20 cars took the start of the opening round for the Winter 2010 Trophy Series, Thomas Cazorla bought the field to the green flag, the Frenchman taking his second career pole in only his fourth V8Thunder start.

An early yellow on Lap 10 was followed by a 59 green flag run, this including 2 green flag stops which spread out the field and caused quiet a stir with Mathieu Souphy and Chris Hill both spinning on entry and Ian Smiff, Andrew Jones and Jim Turner all having to serve drive through penalties for speeding on pit lane.

Lap 69 bought out the second caution, approaching the pits were the lap down cars of Ian Smiff and Stephen Jones, along with race leader Jack Keithley. Keithley missed his braking point and to avoid ramming Smiff spun his car into the inside wall, at the same time Jones also lost it spinning back onto the racing surface where he was collected by the #04 of John McGraw. Smiff became the main benefactor, as the caution was thrown just before he hit pit lane the Englishman aborted his stop and drove through the infield grass to get himself back onto the lead lap.

The race was restarted on lap 73 with Chris Hill leading from Paulo Rocha second, Sergey Rebrov third, Thomas Cazorla fourth, George Sokolowski fifth and Smiff in sixth with 23 laps left it was going to be hard for anybody to make it on fuel and it virtually guaranteed that another set of stop would be required.

Smiff was first to blink and "rolled the dice" by hitting pit lane on lap 80 he came out a few seconds ahead of the pack on the tail end of the lead lap, but on lap 84 the gamble paid off when the caution came out for the third time when Cazorla and Stephen Jones got together in turn 1. With all the other lead lap cars needing to pit, Smiff stayed out and inherited the lead to which he'd not be dethroned from in the 9 lap sprint to the flag, taking his seventh career and first Superspeedway win at V8Thunder. "CJ" Hill followed his fellow Southern Counties resident home in second, with pole man Thomas Cazorla third, Paulo Rocha fourth, Sergey Rebrov fifth and "Gentleman" George Sokolowski rounding out the top 6.

V8Thunder goes from the high banked, high speed Daytona to the "Lady in Black" next week at Darlington, there was no "big one" at Daytona despite a large 20 car field - will the Lady in Black be in a bad or good mood for out intrepid racers....? only time will tell.

After 4 races in the inaugural iRacing Truck series, a picture is emerging for the championship contenders to watch out for. Leading the charge is Denis Razumov with 2 wins from the 4 races to date. Taking the other two wins is his Btards fap posse team-mate Eugene Mozgunov, the Russian pairing have dominated the first quarter of the season and it remains to be seen if the best of the rest can mount a charge on the high speed, high banked Talladega Superspeedway next Wednesday.

Ian Smiff along with Team Ecosse pairing James Ewens and Steve Smith close out the top 5.

V8 rookie Denis Razumov notched up a dominating win at the Lowes Motor Speedway Wednesday evening, leading home fellow countryman Eugene Mozgunov to score Russia's first ever one-two in the V8Thunder event, Ian Smiff stole 3rd from Team Ecosse's Thomas Hendrickson at the last turn as the American was delayed trying to overcome the Russian motor train up front.

With the first half of the race running caution free, and a surprisingly low total of only 4 cautions over the 90 laps, all of the 16 drivers did an exceptional job to keep the racing clean as well as entertaining.

Next event on the iRacing Truck Series is at Phoenix next week.

Chris Hill made up for a dismal season in Inters by taking victory in the V8 Thunder World Championship showdown at Martinsville today.

Hill dominated the event with a victory in Heat 1 followed up by a second behind series rookie Paul Taylor in Heat 2.

In the final it was all about a battle between Hill and SRD team-mate Mathieu Souphy with Hill thwarting a last lap challenge from the Belgium to win by 6 tenths of a second.

Heat 2 winner Taylor was relieved of third in the final early on by Ian Smiff, who eventually finished third after 2 spins, with Jay Owen 4th, series rookie John McGraw 5th and Lites Series runner up Mike Cooper rounding out the top 6.

The next Trophy event is the non-championship race at Daytona International Speedway next Thursday.

Rookie Arron Maspero took a first blood victory in Trucks pre-season thunder at the Michigan International Speedway, Maspero held off a final turn challenge from V8 regular Martin Buchan to lead home from fellow rookie Gareth Hickling, Ian Smiff finished third, backwards, with Thomas Hendrickson rounding out the top 4 who were covered by 7 tenths of a second.

The next pre-season thunder event takes place next Wednesday at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Team Ecosse have signed iRacing Division 8 Champion James Ewens for the inaugural V8Thunder iRacing Truck series. The Englishman joins fellow Brit Steve Smith, American Thomas Hendrickson and Norwegian Morten Straus to setup a 4 truck "dream team" which will undoubtedly be a strong contender for wins and the Teams title. Read More.

Entries are now open for the Winter 2010 iRacing Trucks and Nascar Racing 2003 Trophy series. The Truck series will start on 2nd December (2009) at the Lowes Motor Speedway with the Trophy series starting on the 7th January 2010 at the Daytona International Speedway.

Both series will run Pre-Season "Thunder" events during their regular time slots between now and then to allow drivers to familiarise themselves with the new equipment and each other.

There's no relaxing for the drivers though in the off season, with the V8Thunder World Championship "showdown" running on 19th November, the unique, standing start random grid draw event is always a popular alternative to regular testing for the V8Thunder drivers.

A few entry slots remain available for all the series at the time of press - the entry form can be found here.

Inters Series Round-up – Jack Keithley completed a sweep of the major titles in Summer '09 at V8 Thunder; his Championship performance was all the more impressive as it came from only 14 starts. From these, he led all drivers in wins (5); Top 5's (12); Poles (9). There was a 194 point gap back to 2nd place Carl Sundberg; Cal led the series with starts (17); Top 10's (17) and completed laps (1661). His run for the title, though boosted by a meagre 50 penalty points, was hampered by 5 DNF's, but this did not prevent him from winning the Independent Championship. 3rd place, nearly 300 points behind Sundberg, was Andrew Jones. "AJ" only started 12 races but logged 5 top 5's and 14 top 10's on his way to the Rookie Title, his 3rd in consecutive seasons, completing a triple-crown of Lites-Trucks-Inters. Honourable mention to Chris Hill, who won 3 races and 4 poles, leading the most laps (391) but 7 DNF's and a series high 381 penalty points cost him dearly in the standings. Team Ecosse A avenged the Truck series defeat by taking the Inters Team Title by 266 over rivals SRD International. England completed a sweep of Nation's Cups', 4 of the top 10 drivers representing the “green and pleasant (but mostly raining) land”.