Ryan McConkey

Ryan McConkey

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Superleague Career
Nationality	American
Active Years	8
Team(s)	MMC Racing Synergetic Motorsports Woods Racing Constant Racing Stealth Grand Prix SCUM Molotov F1
Grand Prix	34
Championships	0
Wins	0
Podium finishes	0
Pole positions	3
Fastest laps	2
First Grand Prix	2003 Australian Grand Prix
First Win
Last Win
Last Grand Prix	2009 Dutch Grand Prix

Ryan McConkey (born September 27, 1985 in Missoula, Montana, United States) is an American sim-racing driver and long-standing member of the GPVWC. He has competed in all of the leagues competitive series since 2003. He is currently test/reserve driver with Synergetic Motorsports, and owner/driver for MMC Racing in the Masters Series

Sim-Racing Beginnings

McConkey began his sim-racing career during the summer of 2002. Previously only running Nascar Racing, and EA Sports F1 titles, he began racing with Grand Prix 4 upon its release in summer 2002. Online Leagues for Grand Prix 4 were fairly sparse at the time, but McConkey joined one titled GP4League. Upon entering the league he joined the MolotovF1 team owned by Mariano Malisani. He raced in the last few events of the season and made somewhat of a splash with the league admin over whether that the admin himself was cheating or not. McConkey only took part in a handful of races, but apparently made an impression on the track as well. Malisani was looking to put a team into GPVWC when it switched to GP4, therefore he asked McConkey if he wanted to drive for him there. Ryan accepted the offer, but only raced in one grand prix for MolotovF1. GPVWC collapsed soon after this and most of the teams disappeared. McConkey was without a drive, so he went to race at GPChampionship and SFO league. He soon got a job managing the Stealth entry in SFO, and gained valuable managing experience. However, the driving aspect in Ryan's career had been on hold for too long. He left the managing position at Stealth and entered his own team MMC Racing, having co-founded it with Matt Maple. The two drove together before in GPChampionship and had become good friends at the time. The team did fairly well in SFO, and by the time of September 2003 GPVWC had come back, except with the name F1VWC. McConkey heard there were slots still open for new teams and decided he'd enter MMC Racing into the league. This venture proved to be the correct move, as the SFO league collapsed at the end of the 2003 season.

2003

Ryan had entered MMC Racing into F1VWC in September 2003 in time for the United States Grand Prix. Teamed with driver Paul Sleight, the pair didn't score any points, but impressed for such a young team with an underpowered Mugen-Honda engine. The 2003 season finale at Suzuka proved to be one of McConkey's shining moments when he qualified 5th on the grid in a car with at least 50 horsepower less than the rest of the field. He ended up finishing 7th overall in the race thereby scoring MMC's first ever points in just it's 2nd race in the league.

2004

The 2004 campaign for Ryan and his team MMC Racing proved to be the most complete and best on average over the course of his 8 year presence in F1VWC/GPVWC Superleague. Ryan was able to secure 3 consecutive pole positions during the course of the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Monza, and the Circuit de Nevers. Unfortunately, he was not able to ever secure a podium or win during the year, his team secured their one and only race victory at the Suzuka.

2005

2005 proved to be a difficult year for McConkey and his team. Lack of motivation and also a lack of financial stability within the team posed many problems before the season even got underway. Ryan decided to withdraw his team and himself as a driver on July 18th, 2005. He would eventually return again, however, 1 month later to help Ted Cragg after he took over the SCUM entry, with plans to re-brand it as his Stealth Grand Prix team for the 2006 season.