After 13 events and a total of 39 races we have finally crowned our first ARLTC main season winners!

With the ARLTC Winter Series giving us an introduction to the Audi RS3 LMS, in late March we dusted off our race gloves once more, and plunged full steam ahead into 4 months arguably of the toughest competition in FWD cars on iRacing.

A full compliment of 60 cars joined us on the grid for Round 1 at Mid-Ohio. Let’s take a look at who eventually came out on top, and how they did it!

PRO Drivers Champion: Ross Macfarlane – Texense FitzSty Motorsport

A veteran of the BSRTC and now the ARLTC, and a driver that you can always find making his presence known in the showdown is Ross Macfarlane. This season running the car #8 having had his title chances shot to bits in the final rounds of the Winter Series last time.

Ross was keen to make a comeback this season but he would’ve been wanting more from his main season performance, picking up only 1 victory and 3 2nd places in the first 9 weeks. It was easily enough to get through into the showdown but only the first part of the job was done, with plenty of work left to do.

However, once the showdown kicked off he made it count. Picking up 3 more podiums and only finishing outside of the top 10 on 3 occasions. A victory in race 1 of the final event at Daytona was the icing on the cake, and gave him the advantage he needed to hold station ahead of Ross Balfour in the final 2 races and finally bring home the title by just 4 points!

AM Drivers Champion: Pete Newman – CQR Simsports

Another series veteran Pete Newman controlled the AM category with considerable might. He was able to accumulate almost twice the number of showdown bonus points to his closest challenger Luke Cooper through the main season, with a string of 7 AM victories to his name.

Once into the showdown Cooper’s luck ran out and the BoosTED duo of Adam Hedgecock & Simon Field were left to give chase. Neither able to match Newman’s consistent results or overall speed.

Newman seemed to make Race 3 of the evenings his own, with an overall P2 in the penultimate round at Bathurst, and just missing out on victory in the final race at Daytona. I am sure that he won’t have minded one bit, as that gave him a comfortable margin and secured him the AM championship honors

PRO Teams Champions: CQR Club

The head of the teams championship was almost exclusively controlled by CQR throughout the championship. However, the success was divided by a combination of the CQR Club and CQR Puresims teams who although stablemates appeared to be fighting hammer-and-tong for the title anyway!

At the end of the main season, the trio of Ben Palmer, Jake Blackhall and Pete Harrod carried a narrow advantage of just 3 points over Apex Racing Team. However as the showdown played out CQR Club took advantage and eventually pulled clear of their competitors with consistent results and no penalties to speak of they managed to hold onto a narrow margin of just +75 points, despite having only 1 of their individual drivers inside the top 5 at the end of the season.

AM Teams Champions: BoosTED Simsport

Finally the AM championship, which to be honest was absolutely DominaTED by the pair of BoosTED teams. These guys have been racing in the BSRTC and ARLTC since day 1 and their experience clearly showed in their results.

However it was the relatively “junior” team of drivers Adam Hedgecock, Lee Berridge and Shaun Gardiner who took the spoils at the conclusion, with a commanding lead of +189 points to the sister team of Simon Field, John Roberts and David Van Broeck.

Van Broeck was unable to attend the first two rounds of the showdown and that surely hurt the Motorsport efforts on the title. However despite this early setback, the team pulled together and managed to fend off 3rd placed CQR Simsports with a comfortable margin, helped by some tidy results on Van Broeck’s return!