Apex Sim Racing Porsche LMDH

Last week, when the news of Porsche testing their new LMDH Prototype hit the internet, everyone went crazy. The fact that manufacturers are testing cars is proof that the next round of prototype sports car racing is no longer on the horizon, but very real. I think people also went pretty crazy because the news showed some property technical aspects of the new car and it featured a wild black and white cam livery.

When Apex Sim Racing reached out to me to recreate the car, I knew it was going to be a fun challenge. Apex Sim Racing make some stellar, high quality sim accessories, everything from dashboard button boxes to racing displays. I use their Fanatec DD1 dashboard on my rig set up and you may remember the LMP2 livery I did for them last year. There is an IMSA version and LMP2 Challenge version of the livery available for use on my Trading Paints.

Risi Competizione Ferrari 488 GTD PRO

When the race season starts, one of the best parts is watching the build up of hype as teams release their new livery designs. This year, as teams prepared for the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, several teams even released official iRacing livery designs which only added to the hype. There were so many great designs it is hard to say which one made the biggest impact, but when I saw the official Risi Competition Ferrari 488 GT3 EVO for the GTD Pro class, it caught my eye. It isn’t over the top with flashy designs or stripes, but you can never go wrong with a red Ferrari on the banks of Daytona.

Parker Thompson’s JDX racing 992 cup car

With no live, real-life racing taking place during the winter, I’ve been going back to watch races that I either didn’t catch the first time, or perhaps didn’t pay full attention to during the season and that endeavor found me rewatching almost all of the Porsche Carrera Cup North America races. I had watched most of the races during the season, but I definitely didn’t pay full attention to all of the races and it quickly became apparent to me that I had missed several great liveries in the series. A few weeks ago, I posted the bgb motorsports, but one of the other cars that really caught my attention was Parker Thompson’s JDX Racing 992 cup car. The Maple leaf graphic that is exploding across the sides of the car and the color way just drip with Parker Thompson’s Canadian roots.

EN4CER RACING Porsche 992 cup car

Sam Muir is racing in the Pro-Am class in the Aussie Online Gaming Porsche Cup series this year and he reached out to me to put together a livery. The color combination of teal, black and satin silver looks absolutely stunning and the Aussie Online Gaming Pro-Am class colors add that little extra spice.

The Aussie Online Gaming series is a 20 round championship that runs from February to October. The first round of the championship is February 1st and hits the freshly updated Watkins Glen International. Wishing Sam the best of luck on a successful season of racing.

Paranoid Android Motorsports

Last week, the guys from Paranoid Android Motorsports reached out to me about creating a livery design for them to use on a pair of McLaren GT cars, the 570S GT4 and the MP4-12C GT3 car. They were looking for a design that was cohesive across both cars, but not exactly the same and they knew they wanted dark blue and green with some fish scale patterning.

It is always a lot of fun working with teams that want to put together a design across different cars because it is a challenge to incorporate the same ideas and style across cars that can have different body shapes and silhouettes. The reward of a great design is doubled though, when you see the cars and how they work together.

La Broca Sim Racing Civic Type-R TCR

With the latest update of iRacing, came two new cars in the TCR class to join the Audi RS3 TCR, the Hyundai Elantra N and the Honda Civic Type-R TCR. With three cars, this class is now really something to enjoy, with different driving experiences and each car excelling in different areas.

Last week, La Broca Sim Racing reached out to me to design a Honda Civic Type-R TCR to use in the races he’s streaming on his YouTube channel. We talked about some different design ideas and bounced ideas back and forth about the cars that we both thought fit those ideas. The photos you see here represent the final culmination of the design process. It was lots of fun working with Ben to find something that was both unique and different but also looked like an authentic race car that you might see in real life in your local touring car series.

BGB Motorsports 992 Cup cars

With no live racing going on at the moment, I’ve been rewatching the races from the Carrera Cup North America season and some of the liveries in this IMSA support series are really pretty cool and let’s be honest, the new Porsche 992 cup car looks amazing in almost any livery.
The first cars that really caught my attention were the cars run by BGB Motorsports out of Florida. They run a two car team and the liveries are opposites with an alternating highlighter green and deep purple.

2022 R-Team BMW M4 GT4

Last year, Rob and I drove the Charlotte 4 Hour endurance event in the BMW M4 GT4. After that event, we both drove the M4 in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge series. With the turn of the new year and the 2022 racing season starting up, I figured it was time to update the livery and do something new. We’ll both be running the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge series and BMW 12.0 series and with the GT4 cars being featured in the upcoming iRacing Daytona Roar event, we’re looking forward to much success.

The livery is inspired by both the iconic Falken Motorsports livery and the Advan Racing livery.

Porsche 718 Cayman GT4RS Clubsport

A little more than a month ago, Porsche Motorsport announced the Cayman 718 GT4 Clubsport with the new RS evolution. The biggest change is the fact that the GT4RS now features a 4.0 liter flat 6 from the 911 GT3 Cup car capable of 500hp. Externally, the body features NACA ducts that direct cooling air to the new racing brakes and it also features wheel arch vents and specially designed air curtains at the rear of the front arches, both to smooth air turbulence coming off the front wheels.

It would be awesome, if we see an updated Porsche Cayman GT4RS Clubsport iRacing, and with the seemingly good relationship that iRacing and Porsche Motorsport have, it is probably a good chance we will get an update in the future. In the meantime, I thought it would be cool to work on designing and rendering them on the current Cayman GT4 Clubsport to make them look as real and as 3D as possible through the use of shading and highlights. Obviously, I can’t create depth in the 3D model or create holes, but through the clever use of shading, I can almost imitate them and make them look real. Hope you enjoy.

Here are a few pictures of the real Cayman 718 GT4RS Clubsport from this HypeBeast article for reference.

MooseKnuckle Motorsports Ferrari 488 GT3 EVO

Back in November, a group of friends reached out to me about designing a race car for them. They had a name, MooseKnuckle Motorsports, but didn’t have a logo or color scheme in mind. We bounced some ideas back and forth and we ended up with this aggressive, angular, profile of a moose head. At the time, they thought they wanted a Ferrari 488 GT3 EVO, but said they wanted to wait until the 2022 season change over to see if anything new would be released on iRacing.

With the start of the 2022 season now upon us, and no new GT3 cars released, they pulled the trigger on a the 488 EVO design and this is the final result. Check out this Ferrari 488 GT3 EVO for MooseKnuckle Motorsports.

Genesis Simsport LMP2

Last year, I created this iconic team livery for the Genesis Simsport team, which is currently up for “Paint of the Year” honors on Trading Paints. When the guys from Genesis Simsport reach out to me, I always know the final result is going to be a livery design that is unique and instantly recognizable and the creation of this latest Dallara LMP2 was no different.

A few weeks ago, several of the team members reached out to me because they are entering the 2022 VSCA Sportswear Championship. They wanted a fresh design on the LMP2 to stand out and be noticed. We discussed several design ideas and color way options, but ultimately landed on this livery design that has an “art car” vibe while still offering areas for sponsorship. The VSCA has a clear and precise set of rules for livery design, so it was important to make sure that all design parameters were followed and met. I can’t wait to see them compete in 2022 and wish them luck.

Sticky’s Finger Joint 992 GT3 Cup Car

If you’ve never been to Sticky’s Finger Joint in the NYC/NJ area, you’ve got to make a trip. Sticky’s Finger Joint makes the best chicken fingers and they’ve got the sauce game on lock down. I recently discovered that they’ve opened up some locations in New Jersey, not far from home and when I saw their menu sticker bomb graphics, I knew I had to do a car livery based on it.

Evan’s McLaren 570s GT4

I recently completed this McLaren 570s GT4 for Evan Schickel. Evan found me via the iRacing message boards and after discussing the kinds of design style that he liked, we ended up with a design brief that detailed a design with white as the primary color, color blocks with gradients and subtle patterns. As I got to know Evan a little bit through the design process, I discovered that he is an avid auto-x’er and races with the same region I used to race with and knows many of the same people I know from that scene.

I can definitely see Evan’s preference for auto-x and how it has effected the design. He didn’t want any sponsor logos and the design we landed on is more subtle than a “typical” race car. I think it looks more like a street car that has had some added styling touches. I really like the gradient colors and I definitely plan on exploring some more designs with this color palette.

K-Pax Lamborghini #3

The black #3 K-Pax Racing Lamborghini Huracan GT3 won the 2021 Fanatec GT World Challenge America Championship. This car looks so mean and Jordan Pepper and Andrea Caldarelli were prominent at the front of almost every race with it. I completed this design, along with the green #6 team car at the request of one of the K-Pax crew members. If you want to play out your own championship drive, they are both available on my Trading Paints.

Paul Newman AMG GT3

Last year, I watched a documentary, “Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman.” It chronicled the racing career of the famous actor Paul Newman and showcased how he progressed through the sport. It featured a ton of historic race footage and even had some shots from some of the races at Lime Rock, that I attended as a kid. Paul Newman was known for racing Datsuns and the liveries on the Datsuns from Bob Sharp Racing have become iconic.

After watching the the documentary, I thought it would be cool to imagine what a modern race car, driven by Paul Newman might look like. Looking at the modern GT3 cars, I thought that the AMG GT3 was closest in silhouette to the Datsuns. I tried to update the logos and advertisements with the same sponsors that Paul Newman had, but with modern logos.

Black Swan Racing

Black Swan Racing has been involved in various GT racing series in the US since about 2011, but have been absent the last 2 or 3 seasons. That changed 2 weeks, when they entered a GT4 class Porsche Cayman in the SRO Indianaplois 8 Hour event as part of the Fanatec Intercontinental GT challenge. The livery they chose to run was a throwback to the white, green and black liveries that they ran early on as a team. The classic style immediately caught my eye and stood out against the many bold liveries that use lots of chrome effect and other elements that have become super popular lately.

A few days after the race, a past client reached out to me and mentioned that he had noticed the livery as well and wanted to know if I could recreate it on the Cayman and adapt it to the new 992 cup car as well. This is the result.

Grid Engineering Aston Martin DBR9 GT1

Last week, the guys at Grid Engineering reached out to me for a new design. They had a racer that was going to be doing a series in the GT1 class on iRacing and they needed a Grid Engineering design on the Aston Martin DBR9 GT1. This was the first time I’ve done a livery design on the Aston Martin, so there’s always a little bit of experimentation to figure out a design template that I’ve never worked with before, but I think it came out great. If you’ve never driven this Aston Martin GT1, I strongly recommend you give it a try during the test drive sessions that are available when iRacing is updating. This car is a joy to drive and it is perhaps the BEST sounding car on iRacing.

Colorful Learning Porsche Cayman GT4

One of the coolest aspects of designing liveries for iRacing cars is that people from all over the world reach out to me to design cars and they are most often based around their own personal businesses. Last week, I designed a Porsche 992 livery for a Swiss coffee company and this past weekend, I designed this Porsche Cayman GT4 livery for the owner of an Australian Toy store.

The name of the toy store is Colorful Learning and it centers around toys and games that encourage learning and creativity. We discussed a number of ways to represent the theme of “colorful learning” but ultimately landed on this idea of multi-colored bricks that are stacked on the front of the car and tumbling away toward the back. It was a fun project and the car looks great on track. I can’t wait to do this livery on a few more vehicles that the client has in mind.

Fresh Coffee Porsche 992 cup car

Just about a year ago, I was involved in a heated battle of a race at the Daytona Motor Speedway in the Advanced Mazda MX-5 series, with a pace on the final lap to secure the win. Almost a year later, and the driver that came in second in that race reached out to me to design a Porsche 992 Cup car to represent his business, www.freshcoffee.ch.

It was a lot of fun catching up with him and learning about his business, developing a 992 that represented his taste and style in motorsport, while still representing the design language that he’s established for his business.

Apex Sim Racing LMP2

This Dallara LMP2 was commissioned for Apex Sim Racing. Apex Sim Racing makes high end button boxes, dashboards and screens and other peripherals and I first learned of them when I was searching for a dashboard button box for my sim rig. Apex worked with me to design and build and dashboard with exactly the buttons and layout I wanted and it has become a vital part of my racing.

When Apex reached out to me about designing a livery for them for the LMP2, I knew immediately that I wanted to do something with their iconic “A”. I love playing with repetitive geometric patterns and their “A” seemed like the perfect candidate for a pattern that would work. This design features a matte pattern over the glossy red and then a glossy grey pattern over the white aspects of the livery, resulting in a livery that is simple and effective at first glance and then gets more complex as you se the light move over it. If you want to race this paint, check it out here on Trading Paints.