🧑🏻‍⚕️From PhDs to Podiums

While the rest of the world celebrates the nice weather, I’m in a dark basement panicking because the rising ambient temperature is about to add three-tenths to my qualifying lap.

SRN Member Johnny from Overdrive Diecast (community member interview here) included us in their most recent short. I scooped up the exclusive McLaren Hotwheels Edition car for him and he made it into this masterpiece. [below]

Podium Sweep: Ricca Autosport owned Sebring with a dominant 1-2-3 finish. Recent SRN community member Andre Castro put on a clinic, leading from pole to snatch the TC America win and championship lead. Huge congrats to Andre and fellow SRN member Eric Kunz who’s been around for a while now, who secured third after a clinical drive. With former leader Braydon Arthur retiring early, Castro now holds a five-point cushion at the top. Despite the brutal Florida heat and Sebring’s legendary bumps, the Hyundai squad looked untouchable. Catch the last race here to see what happened Saturday [no spoilers]

Record Breakers: Verstappen Sim Racing is on a tear. After dominating Sebring, the outfit formerly known as Team Redline just crushed the iRacing Nürburgring 24h, setting a new distance record with 177 laps. Despite a mid-race "meatball" flag for their leading #4 car and a late-race spin for the #3, VSR secured the win with the largest margin since 2021. Williams and Drago rounded out the podium after a controversial final-lap contact. Elsewhere, Coanda locked out the Porsche Cup class, while Scherer Esports survived a TCR dogfight to win.

Power Pivot: F1 is ditching the equal split between gas and electric power for 2027. A new 60/40 ratio puts more muscle back into the traditional gas engine, ending the need for awkward energy-saving coasting during qualifying laps. But there's a catch: more fuel requires larger tanks. Since many teams planned to reuse their 2026 cars to stay under the budget cap, the FIA is now weighing shorter races or a qualifying-only boost to improve the on-track spectacle without forcing a total and expensive chassis redesign.

If you’ve ever stared at a telemetry squiggle and wondered why the car in front is two seconds faster, Milo DiPaola is building the answer. A New York native turned Massachusetts resident, Milo isn't just another enthusiast on the grid; he has a PhD in mechanical engineering and decided to point his expertise in fluid dynamics and machine learning to the world of sim racing.

After years of developing high-level engineering and simulation tools, Milo realized that most telemetry platforms feel like they require a “NASA level degree” to operate. His response? LapLabs Studio. It’s a telemetry and ML platform designed to bridge the gap between "fast" and "expert" by using synchronized 2D/3D visualization and predictive modeling.

The LapLabs Mission:

When he isn’t optimizing code or shaving tenths off his iRacing laps, you’ll find Milo tinkering with retro tech, playing bass, or experimenting with 3D printing. He’s the rare breed of creator who treats the intersection of art and engineering as a playground, and he’s currently looking for the community to help test the next phase of development.

Ready to see your laps through a different lens? Join the movement and check out his tools at: laplabs.net

Nürburgring in iRacing happened, Nürburgring IRL is incoming. The weather is nice outside so most of us are packing up our rigs or spending more time away from them. I’m sitting here, thinking of ways to keep people coming back and bring the community together and I find myself reflecting on this newsletter. It’s something I forced myself to do, to prove I had it in myself to create something consistent and create good habits, week after week. A newsletter is a simple tool to keep the community engaged in other ways and stay relevant. To “catch up” on the weekly happening’s within sim racing and motorsport. A way to keep in touch, without “keeping in touch”. You pick and choose which is most relevant to you, and there’s still that authentic feel to the community hovering within the weekly newsletter. Something here. Something

over there.

…and here.

It doesn’t matter where you look. The social interaction, the messages. One thing is true. There is a community out there with hundreds of people who care about what everyone is up to with the goal to bring people together from all over the world. It’s a great feeling to see people from different countries all celebrate some form of motorsport.