Eleven weeks of racing all led up to this: the longest and most challenging individual races of my Summer Road Trip, running the 2015 McLaren MP4-30 Formula 1 car over a full grand prix distance at Monza.

It wasn’t the first time I had attempted to tackle this virtual version of a multi-million dollar marvel of automotive engineering. When the iRacing version of the McLaren Honda was released almost two years ago, I made a concerted effort to drive the car.

That lasted all of three weeks.

Although I managed a few top-five finishes in strong fields, it simply became too time-consuming between the practice required, the setup tinkering needed to be competitive, and the races themselves. Arrive and drive, it ain’t.

I also felt some frustration during my last race at Circuit of the Americas. On old tires late in the race, I couldn’t seem to keep the car on track. That put me into the clutches of a car behind that had been slower on pace but ultimately beat me.

After the race, he had some harsh words for me about how erratically I had been driving — a far cry from the friendly, understanding Lotus 49 community, but not far off from the nature of real-world F1.

Since that season, the community around the iRacing Grand Prix Series has shrunk as the popularity of the new car wore off and the grind of practicing and racing it each week weeded out all but the most committed drivers.

As I discovered, simply finding a race can be one of the biggest challenges in this car. But before I got to that point, a much greater challenge awaited: figuring out how to tame this car at the top of the open-wheeled ladder.

The Shakedown

When driving this car for the first time — or the second, or third, or thirtieth — its 700 horsepower is obvious from the time you leave the pits. It’s enough to quickly quiet any jokes about the inadequacies of a Honda engine.

That much power makes this car a torque monster. Going straight to full throttle in anything below fourth gear results in wheelspin and, often, an actual spin. Even in fifth gear, reaching full throttle can be a challenge if the car isn’t pointed completely straight; that made the unwinding exit of Monza’s Parabolica corner trickier in this car than in most others.

Once you can reliably complete laps, you can begin to explore the daunting range of in-car adjustments, from differential settings to brake biases to the energy recovery system.

Since this car was first released on iRacing, the job of managing the ERS has become slightly simpler with the addition of an optimized mode that automatically toggles between peak deployment — akin to using the overtake button — and energy saving. Once you’ve found balanced settings to use, little intervention is needed unless you’re looking to drain the battery a bit more to find some extra speed.

Setups for this car are certainly not for the weary. In the iRacing garage, there are multiple pages of setup options, which can be quite overwhelming. When I tried to learn the car better last year, I took studious notes about the adjustments and their effects. Those have proved useful even when tuning dampers and anti-roll bars on other cars.

I finally got to put that knowledge into practice on the McLaren, and it came in handy as I adjusted a season-old setup from the forums to my liking.

My main concern was having too much rotation on corner exit. In some cars, I can turn up the traction control to keep the car under me, but along with anti-lock brakes, traction control is one of the few onboard systems that this car doesn’t have.

After finding a comfortable baseline setup, it was time to put in more practice laps than I had for almost any car all season. Tips for this car on the iRacing forums read like some sort of sick joke: don’t overheat the tires because you’ll spin, but make sure you keep heat in the tires or you’ll spin.

To get a feel for the tire behavior and wear, I grinded out two full-length race runs in practice, and they mostly went well. I avoided spins or crashes and learned a lot about how the car drove, when I needed to pit, and how to best manage the ERS.

It certainly wasn’t easy, though, and I knew that completing an actual race in this car would test my summer-long strengths of consistency and endurance, and expose my weakness of unfamiliarity with a new vehicle more than any car had done all season.

Off By One

On weeknights, I found no shortage of drivers in practice sessions, but the races themselves were ghost towns. Everyone, it seemed, was coming to grips with this car before committing to racing it.

The primary timeslots in this series are on Saturday and Sunday mornings in the US, but my weekend plans to be out of town taking in real-world NASCAR racing from Darlington meant those wouldn’t be options for me.

On Thursday evening, it appeared that I had an opening. Five people, including myself, were registered for a race, so we needed just one more driver for it to go official. When the deadline passed, though, we were still at five, so we had an unofficial race.

Usually, I immediately exit out of such races, but since I was planning to do another mock run in practice anyway, I decided to stick around and do it in a race session. Although I wouldn’t score any points or iRating from it, I could still gain safety rating with a clean race, albeit at a reduced rate from an official session.

Two other drivers joined me on the grid, including one who out-qualified me by 1.6 seconds. He had a lower iRating than me, which made me feel a bit off pace, and as he pulled away by a second per lap early in the race, I felt even more inadequate.

After three laps, the two of us were the only cars left on the track. I would say I know how the Ferraris felt at the farcical 2005 US Grand Prix, but at least they got to race close to each other. Perhaps I was more like Tiago Monteiro, bound for a decent finish by default but nowhere close to the top driver.

I did gain some confidence after pitting on lap 25. On new tires, I was running more than a second faster than before the stop and was even catching the leader, although at more than 45 seconds ahead, he was out of reach barring a catastrophe.

He did have one late-race spin, still running the same set of tires as he’d started the race with, but he finished 21 seconds ahead of me to record an ultimately meaningless but still slightly demoralizing win.

I did discover afterwards that our iRatings were more similar than I expected — within about 200 points of each other — and that my opponent is a regular in this car who finished third in the overall championship.

With all that in mind, I wasn’t sure how to assess my efforts. I hadn’t crashed or spun all race, but I was also the second-fastest driver in a two-man race. I couldn’t end the season on such an uncertain note, right?

My Best Last Chance

Although I missed the popular weekend timeslots, the Labor Day holiday gave me another opportunity to race. This time, a midday race on Monday attracted 7 drivers, which was enough to make it official.

Again this time, a lower-iRating driver out-qualified me, but the gap was smaller this time and I hadn’t put much effort into trimming out my qualifying setup, so I felt more confident in keeping up.

As we surged off the starting grid and safely through the first two chicanes, I was settling in for a potentially race-long battle up front. However, through the third chicane, the lead car hit the inside kerbs and spun. I took evasive action to avoid him, but the third-place car wasn’t so lucky, running onto the gravel and straight into the outside wall.

Once the dust cleared behind me, I found myself two seconds ahead of the new second-place driver with the polesitter 15 seconds in arrears after recovering from the spin. However, he was undamaged and still running quick times, either matching mine or barely catching me.

His slow charge back toward the front met an unfortunate end on lap 14. The second-place car spun just ahead of him, and with nowhere to go to avoid it, the two cars collided. They both kept going with damage but were more than 20 seconds back.

With no worries from behind, I could completely focus on running my own race and managing my tires. I hit pit road on lap 24 and emerged still in first place, which left me with clear track ahead for the second half of the race.

With 10 laps to go, I had a big lead and lots of battery charge remaining. Because I hadn’t had any close battles with other cars in my races, I decided to simulate the pressure of pushing hard by upping my energy usage and trying to beat my best lap of the race, which I had set on new tires just after the pit stop.

In my first try, I discovered just how tricky this car is to drive on the limit. Entering the third chicane, I clipped the inside kerb and the car immediately got sideways. The slide finally stopped when it gently nosed into the outside wall. Fortunately, I avoided damage and any incident points, but it was a much closer call than I cared for.

After that, I turned down the wick a bit and still managed to set a new fast lap. As the tires continued to wear, the car became twitchier, so I settled in for an uneventful drive to the finish. With a nearly one-minute gap over second place, I ended the Summer Road Trip on a victorious note.

Reading the Report Card

If this week was my final exam for the season, then what grade should I give myself?

It’s not an easy assessment to make; in one race, I was outmatched by a top-of-the-class driver, while in the other, I easily won over drivers with half of my iRating.

Based on my pace alone, I don’t deserve much better than a C. I put almost no time into qualifying so my pace was lacking there, and in a race against a driver with a similar iRating to mine — car experience notwithstanding — I couldn’t keep up.

Based on survival, I’d give myself an A+. Going incident-free over more than 100 laps in any car is no easy feat, but particularly in a modern Formula 1 car at the high-speed Monza circuit, it’s a solid accomplishment.

Of course, you might say that my ability to survive was never really tested since I didn’t face the pressure of any close competition, and when I applied some pressure to myself, I nearly choked. In that case, just call it a regular A.

Perhaps I should average those scores and give myself a B. It reflects the fact that I finished both of my races but still have room for improvement in this car.

The opportunities will certainly be available. Beginning this month, the McLaren Honda should see a participation boost as it plays host to the World’s Fastest Gamer competition. If nothing else, that should offer some additional races, even in US-friendly timeslots.

I’ll be sitting out that series, though. While the McLaren may beckon again at some point, for now, I’m happy to take my passing grade and close the book on this summer semester.

Class dismissed.