive around you. If you’ve been given a meatball flag, towing takes way too long, so just drive around on the racing line until you get to the pits. If you’re reading this and you’re currently sideways in the grass doing 180 km/h with no hope of recovery, be sure to point the car where you want to be and stay on the gas. This way, when you eventually do come to a stop, you’ll have at least moved closer to the pits. Do this even if it’s going to send your car shooting across the track.

5) You’re in the pits with 8 minutes of repairs on the third lap of a 20 lap race. There’s really no point continuing now, so spit some choice words over the mic at whoever’s fault it was, and quit the session. You probably have time to get into the next one and win that instead.

If, on the other hand, staying in rookies is not your goal, you might want to consider removing one or more of the aforementioned from your repertoire.