About Us

Irelandio Racing is very successful and well established internet sim-racing team that has competed in 3 seasons of Jonathan Edgar's The Gp2 Championship which uses Microprose's Grand Prix 2 - a Formula 1 simulation. We have also competed in two Indycar 2 (by Papyrus) leagues and a Nascar championship. The team was founded in June 1998 and by now we are by no means without experience! We also use Microprose's most recent F1 sim, Grand Prix 3.

In The Gp2 Championship the team has had the honour of becoming the Unofficial Overall Constructors' Champions of the 1998/1999 season and has taken 30 victories, 2 Formula 1 Constructors' Championships, an F1 Drivers' Title and an F1600 drivers title. Click here to view some interesting statistics totalled after 2 seasons of the league from 1998-2000.

In the near future we hope to be entering competitions using GP500 and TOCA 2 - plans on some of these ideas are already finished. As a team we feel it important to enjoy ourselves, what we do is meant to be fun, not deadly serious...

History

The team was founded in June 1998 when James decided to enter his own team into the Finnish F1GP2 League. After 2 races of Irelandio competing the league closed down so the team considered entering the Little Formula Racing Series (LFRS), after assembling 6 drivers to compete the project was abandoned due to James's dislike of the LFRS.

At that very point Jonathan Edgar was just setting up The Gp2 Championship. After finding the site by chance, the team was instantly attracted to the league as it offered a different experience compared to others. The prospect of different combinations of power, weight and grip seemed interesting... While the league was being set-up, James went off to race Indycars (Using Papyrus's Indycar 2). More comfortable driving the cars he first learnt to master, he took 4 wins at Laguna Seca, Vancouver, Michigan and Indianapolis. The his attention was turned back to the GP2 Championship.

The image we set out with!

The first part of the season was a nightmare - we simply weren't fast enough. So after lots of practising James came back a much better driver and started his long run of podium finishes that lasted just over a year. But he'd brought back a new addition, Christophe Scarr. The rest of the season, by contrast, couldn't have gone any better. David Ireland - James's brother - was also a consistent race winner in Formula Ford as well. Our reward at the end was being the most successful team in the championship.

The 1999/2000 season of The Gp2 Championship, in some ways, proved less fruitful than the first. A disastrous off-season meant the team was nowhere near prepared and only a small driver line-up had been secured - no one had even been on Gp2 during this time.... After becoming the most successful team in the championship's first season, Irelandio's target was to do it again. Also James, having missed out on the Formula 1 title by a very small margin, was determined to lift that championship cup.

The season started off badly. The team briefly led the Overall Teams' Championship after the 3rd race but by the end of the season had slipped down to 5th. Despite numerous victories it wasn't enough to beat the higher teams.

The time of reckoning never did come....

Irelandio then began secretly working very hard to prepare for the 2000/2001 season....

The team contemplated quitting the GP2 Champ and looking for competition elsewhere, but the decision was made to stay in the championship. So far, an Irelandio car has raced in every GP2 Champ event! Pre-season hopes were high as we managed to secure several top names to race for us, but problems just before the first race meant many had to leave - leaving the team struggling at the first race....

Steven Painchaud beat the supposedly unbeatable Peter Petrinovics at Monaco and things began to look good, but with no drivers in the top divisions scoring points for the OTC was difficult. After changing image yet again with the launch of the new car and website popularity suddenly rocketed - leaving the manager to cope with numerous job applications a week!

The season only improved from there, with just about all drivers consistently scoring in the top 10. Motivation within the team was at its highest ever and we targeted a top 4 position in the OTC by seasons end. The manager of the GP2 Champ then had to leave and the league was taken under new management. Unfortunately the league never recovered and it was announced, that mid-season after the Canadian GP, that the league would be stopped. Irelandio managed a slightly disappointing placing of 8th in the OTC as we felt that, if the rest of the season had been run, we would have finished a lot higher. Aside, our driver Stephanie Caldwell still managed to bring 1 more title to Irelandio by winning the F3000 division crown!

With the GP2 Champ finished, the team is currently looking elsewhere for a place to compete...