Garry Jacobson is adjusting well to life as a virtual race car driver.
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The Shepparton product was in all of the action in the second event of the BP Supercars All Stars E-Series, banking two top-10 finishes and moving into 12th spot on the championship leaderboard.
Wednesday night's races were held at Silverstone and Barcelona, with Jacobson impressing early on.
After qualifying in 14th, Jacobson mixed it with some experienced iRacing names to challenge the top five.
Eventually he settled for seventh and a great start to the evening for Matt Stone Racing.
“Race one at Silverstone was great,” Jacobson said.
“I got off to a good start and finally got to have a bit of a crack with the front runners driving behind drivers like Chaz (Mostert) and Andre (Heimgartner) who are consistently quick.
“I was able to match their pace in the race and get a seventh.”
Jacobson's night took a turn towards carnage in the second race at Silverstone and first at Barcelona, but he handled it well to bounce back towards the front of the grid.
“Race two was one of those things, it’s a reverse grid race, and I know that staying out of the carnage is the main thing, but I managed to get hit by Jack Smith straight away off the start line,” Jacobson said.
“I don't think he meant to do it, I think he just spun the wheels and turned right while I was going past him and that collected me.
“Then there was a freight train of cars behind that had nowhere to go and that caused too much damage to continue on.
“I managed to get back to the pits and take about a minute of crash damage to get going, but then the race was done.
“Race three got off to a blinding start and I was sitting around fifth position and got taken out again by Will Davison which is something that’s out of your control, but is what it is.”
The 20th and 13th position finishes put Jacobson out of contention for the $1000 Armor All Round Winner prize — which he will be donating to the Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project if he can get his hands on it — but that did not stop him from virtually dusting off his Yellow Cover machine and putting in another great shift in the final race of proceedings.
“Race four at Barcelona was awesome,” Jacobson said.
“I remember having a good battle with my teammate Jake Kostecki where I think he pitted just after me and had one or two lap fresher tyres.
“I was trying to pressure him as best I could, but as the tyre degradation came to the fore the eight-tenths between us, lap after lap, didn’t change.
“We were both driving really consistently, and I just couldn’t quite put enough pressure on him to force him into a mistake.
“Jake's doing a really good job on iRacing at the moment and he’s sort of leading the way in the championship, but the good thing is I know I can qualify just as well and race just as well, I just have to try and get through the carnage on those first few laps.”
Jacobson will look to push into the top 10 in the championship when racing resumes on Wednesday at Mount Panorama.
“From where we are sitting, 12th in the championship, we can improve quite quickly just through those little bits of things that you do differently on iRacing than you do in real life,” he said.
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