I recently decided to give the iRacing Tour Modified Series a try. The cars are fast and they drive great. It’s C class so that brings long races with caution flags, so pit stops are possible. It sounds pretty good. The only downside is a lack of participation in the series.
One reason for the lack of active racers is there is not much glamour in the Tour Modified Series. Let’s face it, part of the reason the trucks and the A and B class series get so many drivers is because of the glamour. You see these vehicles on television quite a bit. They’re the premier NASCAR racing series, and they get all the glory. NASCAR is where the money is, so iRacing does it’s part in taking advantage of that by promoting those series more than they do some others. Most iRacers join so they can race those trucks, class B and class A cars. So, to those drivers, Tour Modified has little appeal.
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But that doesn’t explain it all. After all, take a look at Late Model and SK Modified participation. Those classes don’t make real world racing headlines on a national scale either, but their participation numbers are pretty good.
After I started driving in the Tour Modified Series, I quickly learned why it is so unpopular. It’s because of some of the drivers who are regulars in the series. First of all, I’m not talking about all of the drivers, I’m talking about some of them, so don’t get the wrong idea.
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The number of downright rude drivers in this series is amazing. The percentages must be astoundingly high. When I say rude drivers, I mean drivers who do things like drive a race with a poor connection, blinking and so forth, and knowingly race in traffic with those conditions. Others tell them that they’re blinking badly, yet they continue to race as if they don’t hear. Then when they wreck you, they never apologize or say anything at all. There is no respect for other drivers in the iRacing Tour Modified Series unless you’re a member of the unnamed team (see below).
Then you have the cheaters. These are drivers who intentionally block on the race track. Blocking is cheating. Cheaters may cross the finish line first sometimes, but what’s the point if you’re cheating? If you block in a race, you might as well be running an iRacing grip hack or weight hack or any other cheat. It’s all the same, and a cheater is a cheater and no better than a low-down dog.
There is an entire racing team (unnamed) who competes regularly in the iRacing Tour Modified Series whose strategy is to cheat by blocking. They do it in such a way that it’s practically impossible to report them for it. I had one of these cheaters block me two races in a row at Dover International Speedway, then pout and cry like a little baby when I called him on it. After that, I started spectating a few of his races. That’s when I noticed that he and his teammates all drive lines that are not fast, but that only have one objective: to block other drivers. They really like tracks where they can drive on the apron, below the blend line, and they drive on the apron as much as possible despite the fact that they run slower laps by doing so. Their cheating strategy is blatantly obvious.
So rudeness, lack of respect and cheating are killing the iRacing Tour Modified Series, and rather than make an attempt to police it, iRacing chooses to rely on their phony protest system instead. It’s cheaper that way. One employee can handle the protests, but it would take more than one to actually police a racing division temporarily. When it comes to iRacing, you can always follow the money.
There are some very good blockers running tmod. No doubt. Some of them are fast but I have seen faster. They would be even faster if they would stop trying to block and just race.
I quit iracing after 5 years for this very reason. You either get blocked or get wrecked in too many races. Some races are good, some are terrible. And blocking is cheating this is true its against the rules. Then there are guys who suddenly become unrealistically fast overnight. When iracing fixes these things I will consider coming back, but I see they have not.
Wow been racing 2 years with the tour mods and this so called blocking I haven’t seen, holding a line and not letting someone by I see, but no blatant blocking, Maybe a little more time on setup and practice than writing some unrealistic statements, I for one never liked the ” If I can’t beat them might as well trash them” way of doing things and that’s kind of what your doing.
You’re incorrect. I spent time on setups. I was fast enough. I could beat some, I couldn’t beat some. I know some of the guys were just faster and I have no problem with that. Where I did have a problem was when I was significantly faster than one of these guys and he altered his line by going low abnormally early when entering the turn. This happened lap after lap in two different races.
Where I also had a problem was when I spectated a race session with many of his team members racing, and they all were driving the same line. Very low entries, a lot of apron driving. It was obviously a team effort. Their business is blocking, and that is the business of cheating.
First Official Sporting Code:
Blocking – The leading driver is allowed to run a defensive line. Blocking
is a deviation by a driver from defending position based on the action of the
pursuing driver is considered blocking.
The driver I raced was definitely deviating from his line based on my actions. I’d go one step further than the sporting code and say that any time you enter significantly lower than the normal racing line, or any time you have more than half of your car on the apron, you are cheating. If you’ll see my league rules page, you’ll find out I’m not just saying that in this situation. Apron driving has been cheating in my league for at least two seasons.
I saw members of this team driving their freakishly low entries and all the way down on the apron at Stafford Motor Speedway. I know for a fact that it was slower to run that way yet they continued to do it. I could turn lap times at Stafford comparable to their fastest guys, and I can’t do that on tracks where you can’t apron cheat.
So no, it wasn’t a matter of ‘I can’t beat them.’ I won some TMOD races when I was participating. It’s more of a matter of not wanting to race in a series where there are so many people cheating.
And trust me, I work on setups. Ask any of my league members, or just go have a look at my iRacing setups pages. I had one of the fastest TMOD cars at Dover last season, and the setup was all mine. Unfortunately I got blocked by someone who wasn’t accustomed to being called on it.
It seems your basing you opinion on a few times and one or two drivers that may of blocked someone, like I said I race the tour car a lot and have not seen the blatant blocking run rampart in the series and it’s not fair they make a post that the series is a failure over a few time that something has happen
Well, fair or not, the series is a complete failure and that’s a fact. My post asserts that two of the reasons for it are cheating by blocking and rudeness. It also wasn’t fair when I was blocked two races in a row at Dover by the same cheater. Nor was it fair when the same cheating little crybaby went crying to iRacing because I called him on his cheating. He will remain unnamed. He already knows who he is.
Blocking is the number 1 reason there are so many wrecks in iracing period.