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Monica has qualified on the pole for 30 races
and has finished in Victory Lane more than 25 times
from Michigan International to Iowa to the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway. All virtually.
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A Brand new name in IndyCars
Monica Clara Brand’s name may not be quite as
familiar to IZOD IndyCar Series fans as those of
Ana Beatriz, Simona de Silvestro, Sarah Fisher and
Danica Patrick, but she has much in common with
them.
Like Fisher and Patrick, she has qualified on
the pole for a race . . . 30 by actual count. And,
like Patrick, she has finished in Victory Lane.
Brand has more than 25 wins to her credit from
Michigan International to Iowa to the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway.
What distinguishes Brand’s racing career
from those others is that all of her success has
come in a digitized Dallara on the virtual
racetracks of iRacing.com.
In fact, the 34-year-old resident of Bucharest,
Romania, has never even attended a IZOD IndyCar
Series race, although she would dearly love to.
“Of course, attending the Indy 500 in
person is one of my dreams,” says Brand, an
administrative specialist. “But, factoring out
money and time, I would fly over to attend every
race. Just picking out a few races outside the Indy
500, I think I would very much enjoy Texas, Long
Beach and Las Vegas.”
Currently ranked third in the iRacing.com IZOD
IndyCar Premier Series (oval) standings behind Yang
Ou and PJ Stergios, Brand could fulfill her wish of
attending a race were she to capture the overall
iRacing.com IZOD IndyCar Premier Series title and
the accompanying prize package, which includes a
trip to the IZOD IndyCar season finale at Las Vegas
Motor Speedway.
However, as the statistics show (and Brand
readily admits), her forte is the speedways and the
bull rings of sim racing rather than the road
courses.
“Although being European my background is
road racing, I’ve come to love oval racing
through iRacing, at first the short ovals with the
SK/Tour Modified and Late Model cars, and then
through the IndyCar Dallara on the bigger
speedways,” she explains. “What I like
more about ovals is that the competition is tighter
and the risk and reward feels so much sweeter. On
road courses, many times can get pretty lonely and
it’s only you versus the track while on ovals,
no matter your speed, you always have quite a few
cars around you that you can race close with.
That’s a bigger thrill, for me at
least.”
There’s more to Brand’s success in
iRacing than the thrill ride of arcing a virtual
Dallara into Turn 1 at Indy at 220-plus mph. Like
all her successful competitors, Brand has become
quite atuned to the myriad of chassis, tire and
aerodynamic tweaks necessary to get the most from
her IndyCar – all readily accomplished with a
few clicks of her computer’s mouse, with some
help from her friends and teammates at Ludicrous
Racing.
“To me, the Dallara is the most complicated
car to set up on the entire iRacing service,
especially for ovals,” she says.
“Normally I take my last season setup for a
given track and turn laps until I get comfortable
again with the track and setup. I then start to
change things to improve it in search of that
ultimate speed and lap time. Sometimes it’s
that simple and sometimes I rely on my team mate
Niles Anders’ setups. It’s not hard for
me to admit that he’s got this car figured out
a lot better than me. We then start testing
together along with my other team mates to see
which change is better and what works for who. All
in all, I put at least four to six hours and
sometimes even double that amount into testing
before I turn a single race lap.”
Source: blog.indycar.com/2011/08/30/a-brand-new-name-in-indycars/
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