After racing online and offline with games like Papyrus’ NASCAR Racing 3 all throughout high school, a busier schedule and cramped dorm rooms in college forced me to take a break.

But after graduating, I felt the desire to race again, and my interest was piqued after seeing a new game – er, simulation – advertised on Marcos Ambrose’s racecar in the August 2009 race at Pocono.

Less than a week later, I was an iRacing member and, it turns out, an early adopter of the platform just one year into its own existence.

In my first days on the service, I passed up chances to spend time with friends after work so I could log more laps on track by myself. Later, I worked up the courage and consistency to compete in official sessions against other drivers.

While my driving wasn’t very polished, I still look back on those early days with fondness, remembering how nervous I’d get about every off-track or how excited making a pass even against the slowest backmarker would make me.

That nostalgia was reignited during iRacing’s recent 15th anniversary celebration, which included a special four-week series featuring some of its original cars running on its oldest tracks.

With an opportunity to rediscover some of my sim racing roots, plus a small chance at winning a $1,000-credit grand prize for competing in all four weeks, I strapped in for a ride down memory lane.

A Roadster Remembered

The Pontiac Solstice was the rookie-level car when I first joined iRacing, and while its lack of power is obvious compared to the GT cars I race now, at the time, it was a good car for a beginner to learn braking points and racecraft without punishing the inevitable mistakes too severely.

Back then, the rookie series alternated between just two tracks – Lime Rock and Laguna Seca – and during my first week driving the Solstice, Laguna Seca was up as the host.

My first race was solid if unspectacular, finishing in third place, ten seconds away from the next closest car. After that, I had the typical incident-riddled rookie-level race that left me eleventh out of twelve competitors and a little unsure about this whole iRacing thing.

I followed that up with a string of podiums, all while shaving tenths off my fastest lap times, and during a Saturday afternoon race on August 29 – just three weeks after joining iRacing – I earned my first official victory.

I remember little to nothing about the race itself, but the results show I won from the pole with a final margin of 12 seconds and only a single off-track incident in the 11-lap race.

Fourteen years later, I knew my return to Laguna Seca in the Solstice wouldn’t be that easy. But after joining a Tuesday night race session, I thought the same result was possible. In this race, I was the #1 car, and as I learned all those years ago, that carries an expectation to win as the highest-rated driver in the field.

Suddenly, I felt the same nerves as in those early races with the Solstice, and those only increased after qualifying, where I took the pole by three tenths of a second.

At the start, it was clear that the draft was strong enough and the driver behind was quick enough to stay with me, so I’d need to dig into my bag of tricks if I wanted to get away.

The first of those came into play on the second lap. In slower cars, I have often found a shallow entry and hard, late braking into the Andretti Hairpin is an effective way to keep the car on a tight inside line – the shortest distance around the corner – and rotating to set up a fast exit.

The driver behind me took a wider entry but still tried to cut back for the second apex like I did – and he was going too fast and ran wide. That bought me a buffer of about a second, but he was still within draft range.

The following lap, I took a wide exit out of turn 3, kicking up gravel beyond the kerb. The driver behind again tried to follow in my tire tracks, but he ran even wider, sliding through the gravel and back onto the circuit.

As he entered a battle of his own with third-place driver, I was finally in the clear out front. But just as I’m sure I did in my first ever races here, I held my breath every lap through the Corkscrew and exhaled whenever I came out the other side with all four tires on the road.

After a short but well-executed seven laps of driving, I returned to victory lane in the same car/track combination where it all started for me fourteen years ago. It was a rewarding result, but I couldn’t rest just yet with three more weeks of throwback racing ahead.

(Re)living Legends

Despite coming from an oval racing background with the NASCAR games I grew up playing, I was slow to try the oval side of iRacing. In fact, it took more than nine months after I joined the service before I ran my first official oval races.

Those came in the Legends car, which like the Solstice was underpowered but ideal for learning the dynamics of side-by-side short track racing.

My earliest races at South Boston – a track I knew from NASCAR Racing 3 – were again a mixture of progress and pandemonium, but my biggest hurdle was putting a complete race together and not fading or slipping up in the closing laps.

A Wednesday evening race in May 2010 seemed to be going the same way, as I led laps early but fell back to second place by mid-race. But this time, the car ahead slipped up and I retook the lead in the closing laps.

However, another car had followed me through, and he was all over my rear bumper and not making any mistakes. As we took the white flag, I made one of my own, pushing too hard on old tires and opening up the bottom lane for him in turn 2.

We ran side by side down the backstretch, all with a lapped car just ahead. I held my higher line through the final corners and we nearly crossed the finish line three-wide, splitting the lapped car. But my momentum around the top paid off, and I won by just a tenth of a second.

A photo finish like that was a dramatic way to take my first oval win, and I still credit that as the moment I became truly hooked on iRacing and convinced it was unparalleled for online sim racing competition.

Getting back into the Legends car after all these years, the buzzing hornet sound was the same but I could immediately feel improvements to the handling thanks to many iterations of tire model development. The car is now much more predictable when driving close to the limit, and instead of immediately spinning, slides can be anticipated and saved.

Of course, I hoped I would never have to deal with those in my race, which was early on a Thursday morning. I was again the highest-iRated driver in the field, but with many rookie drivers in the 12-car field, it seemed like survival rather than speed could be the key.

I qualified on the pole and got a good start while chaos unfolded behind me. The third-place car got loose exiting turn 2 and collected nearly half the field behind him. While that could have thinned out the field, it could have also meant many off-pace or damaged cars returning to the track during the 30-lap race.

As I stretched out a gap over second place, I started taking it easy when lapped cars filled my windshield, giving a little extra room when passing them.

I was also careful to manage my tires, because even in a 30-lap run in practice, I noticed that pushing early on resulted in some severe falloff by the final few laps, which turned the normally nimble Legends car into a dump truck. Whether I was in a close battle or negotiating lapped traffic, I couldn’t afford that loss of handling in a late-race situation.

This time around, though, I was comfortably alone out front, aside from a few courteous slower cars around me in the closing laps. The best battle on track was for second place, nearly nine seconds behind me.

While my return to the Legends car lacked the drama of a photo finish, it still brought the success of a victory, bolstered by consistent driving and years of experience with tire and traffic management.

Skipping Back in Time

After competing in the Solstice, my next step up the road racing ladder kept me on the tin top side of the service, running cars like the Volkswagen Jetta and Ford Mustang.

But on the open-wheel side, the Skip Barber Formula 2000 car stood out as one of the most popular cars on iRacing, and one that probably should have caught my interest sooner.

After all, in June 2007 – a year before iRacing launched – my dad and I took to the track at Virginia International Raceway in similar Formula 2000 cars as part of the Bertil Roos Racing School.

Looking back, I can only imagine that having iRacing then would have dramatically sped up my learning curve – and my lap times – in that racing school.

Alas, my starts in the Skip Barber have been few and far between, including some as part of my Summer Road Trip at Silverstone in 2017 when I infamously bump-drafted my teammate Karl straight into a crash.

To get another taste of the Skippy and my own real-world racing experience, I took to the track at VIR, running the same south course layout my dad and I drove together 16 years ago.

In my first test laps, I certainly felt a sense of familiarity – although the comfort of my office was a much different atmosphere than the sizzling 95-degree weather on the day of the racing school.

Mainly, I remembered how tricky of a track VIR’s south course is. While it’s just 1.65 miles long, it packs plenty of challenging corners, including the appropriately named Bitch – a tight hairpin at the end of the frontstretch
– followed by a blind entry to the downhill esses, and concluding with Oak Tree. All these years later, the namesake tree itself is gone, but it remains a difficult corner to get right.

However, I could tell that my experience on iRacing – plus a little from real life – helped me get up to speed. I was able to pick out the fastest lines through the corners, sense the grip level in the tires, and do what I have always done best on the sim: string together consistent, clean laps.

Those skills would all come in handy during my Thursday night race session, where it was clear my biggest opponent might be myself. I was again the highest-rated driver in the field and nearly two seconds quicker than the field in qualifying, so as long as I could stay on track, the win seemed easily in reach.

As at South Boston, I got a helping hand early in this race, as the cars behind me piled up in the first turn while I drove away.

After the first lap, I had a six-second lead and was gapping the field with every corner. Those races can be some of the most challenging as a driver, since your mind wanders and you tempt yourself to hotlap, running close to the limit to extract more pace.

But I remembered back to the racing school, when they warned us even dropping a tire in the grass would warrant a pit stop, and convinced myself not to go too crazy searching for speed.

After a few cautious encounters with lapped traffic, I completed the 10-lap race with a 30-second margin behind me. That left me three-for-three in the 15th anniversary series with one week to go.

Better Late

While my first year or two on iRacing were spent primarily doing road racing, my early oval experience was enough to draw me back there from time to time, and one of the most popular oval cars to drop in and race was always the Late Model.

That car was even featured in one of iRacing’s first big events. In September 2011, they hosted a two-night tournament at Iowa featuring heat races, semifinals, and a 30-driver main event.

I took part and did much better than expected, qualifying in 30th out of 434 drivers and making it all the way to the finals. Along the way, I competed head-to-head against the likes of former ARCA and NASCAR driver Stuart Kirby, and gridded up for the feature alongside a who’s who of future eNASCAR stars including 2013 series champion and tourney winner Tyler Hudson.

While an early crash around me ruined any hopes of a strong finish, even making the finals over more than 400 other drivers was a proud achievement.

Returning to the Late Model in this final week of the anniversary series, there was a twist: the car itself was different, with the old Monte Carlo replaced earlier this year by a CARS tour Late Model Stock.

It is a car, though, in which I’ve got some recent experience. Together with my friend Bradley – one of those work friends whose company I eschewed to race fourteen years ago – we have been racing against AI opponents while simulating the mid-90s stock car scene.

We began our mock career mode with the Slim Jim All-Pro Series, a southern late model tour for which we used the new Late Model Stock.

During our race at Concord Speedway, a now-defunct triangular half-mile preserved digitally on iRacing, Bradley and I battled side-by-side for the lead, but contact with the simulated Shane Hall slowed me down and I had to settle for second place.

That left me wanting another chance with that combination, and with Concord on the Late Model’s 15th-anniversary series schedule, I knew I had to race – and win – there to finish up this trip down memory lane.

There were only six drivers in my race session, but it may have offered the best competition of any event in my anniversary series experience. One driver ran faster than me in practice, and another had a high-enough oval iRating that I expected he could be quick in the race.

I qualified on the pole and jumped out to a half-second lead, but the fast driver from practice backed up that speed in the race, and he didn’t let me pull away early on.

Eventually, a lapped car limping around the traffic slowed him down and let me open a two-second lead over the pair of quick drivers battling behind me.

With ten laps to go, the higher-iRating driver got the position and was sometimes running a tenth or more faster than me. His speed was undeniable, but with the gap I had built and the laps winding down, my lead was safe until the finish.

While wins haven’t always come easily in my iRacing career – and this was my first official victory in either generation of Late Model – my execution in this race was classic Corey. I didn’t always have the fastest car on track, but clean and consistent driving paved the way to a good result.

Fourteen years ago, I could have never imagined that iRacing would become such a mainstay in my life for such a long time, even knowing my long history of sim racing before then.

In that time, I have assembled a solid and well-rounded résumé of achievements, from oval league championships to an Indianapolis 500 victory to endurance race wins at tracks including Daytona, Sebring, and the Nürburgring.

Each of those were special moments to be sure, but some of my favorite memories are still my very first races, when I’d get anxious and antsy as the session loaded and my emotions would rise and fall with my safety rating.

Reliving some of those combinations over the past four weeks has made me appreciate the adventure so far and excited to see what the next fifteen years – and hopefully many more – will bring for iRacing and my own sim racing ride.

Granted, in those early days of racing video games just after the release of the original NASCAR Racing by Papyrus, he was the only sim racer I knew. And before the advent of live streams, world championship series, or any sort of organized online competition, it was tough to know how good anyone truly was at making pixelated cars turn left.

Still, that didn’t stop me from being in awe of my dad behind the wheel. I must have watched him drive hundreds of laps, always at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. It was fitting since the track that hooked me on real racing from the first time I heard the roar of engines from afar was also my gateway into sim racing, even if absorbed second-hand.

Just seven years old when the game was first released, my own attempts at driving were… less than stellar. It didn’t help that I thought the lap speeds in miles per hour were times in seconds, so my 100-second laps puttering around at highway speeds were never as competitive as I’d hoped.

I also couldn’t get the hang of pit stops. The mechanic in the Papyrus sims always required having your foot on the brake to begin pit service, so repeatedly reversing and jolting forward in and out of my box never gave my virtual crew their cue to get to work.

I eventually got better, mainly with a few years’ more experience on titles like NASCAR Racing 2 and NASCAR Racing 3, while my dad never spent much time with the sequels.

However, that couldn’t change my view that my dad was the best I would ever see on the original NASCAR Racing sim. He managed to perform well despite its primitive, low-resolution graphics, the lack of force feedback, and the not-quite-surround sound.

Or, perhaps, he did so well because of that simplicity.

Stripped of the vanities of modern titles, sim racing is little more than a physics problem: how can you get a mass from point A to point B as fast as possible, where point A equals point B and the route between them is a glorified circle? As an engineer by training and by trade, it’s no wonder he was so good at it.

All these years later, I never quite knew how I would stack up against my dad in his prime. While we did spend some track time together on iRacing in a fun league with a few of my friends, by then, the years had eroded his depth perception and reflexes, so he struggled to keep up with us spry young’uns.

It seemed like a question that would remain forever unanswered, until an unusual sequence of events unfolded this weekend that revealed a key clue about my dad’s performance.

Off at my mom’s to spend time with family for my birthday, an ice storm knocked out power at her house and left me little to do besides cleaning out the bookshelves in her office, stocked with old floppy disks, CDs, and game manuals that had been collecting dust for decades.

Sandwiched among them was our original copy of NASCAR Racing, box and everything. And stuck in there were a few less-than-sticky notes with the unmistakable handwriting of an engineer.

They were my dad’s setup adjustments, obviously for Charlotte since it’s the track he knew best. A second page, containing mostly his graphics settings, also included a number that my present-day self clearly recognized as a speed, not a time: 180.157.

It was the best present I could ask for, like a birthday card from my dad nearly three years after he died. And it sent me on a trip back in time to the 1994 sim and back to the original Charlotte Motor Speedway to see if I could be like Bruce.

After downloading a DOS emulator — now there’s a throwback! — and tinkering with configuration options so the game would run with my current computer, wheel, and pedals, I was set.

It was time to go testing at Charlotte aboard that familiar white #94 car. I started with the default ‘easy’ setup, just to get a feel for the sim and to see where my pace stood.

My first impression was a rush of nostalgia, especially as those dashed lines down the backstretch zoomed past my car. I clearly remember watching that from over my dad’s shoulder many years ago, and it always made it seem like he was driving at warp speed.

Then, at the end of the backstretch, a dose of reality: Wow, these cars drive like bricks!

Indeed, absent the aerodynamic advances of the past 25 years, the stock cars of 1994 required more than just a gentle lift into the corners, lest the car head straight up the banking and toward the wall. It was Newton’s first law with redneck reasoning: an object in motion will remain in motion unless you brake early, dummy!

Eventually, I managed a clean lap, and it was… slow. At 170.035 mph, I was 1.7 seconds off my dad’s target time.

I could almost hear him say you’re not gonna beat me like that!, followed by his trademark disarming wink that let you know he was just kidding around.

I steadily gained speed over the next few laps: 170.9, 171.1, 171.4. At a certain point, I had clearly hit a wall — actually, many of them around the track — and wasn’t going to find much more speed on the baseline setup.

So I entered the virtual garage and loaded the ‘fast’ setup, because with a name like that, it can’t be slower, right? On the track, I found an immediate improvement: 175.019 mph. Faster for sure, but still eight tenths off the pace.

It was then time to turn to my dad’s setup, hidden away for all these years until now.

As I input his handwritten settings into the garage screen, something immediately stood out. The shock settings were much stiffer than those on the default setups. I’ve heard that stiffer suspensions are a relatively recent development in motorsports, part of the aerodynamics-driven revolution to help seal off the front ends of cars against the track.

My dad, it seemed, was ahead of his time as an engineering expert. I’d even say he could have been a keen crew chief, if not for his upstanding and honest nature that might have kept him from searching for those gray areas in the rulebook where the best wrench-turners like Smokey Yunick, Ray Evernham, and Chad Knaus have thrived.

The question was, though, how would his handiwork drive?

Straight out the pits, I could tell it was loose, and very much on the edge. However, I could also tell it had the potential for speed, given how well — maybe too well — that it rotated mid-corner.

After plenty of spins and a few nervous but mediocre laps, something finally clicked in my mind: with the nose of the car stuck to the banking, I could drive much deeper into the corners than I first thought. Thanks to my dad’s foresight, those 1994 stock cars didn’t have to drive so differently from modern cars after all.

Now even more on edge entering the corners, it was still tough to complete a lap, and probably a hundred or more attempts at hotlaps nearly all ended in spins or crashes.

It took some extra setup tuning — a little higher tire pressures, a more balanced crossweight, but don’t touch those magical shock settings! — and I finally had a drivable setup.

After a solid lap, the speed flashed on my screen: 178.888. Still too slow, but only by two tenths. The goal finally seemed within reach.

A few attempts later, I had a strong run through turns 1 and 2, but wound up running the middle groove through turns 3 and 4, unable to get the car down to the white line on exit. I was ready to write it off and start another lap, when it happened…

180.216.

I had done it. By less than one one-hundredth of a second, it was a new family best around Charlotte, set some 25 years after my dad’s record.

Going into this sim racing scavenger hunt, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would I immediately find speed using whatever setup I tried? Would his adjustments be the key to a faster lap? And would beating his time be an easy effort, or an impossible mission?

In the end, it was achievable, but only barely after a full afternoon of trying, and perhaps my lap should come with a few asterisks next to it. I’ve had the benefit of thousands of hours of sim racing and study, aided by tools like real-time telemetry, while my dad made do with whatever knowledge and ability he had at the time, all while meticulously hand-crafting a setup that ultimately held a key to such a quick time.

In addition, I made a few concessions to boost my chances. My dad’s notes didn’t mention the weather he ran in, so I turned the air temperature as low as it could go. Nor did he list his fuel, so I put in 2 gallons, or just enough for a qualifying run.

Exactly what conditions he ran in, or how he found so much speed with such a loose but innovative setup, are secrets that will remain safe with him forever.

I can only be thankful that he still had another lesson to share, this one etched in black ink and memories, neither of which has faded over the years.

That’s the best explanation I can fathom for how a sim racer who, despite growing up on the Papyrus NASCAR games, never found much success on those earlier titles yet was able to leap up the oval ladder on iRacing and find success driving the Cup Series cars almost immediately in the Power Series.

I was able to discount my first few wins due to the circumstances. I won in my second start, but it was at Watkins Glen, where ringers can always shine. And I won at Chicagoland in the second race of my first full season, but had a lucky strategy call pay off and move me from the edge of the top ten into the lead.

As time went on and I kept running well, including three straight wins in my rookie season, my oval racing chops began to seem undeniable, even if I was still in denial myself.

After 21 Power Series wins and two championships, as well as another in the truck-based Stars Series, my oval racing résumé feels full — well, aside from that restrictor plate win that always eluded me.

And even if I have no idea how I got there, I could easily choose many of those races as some of my best drives. There was my first fuel-mileage win at Rockingham, a runaway win in my first race at the repaved Phoenix, and a pair of stock car wins at Indianapolis to complement my 500 triumph.

But it’s another race at the Brickyard that didn’t end in victory lane that makes the #4 spot on the list of my ten best drives.

4. Power Series at Indianapolis – May 15, 2016

Frankly, any of my three championship-clinching races could have landed on this list. In the past, I’ve written about the other two: my first Power Series title run at Las Vegas and my fuel-saving Stars Series win at Homestead.

Because of the excitement of those races — a last-corner pass to take the title on a tiebreaker, and a truck win while storms raged all around me — my second Power Series championship drive at Indy seems tame by comparison.

But of the three, it’s probably the one that stressed me the most, and in some ways, it includes shades of the other two and how I used a bit of smart strategy, in-car mental math, and some focused driving to elevate my performance and take home the title.

Understanding why this was such a tough race requires backing up four months to the start of the season. Just like the NASCAR Cup Series in 2018 was marked by the dominance of “the Big Three” of Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, and Martin Truex Jr., the Power Series’ eleventh season saw three drivers win 12 of the 17 races.

Tim Johnston, my Daytona 24 hour-winning teammate from earlier that year, opened that season with a win and racked up three more, with just four finishes outside the top five.

Mike Kelley, a long-time sim racing opponent of mine with whom I had a great rivalry but also tremendous respect, hit his stride mid-season with four wins in five races

And then there was me — arguably the weakest of the three statistically with the fewest laps led and laps completed, the latter due to a lap-1 crash at Chicagoland.

I won the two road races at Watkins Glen and Laguna Seca, and added short oval wins at Milwaukee and Iowa. But the bigger tracks hadn’t been my forte all season, and the finale was at one of the biggest of them all — Indianapolis.

Entering the race, I had a narrow two-point advantage over Mike and nine over Tim thanks to a better result at Talladega a few weeks earlier. But with such small margins and bonus points on offer, especially for the race winner, I knew the title was far from sewn up entering Indy.

As was custom in each of my championship bids, I spent the week beforehand running numbers in my head. Instead of counting sheep at night, I counted points, and it was no more helpful at putting me to sleep.

On race day, my first break came in qualifying. I would start second, ahead of both Tim and Mike, and just maybe have a chance of leading a lap early on, which would be an extra point in the bag for me.

Unfortunately for me, one of the race’s spoilers had a different idea. Matt Delk entered the race fourth in points and had a successful season by all accounts, with four poles and a win to his name. But outside of championship contention, his focus was on first place in the finale, which is exactly where he started.

Matt was one of several drivers who could take potentially points away from me by slotting in between me and my competitors. My best hope was for Matt to stay up front and dominate the race.

The first run went largely to plan, with Matt leading and me in second. But two cautions between laps 15 and 25 put my hopes in increasing jeopardy. On the restart after the first caution, Tim and Mike both got around me.

I raced Mike hard, with the two of us running side-by-side for half a lap before I finally surrendered the spot in turn 2. Although every position was important, a crash while racing unnecessarily close just a quarter of the way through the race would have become an easy championship win for Tim.

The next caution flew just a lap later, and Matt pitted while Tim, Mike, and I stayed out. My worries about the dreaded spoiler scenario then returned: a fast driver like Matt on slightly fresher tires could have easily separated me from my rivals.

As the race entered its caution-free final 55 laps, it took Matt longer than expected to work through traffic, so I was in a relatively safe spot simply following Mike. It had become clear that we both had a similar pace, so if I stayed close and copied every move he made — including his pit strategy — I figured I’d be fine.

A wrench was thrown into my plans during the first round of green-flag pit stops. Tim ducked into the pits early, handing the lead — and a bonus point — to Mike. Just copying him was no longer enough. To be safe, I needed to lead a lap as well.

That meant either passing Mike or staying out longer than any of the leaders during the final round of stops twenty-some laps later.

At first, I pinned my hopes on the former. Mike and I pitted at the same time, then raced side-by-side onto the narrow access road on the inside of turn 1. I barely had a bumper ahead, and against any other driver, Mike might have forced the issue.

However, in this case, he let off and gave me the spot — perhaps returning my favor from earlier, or maybe out of similar self-preservation to avoid a crash.

Or maybe he was just confident in his own pace. He should have been. A few laps later, Mike got back around me and I couldn’t catch him before the final round of stops began.

Unfortunately for me, Matt had also caught up by this point and gotten between Mike and me. If the race had ended then, Mike would have been the champion. I needed to lead a lap, and it wouldn’t be as easy as I expected.

Tim pitted first and Mike followed him on the same lap — likely his only chance to win the race given the time lost during even one lap around Indy on older tires.

But Matt stayed out, and my fears of his spoiler role returned. Would he stay out long enough to run me out of fuel before I could lead a lap?

Luckily for me, he did not. He pitted one lap later, giving me the lead and a single but extremely valuable bonus point.

It was a strategy move reminiscent of NASCAR champion Alan Kulwicki. In the 1992 finale at Atlanta, he and his team had done the math to know that if he stayed out a few extra laps before making his final stop, he could lead the most laps and deny those extra points to his chief rival, Bill Elliott.

Ultimately, that decision cost Kulwicki a chance at the race win, in part because of a short pit stop with a light fuel fill. While Elliott cruised to the race win, Kulwicki conserved fuel running in second, but his strategic foresight had been enough for the championship.

In my case, after running two extra laps on old tires, I had given up any shot at outright beating my opponents on the track so that I could beat them in the standings. But it was far from a guarantee, and it carried two major risks.

If one of the drivers behind like Dean Moll — another potential spoiler — passed me during the cycle of stops, they might have gotten too far ahead for me to catch them in the final 20 laps. And if a caution had come out before I pitted, I would have restarted at the rear since Tim, Mike, and the other leaders were still on the lead lap.

However, the clean race remained that way, and even though Dean did pass me during the pit sequence, I got around him shortly after my stop.

By this point, Mike was 8 seconds up the road, ahead of Matt and chasing down Tim. But Matt’s slightly fresher tires and better pace helped him get by Mike with 6 laps to go, and with Mike’s tires spent after a hard battle, he had nothing left to fight with.

The final margin between us was just two seconds, but more importantly, we were separated by just one point, and it was in my favor. And while Tim won the race and led the most laps, I finished four points in front of him.

No, a fourth-place finish wasn’t my best ever on an oval. In fact, it was tied for my sixth-worst finish in that 17-race season. But in a race where so much could have gone wrong — a hard battle backfiring, a strategy gamble flopping, or a spoiler living up to that title — I stayed cool and calculated.

In the end, it was worthy of a championship.

3. Power Series at Fontana – May 18, 2014

Two years before that race and my second Power Series title, I was still getting over losing my first championship.

While I can’t blame a single race for costing me a chance, a different result in any of the late-season races could have changed my fate, or at least given me more margin for error in a finale that turned into a head-to-head fight against a superior competitor, Kyle Taraska.

One of those races was at Auto Club Speedway, the 2-mile oval in Fontana, CA. It came down to fuel mileage and pit strategy, and I underperformed, finishing one spot behind Kyle without leading a lap.

The next Power Series season started in Fontana, and I was determined to make a fresh start while also fixing my failure from the previous race at that track.

That effort began on a positive note, with a third-place qualifying run. Of course, I knew qualifying wouldn’t mean much on this wide track where the draft largely kept the field bunched up. The chances of someone breaking free for a runaway win were slim.

Early on, the pack settled into a single-file line, and I was content to run in third. My patience paid off on lap 12, as the two leaders simultaneously hit the wall off turn 4. That put the lead in my hands, and I stayed there until the first caution on lap 20.

A series of cautions then bunched up the field and shuffled the order, but even after losing spots, I managed to gain them back each time. I had a fast car, although I still hadn’t proven myself over a long run with green-flag stops — the same sort of ending that had cost me in the previous Fontana race.

I would get that second chance as this race went caution-free for the final 70 laps. And this time, I was off to the races.

The field was full of worthy opponents, including Kyle, who had outrun me for the championship only one race earlier; Mike and Tim, who were always worthy opponents on any track; and a number of other drivers who all won races in the heyday of the Power Series.

However, while they battled behind me, I broke their draft, extended my lead, and executed a perfect green-flag stop in the run to the checkered flag.

My final margin was 13 seconds over second place and a full 20 seconds over Mike in third. In a fixed-setup series on a draft-friendly track, it was a dominant performance, and my best ever drive on an oval.

There isn’t much more to say about this race because it wasn’t a matter of math, strategy, or risk management. It was 125 laps of motivated, mistake-free driving that ended in victory lane.

Looking back, it’s the first race that comes to mind when I think of having something to prove. And it wasn’t just proving it to my competitors. It was about proving something to myself.

While it came one race too late to win a championship, after losing that title, I started to second-guess myself, again thinking my oval results to date could have been just a fluke.

My success in that narrow two-year period, including my three stock car championships, still feels too good to be true sometimes. But at least my win at Fontana — one of the toughest oval tracks around — reminds me of how hard I worked to get to the top.

But a few times each year at critical points on the racing calendar, different races graced our TV, and because they were so different from stock cars turning left, I knew they had to be something special.

In late January or early February, deep in the motorsports doldrums before NASCAR roared back to life, the 24 Hours of Daytona filled my fix for racing with a strange but satisfying facsimile of it.

Cars much more exotic than the Fords, Chevys, and Pontiacs I was used to watching lit up the high banks of Daytona before making some right-hand turns in the infield. It was my first taste of endurance racing, and while initially sour — where were the big wrecks? — my palate grew more sophisticated over time.

Eventually, I was able to appreciate the drama of a late-race breakdown for the leader, as NASCAR moonlighter Tony Stewart faced in 2004, and the GT dominance of Porsche, which my dad as an aficionado was all too happy to point out.

Then each Memorial Day on racing’s version of Christmas, Indy cars took to their namesake speedway for the 500. Usually, I watched that race from my grandparents’ house at High Rock Lake. Their TV was smaller than I was used to, and for many years available only in black and white over an antenna, but it was good enough to tune in the sights and sounds from Indianapolis.

The cars and the drivers were mostly foreign to me, but I could still pick out ones I recognized. Chief among them, there was Unser, Andretti, and Robby Gordon, whose fuel-mileage loss to Kenny Bräck still stings to this day.

Even as I had begun sim racing during those formative years, I never imagined that I might one day be able to compete in those same special events. They were far enough from NASCAR and the racing games I started on that they seemed like a completely different universe, despite the stock car stars who increasingly began crossing over to drive in both.

When I joined iRacing in 2009, it was still expanding its catalog of cars and tracks, so running a virtual version of those races wasn’t immediately possible. But once sports cars, Indy cars, and both famous American circuits joined the service, iRacing began hosting its own World Tour events to follow the global racing calendar.

There’s little drama in the inclusion of both my first — and only — Indy 500 and 24 Hours of Daytona wins in this list. I’ve written about both on The Driver Diary, including how much they meant to me at the time.

So to avoid telling those same stories again, I’ll use this post as a chance to share some behind-the-scenes insights about those two races and why they stand out as good drives, both because of and beyond the magnitude of the events themselves.

6. Indianapolis 500 – May 29, 2015

The fact that my first attempt at iRacing’s Indy 500 didn’t come until the sixth running of the event wasn’t down to fear or failure behind the wheel. While I’d run some practice laps in previous years, the races themselves always fell on weekends when I wasn’t available, often back at my grandparents’ house as my family’s Memorial Day weekend tradition continued into adulthood.

In 2015, I decided it was time to change that. I could run the Friday night race and still head out of town for my weekend plans on Saturday morning. Of course, that meant I’d only get one chance, whether it ended in a first-lap crash or some unthinkable success.

A win truly did seem out of the question. After all, it was my first attempt at running not just 500 miles, but any race distance, in the DW12 Indy car. Sure, I watched Juan Montoya and Helio Castroneves win as rookies at Indy, but they were much more talented drivers with open-wheel pedigrees.

Their other main advantage compared to the field, it seemed, was their equipment, and if I wanted to finish well or even finish at all, that would have to be mine as well.

Fortunately, my teammate Bryan Carey had more experience in the Indy car and put lots of work into building a setup that handled like a dream. It could go flat-out for nearly an entire fuel run, sacrificing raw pace for extra downforce and stability.

While that at least boded well for finishing the race, Bryan and I both would need plenty of long runs for our setup to shine and for us to move up from eighteenth and seventeenth on the grid, respectively.

In this race, I knew that was a big ask. The top-split 500s I’d watched always tended to average at least five cautions, and we were in the second split, so there was no telling how the race might play out.

To our surprise, the race started with not just one full fuel stint, but four! It was clean and green for the first 133 laps, which played right into our strategy and our setup. By the time the first caution came out, I was sitting in fifth and Bryan in tenth.

If the race had ended there, it would have been an incredible result. Carving through the field on old tires and passing some of the fastest drivers, including at least one top road racer who would usually drive laps around me, had been a surreal experience.

Sure, it was mostly because of the setup, but I’d like to think it was at least partially down to my driving as well. Running 133 laps wide-open around Indianapolis isn’t easy, and it was certainly uncharted territory for me in my first time racing the DW12.

The last third of the race was the toughest. As I feared, one caution bred more, and I simply wasn’t as fast as the drivers around me on fresh tires. I fell back to seventh with 25 laps to go, and from there, even a green-flag run to the finish wouldn’t have been enough for me to make up the lost ground.

It would take some luck and some strategy. The first was out of my control, but I could have a say in the second. In the third caution with 20 to go, the two drivers ahead of me along with Bryan and I stayed out while the leaders all pitted.

I restarted in third with Bryan in fourth, and we held those positions until another caution flew just six laps later. On the next restart, I used the draft to move up to second place, but my wingman Bryan wasn’t as lucky. Swamped by faster cars on fresher tires, he wound up being a part of the race’s final caution.

His race was over, but I still had a chance, albeit a small one. I was sandwiched between the speedier drivers behind and a race leader who, despite having the same age tires as me, had been faster for most of the race.

His gamesmanship on the late-race restarts — often accelerating, then slowing to bunch the field up behind him — had drawn the ire of our opponents, but that strategy was working, and there was little I could do to anticipate when he’d go on the final restart with two laps to go.

My voice trembling with nervous excitement, I told Bryan I’d be happy just to finish in the top three. I nearly blew that chance on the restart, as I took too much inside kerbing in turns one and two and lost a position down the backstretch.

It might have been worse if not for the field battling side-by-side in my mirrors. With the damage limited to one position lost, I tried to sniff the leaders’ draft as they began to battle on the final lap. I had the best seat in the house for that fight, which culminated with contact in turn three and both of their cars crashing across the track.

After keeping my car clean all race, my biggest obstacle awaited with just two turns to go. I slowed down — but not too much — so I wouldn’t drift into their crashing cars in the short chute. That decision saved my race, as I avoided a sliding car by just inches.

My final memory of that race isn’t perfectly apexing turn four, which I’m pretty sure I didn’t do, but screaming over the radio to Bryan in disbelief.

It was an unlikely outcome for sure, and the former second-place driver who lost it all on the last lap offered a somewhat backhanded congratulations after the race.

“You snuck that win, didn’t you?”

To be fair, I did. I led just four laps all race, three of which were during pit stop exchanges. But at Indy, it’s only the 200th lap that counts. Plenty of pros have lucked into last-lap wins — see Bräck, Kenny, or Wheldon, Dan, for starters.

And as I learned as a kid, at Indianapolis, all wins regardless of circumstance end with the same reward — a tall glass of milk.

5. 24 Hours of Daytona — January 23-24, 2016

Just eight months after my first Indy 500 attempt and victory, I was hoping for the same outcome in the 24 Hours of Daytona.

Okay, so the 2016 race wasn’t technically my first try. The previous year, my KRT Motorsport teammates and I entered but were caught up in a crash between GT cars after just two hours. In that race, I never even got behind the wheel.

Eager for another shot, my first hurdle would be finding a team to run with. My KRT teammates were all occupied with the NEO Endurance Series’ eight-hour race at Spa on the same weekend, and while the two races didn’t run concurrently, preparing for 32 hours of racing seemed like a bad idea.

I found a substitute driver for my NEO ride and joined three of my Power Series competitors in one of iRacing Today Motorsports’ entries for Daytona. Just like I remembered as a kid, we’d be a group of stock car drivers dropping in for a rare sports car event at the World Center of Racing.

Like at Indy the year before, I had plenty of reasons not to be confident going into the race. I would again be in unfamiliar equipment, as this would be my first race in the then-new Corvette Daytona Prototype.

More worryingly, deep into the night of my previous 24-hour race at Spa, I had my now-infamous crash out of the lead. Our team’s schedule had me running some early-morning stints, and I couldn’t help but fear a repeat of one my lowest sim racing lows.

After my post-midnight triple stint ended uneventfully, I was fully prepared to get some sleep before watching my teammates bring the car to the finish. However, since we were in podium contention, the excitement — and insomnia — were only building.

My teammate Dean Moll was our fastest driver and looked every bit the part as he closed in on the leaders. However, something going bump in the night at his house demanded his attention, so he asked to hand the car over to the next scheduled driver, Tim Johnston.

In one of those unexpected events that seems to only happen at odd hours in endurance races, Tim discovered his wheel wasn’t working properly, so as Dean came down pit road, we called the audible to put me back behind the wheel.

While I turned laps at 5 am, it felt more like the close of trading on the New York Stock Exchange as we debated our strategy options. Tim was still due for his second triple stint, but Dean and I had been the team’s fastest drivers and might give us the best — or only — chance of winning the race.

Unselfishly, Tim gave up his final stint and put the race in our hands. Dean agreed to drive the final two hours if I could double-stint until then. Finally feeling confident behind the wheel, I agreed, but I knew I had to put us in a position to win while not costing us everything we’d worked for.

It was a delicate balance to strike, especially after a lack of sleep that usually depletes focus and increases reaction times. However, I was up to the task in my final 56 laps, running some of my fastest and most consistent laps of the entire race.

During this double stint, I took the lead, but we knew we’d have to work to keep it. Our closest rival team — which, coincidentally, included the same driver who lost the heartbreaker to me at Indy — would have their fastest guy in for the finish.

Lucky for us, Dean was up to the task as well. His closing laps were masterful and made even more impressive by the distractions around us. Traffic was unpredictable and downright annoying, especially the prototype team more than 20 laps down that insisted on racing with us. In addition, we could see the gap to second place slowly but steadily shrinking.

A perfectly executed final pit stop for a splash of fuel kept us in the lead, and even as the driver chasing us closed to within three seconds coming to the white flag, Dean kept our car in a winning position.

As the checkered flag waved, I told Dean “that was all you, man”. Thinking back on that comment, it feels like a slight against our other teammates, Tim and Chad Dalton, but even today, I feel like my own late-race drive was rightfully overshadowed by Dean’s run to the finish.

I wasn’t quite as quick as Dean, and I might have either imploded or exploded if confronted with the same frustrations as he faced in the final stints. But as in my GT3 drive at Silverstone that landed at #7 on this list, I did my job as a co-driver and helped keep us in contention.

I’ve certainly been better-prepared for races than I was in both my Indy 500 and Daytona 24-hour wins, and I’m sure I’ve been a faster and more competitive driver at other times.

However, the history and incredible circumstances of both make them stand out and ultimately make this list.

Just as kid Corey could have told you, those races are special events for a reason. And my winning experiences with them were anything but standard fare.

My own abilities and equipment — including a half-broken set of Microsoft Sidewinder pedals — were a bit rusty at first, and with my performance tracked by precise indicators of skill and safety, I was nervous every time I registered for a session to compete against other people.

Over the years, my driving has improved, although those nerves haven’t completely gone away. That’s part of the addiction of iRacing, though. Compared to other games, there’s no reset button when races don’t go your way, and the feeling of accomplishment is all the more satisfying when they do.

As I approach my ten-year iRacing anniversary on August 9, I’ll count down ten of my best drives here on The Driver Diary. It was a tough list to curate, not because I’m a particularly prolific driver, but because I’ve driven a lot — more than 700 official races plus countless other league events — spread out among a variety of cars, series, and disciplines.

This top ten represents a sample of all of those, from my lowly beginnings in the rookie series to the top of the heap in endurance racing.

The countdown begins with the former — one of my first iRacing wins that remains one of my closest ever margins of victory.

10. Rookie Legends at South Boston — May 19, 2010

It wasn’t my first win on iRacing — that came in August 2009 driving the Pontiac Solstice at Laguna Seca — but it was the race that convinced me iRacing was worth a second chance.

My first entrée into iRacing in the summer of 2009 had been eye-opening. It was a big change from the last titles I had driven, such as Sports Car GT and F1 Challenge 99-02. But running mainly on the road racing side, it hadn’t managed to hold my interest for more than a month or two.

The following spring, I decided to give it another shot, this time on the ovals, which is where I’d done most of the online competition in my sim racing past.

At the time, the rookie car was the Legends Coupe — a frankencar with a to-scale 1934 Ford body and a motorcycle engine. Tame enough to avoid spinning from small mistakes but powerful enough to slide through the corners with well (or poorly) timed throttle application, it was an ideal car for beginners, or in my case, sim racing returnees who never quite got the hang of high-level oval cars in NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, iRacing’s predecessor in lineage and physics.

The rookie Legends series at the time rotated between just two tracks, so after getting my feet wet with a couple of races at Lanier, I buckled down for a week of 40-lappers at South Boston.

My first race ended in a crash while the second was my closest brush with oval victory up to that point. After starting second and leading 14 laps early on, I faded late in the race and finished second, five seconds behind the winner.

The next day, I was back at it for more races, but despite two top-fives, I was no closer to winning. It took a random dinnertime race on a Wednesday to finally break through.

It began with another second-place start, but instead of charging to the lead right away, I bided my time and moved into the top spot on lap 16.

From there, it certainly wasn’t easy. As the laps wound down, I hit traffic and also faced increasing pressure from behind. It was enough to force me into classic rookie mistakes, missing my marks and opening up the bottom lane for my opponent.

On the final lap, we raced side-by-side as my car four-wheel drifted through turn 2. I was pushing the little Legends car as hard as I could and barely hanging on.

I had a nose ahead down the backstretch but bigger problems out my window. A lapped car was just ahead of us, and we were set to catch him out of the final corners.

In turn 3, I held the middle groove and gave my opponent room — but not much — on the bottom. Sure enough, we caught the lapped car off of turn 4, but split him on either side to take the checkered flag.

Crossing the line three-wide, I was a tenth of a second ahead of second place. I had earned my first iRacing oval win, and with such close, clean, and intense competition, there was no doubt I’d be back for more.

Although wins were tougher to come by on the oval side as I moved into higher splits, few could have ever beat the excitement of that first victory in a short-track photo finish.

9. Sprint Car at Lucas Oil Raceway Park — February 28, 2017

After dabbling with the Legends, late models, and trucks, I largely put my oval career on hiatus as I explored more of iRacing’s depth of road content. When I returned to making mostly left turns, I had a successful stint of five seasons and two championships in the Power Series. However, even those results left me wanting more.

At least until overpowered dirt-racing rocketships like the midget and super late model arrived, the final frontier of oval racing always seemed to be the asphalt sprint car.

With heaps of horsepower and a dearth of downforce, it seemed like a great match for my own driving style, honed in bulky stock and GT cars that rely more on throttle control than aerodynamics. I’d just never given it a fair shake.

That opportunity finally arose in the fall of 2016. During week 13, iRacing held an unofficial sprint car series at Lucas Oil Raceway Park, which helped me get acclimated to the car, albeit in the same way one gets acclimated to the heat in a desert.

My first few races were rough, as this car was everything the Legends car wasn’t. It easily spun with overly ambitious throttle application, or sometimes seemingly if you looked at the gas pedal wrong.

By the end of that week, I was consistently finishing races and I felt competent enough in the sprint car to avoid crashing. I was ready, if hesitant, for my first season of official competition.

My expectations weren’t particularly high since I’d be driving against people far more experienced in the car with better setups and higher iRatings than me. And initially, I was satisfied to be solidly mid-pack — sixth place in my first two races, then a top five in week four of the season.

As I became more familiar with the car, the setups, and the surprisingly close racing in the Sprint Car Cup series, I steadily began reeling off top-five finishes. To shorten my learning curve, I also ran the car in the private JSRL league, and even managed to earn a couple of victories there.

However, I was still searching for my first official-series win, and entering the final week of my first — and only, as it turned out — season driving the sprint car, time was running out.

As luck had it, that week brought a return to Lucas Oil Raceway Park, so it would serve as a measuring stick for how far I had come as a sprint car driver.

A second-place qualifying run was a solid start, but the early laps of the race brought setbacks as I slipped to third and then fourth behind two of the fastest drivers in the series.

As the 50-lap race passed its halfway point, my comeback drive began. I re-took third place in a tight wheel-banging battle that finished with me making a difficult inside pass on a track where the top groove is typically preferred.

Although the two leaders were several seconds up the road by then, a well-timed caution at lap 28 bunched the field back up and gave me another shot.

When the green flag waved again, the racing was close among the top four, but I held my position and waited for a chance to move forward.

With nine laps to go, that opportunity emerged. The second-place driver tried an inside pass for the lead, but I managed to fill the gap to his outside and take the spot.

The following lap, the leader inexplicably changed his line to the middle groove, opening the top lane for me to get alongside him.

After a side-by-side battle for a lap, he got loose entering turn 1 and I sped by on his outside to take the lead.

While the second-place battle raged behind me, I held on to win by a second. It wasn’t as close of a finish as my first on an oval, but the fight to get there was every bit as challenging, if not moreso in the most difficult asphalt oval car to drive on the iRacing service.

I can’t quite say I ever mastered the sprint car — I’m not sure anyone can make that bold claim — but I’m still amazed by how quickly I got up to speed and, eventually, to victory lane.

From unintentionally spinning on the frontstretch at Lucas Oil Raceway Park to celebrating a win there in the course of just three months, my sprint car career — while brief — was a story of constant improvement and some of the most fun races I’ve ever been a part of.

Thinking back ten years, those moments alone made me glad I stuck with iRacing. Apparently all it took to get me hooked was my first taste of close competition and the thrill of victory.

So for most of my life, dirt racing was something I knew little to nothing about.  Sure, I had heard of and respected drivers like multiple-time sprint car champion Steve Kinser, but I couldn’t exactly relate to that discipline of driving.  It just seemed like a bunch of crazy-looking cars sliding sideways in the mud.

However, when iRacing announced several years ago that they were adding dirt racing, I decided to give it a closer look.  As someone who prides himself on being a successful all-around racer — winning in road and oval cars at a variety of circuit types — I wanted to show that I could conquer dirt racing as well.

In preparation, I drove two full seasons in the asphalt sprint cars, expecting that if I could master the car control and finesse needed to drive those high-horsepower, zero-downforce beasts, I would be just fine on dirt as well.

Slinging a sprint car around Irwindale Speedway.

On the day that dirt arrived, I jumped straight into the Limited Late Model and had some incredibly fun races with other drivers who, like me, were just beginners on dirt.

But after a few weeks went by, once many of those curious early adopters of dirt racing went back to their comfort zone on asphalt and the cream of the dirt crop had risen to the top, I had a troubling realization.

I’m not a very good dirt racer.

It wasn’t just in terms of pace, although I was stuck in the back half of the fields I raced against.  I also found myself hitting other cars and even getting called out by other drivers.

“Stay away from that orange car,” one opponent warned his competitors about me after I rear-ended him earlier in the race.

The frustration of being slow combined with the fear of being a hazard caused me to largely step away from dirt oval racing, vowing to return to it some day in the future.

That day is tomorrow.

Close racing in the late models around a dusty Eldora track.

It was an impromptu decision spurred on by a weekend Twitter poll asking which discipline I should race.  But those poll results aside, it also felt like an appropriate time to hit the dirt again.

In a gap between the winter endurance season and a second iteration of my Summer Road Trip, I have found myself searching for things to drive, and the dirt ovals recently got an update to their track surface model, improving the look and feel of the cushion.

Plus, when iRacing added rallycross content last fall, it created new dirt oval and road license classes, effectively providing a clean slate — including the standard starting iRating of 1350 — to all drivers.

So for this week and a few others this spring, my goal is to finally get the feel for dirt racing.  I want to find speed. I want to race cleanly around other cars. I want to be comfortable racing even the more powerful higher-level cars.  And in the process, I want to see just where my dirt oval iRating can end up.

I’ll still be in an orange car, but this time, from my preparation to my execution, I’m cleaning up my act.  The only mudslinging I plan on being a part of is with dirt tires on a tacky track.

Few things on the track draw more ire from drivers than a bad-handling car, and rightfully so. A successful setup can help make the most of out a race, while a bad one can cause an opportunity to slip away.

Of course, setup preferences are as different as driving styles. Each driver has certain tendencies and irritations with those changes under the hood, and during a race where tire wear, ambient weather, and track conditions change, the perfect setup is always a moving target.

You could fill an entire blog with thoughts about setup adjustments, but in this post, I want to look at how driving styles affect setups and vice versa.

To Each His Own

So far in this series, I’ve looked at driving styles in the context of inputs and downforce, gathering some illuminating insights by comparing my own style with my teammates Karl Modig and Dean Moll, whose styles are worlds apart from each other.

Given those differences, it’s probably no surprise that they have different setup preferences as well, especially when it comes to downforce.

Dean’s style suited toward high-downforce cars also tends to demand a higher-downforce setup, which helps him brake even later and keep cornering speeds even higher. That makes his job easier in racing situations.

“My preference is to run more downforce on the car,” he said. “I find the extra stability in traffic is beneficial, which allows me to focus on racing versus fighting the car.”

For Dean, the stability provided by extra downforce proves useful in traffic.

Because Karl’s style emphasizes slowing down mid-corner to get the car to rotate and getting back to the throttle sooner, extra downforce doesn’t help him much. In fact, he said he prefers a low-downforce setup because it gives him an edge in a different area: top speed. After all, passing in a straight line is much easier than in a corner.

There’s no one right answer to which setup is correct other than whatever is fastest, and that varies from driver to driver. For example, with Karl’s style, having higher tire pressures can help with his mid-corner rotation.

On the other hand, I can’t stand my tire pressures to be too high. By now, I’m sure Karl is sick of me complaining about “driving on basketballs” — the best comparison I can make to having overinflated tires. For me, it’s a matter of stability, or the lack thereof.

Instead of raising the tire pressures, one of my go-to adjustments to help the car turn is increasing the front toe-in. This especially helps with quick changes of direction, like the high-speed left-right Schumacher S at the Nurburgring. Although too big of a change can also compromise the stability of the car, in small amounts, I find it to be an effective adjustment.

When Adjustments Aren’t an Option

Not all cars are created equal in terms of available setup adjustments. While Indy cars and F1 cars offer nearly every imaginable adjustment, many of the lower-level cars only allow changing tire pressures, cambers, and a few other settings. These cars with a more fixed setup often require adapting your driving to the setup instead of the other way around.

One such car is the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car, which was designed by Porsche to have limited adjustability to better highlight driver talent behind the wheel. Both this car and its predecessor on iRacing, the Ruf C-Spec, notably have a bit of oversteer on corner exit. Without traction control, adjustable dampers, or differential settings to dial this out, it’s simply a characteristic you have to deal with.

With no traction control, exit oversteer tends to be a common characteristic of the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car.

This exit oversteer seems to be even more magnified with my slow-in, fast-out driving style, which means I have to be more careful with my throttle application in these cars. For comparison, in a car like the Mercedes AMG GT3, I usually run a high traction control setting and often tune the differential to shift understeer to the corner exit.

Perhaps the best example of adapting your driving style to the setup comes when driving fixed-setup oval cars. These series are hugely popular on iRacing because they don’t require much setup knowledge or time spent under the virtual hood.

A Fixed Setup Fallacy

One common misconception is that fixed setups level the playing field among drivers. In reality, certain setups suit certain driving styles better, and I have first-hand experience with that while racing in the fixed-setup Power Series.

When we raced at Indianapolis a year ago this week, I had a decent enough run to clinch the championship but certainly wasn’t a contender to win. However, when we returned there just a few weeks later during the summer, it was a different story.

While the setup was the same, the weather and track conditions made the cars much tighter around Indy’s flat corners, which are tough enough to negotiate in a heavy stock car as is. Even I — an early braker in the first place — found myself moving by braking points back so I didn’t push straight past my apexes. The cars were undeniably tight, but I adjusted to it and ended up getting the race win.

While my competitors fought a tight setup at Indy, I adapted to it and won the race.

While the setup and my tolerance for its tightness benefitted me on that day, fixed setups also worked against me several times over the years. I always tended to struggle when the car felt floaty through the center and exit of a turn, whether it was due to an overly loose setup or overly high tire pressures.

In general, I was and am a fan of fixed-setup oval series, but I realize that just because the setup is the same for all drivers, it doesn’t mean that no one will have an advantage. I like to think that good oval drivers can adapt their style to any setup, even if it’s not their preference.

What a Driver Wants

So what do drivers prefer in a setup? While different drivers favor certain adjustments over others, I suspect they almost all agree on the ultimate outcome: having a car that will effectively rotate in the center of the corner.

This is true regardless of driving style, whether you’re Dean looking to keep your cornering speeds high or Karl looking to get the car slowed and turned early.  In either case, good rotation maximizes the speed you can carry, and in essence, it means the car is working for you rather than making you fight it through the turns.

I’ve seen the benefits of this first-hand. With three races to go in my first championship-winning season in the Power Series, we visited the newly repaved and reconfigured Phoenix International Raceway for the first time.

Since no one had raced there yet, it was a huge wildcard in the championship fight. And somehow, I managed to drive that track and setup just right so that it perfectly rotated the center of the corner, especially in turns 1 and 2. I managed to win that race by almost 9 seconds, and in a season that was ultimately decided by a tiebreaker, those points gained at Phoenix were vital.

Rotating the center of the corner at Phoenix helped me win my first Power Series championship.

So in this race, how did I manage to make the car do something that most other drivers couldn’t? Am I a better driver than them? That’s doubtful, as in plenty of other races in that series, they outmatched me or we were at least nearly equal on pace.

More likely, it came down to differences in driving styles. I always found myself lifting earlier than most other drivers entering turn 1 at Phoenix, which could’ve been just what that setup called for.

In several return trips to Phoenix, I was never quite able to find the same successful recipe to rotate the center. That just goes to show how tough it is to make driving styles and setups mesh together perfectly, the inability to do so usually resulting in a frustrated driver.

And what’s a race without the sounds of cars revving, crews working, and drivers complaining?

By the 1960s, as racing tires became capable of handling a greater cornering load, clever designers like Colin Chapman began to equip their cars with wings to provide aerodynamic grip and push the cornering speeds higher still.

Since then, those aero devices have found their way onto nearly every race car around the world, with designers routinely exploiting gray areas in the rulebook to add more downforce wherever possible. Even this year, a handful of Formula 1 teams added “T-wings” in front of the rear wings for an extra aerodynamic gain.

Mercedes F1 cars from 1955 (left, by Lothar Spurzem) and 2017 (right, by Morio): spot the difference in downforce.

Depending on your perspective, discovering and harnessing downforce is either a triumph for innovation and fluid dynamics, or a competition-crushing scourge on motorsports that can’t be unlearned or undone.

Trust…

Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme. But I am somewhat wary of downforce, largely because my driving style isn’t well-suited for high-downforce cars. I described one reason in the first post of this series: my early braking is inefficient in cars that can be driven deep into a corner. Another reason has to do with a quirk of downforce itself.

Wings, spoilers, diffusers, and the like don’t do anything when you’re sitting still. They only produce downforce at speed. And as speeds increase, downforce increases by the speed squared. So if you can carry more speed into a corner, the downforce will be much higher, which keeps the car even more planted.

Downforce: the unseen gummy worms that hold our cars to the track. (Image from TotalSim)

While I understand this concept, actually putting it into practice has always been tough for me. During preparations for my first 24-hour race at Spa driving the McLaren MP4-12C, my teammates had to repeatedly talk me into lifting less and carrying more speed through the fast Blanchimont turn since the extra downforce would actually make the car more stable.

At least for me, trusting these unseen factors, even in a racing sim, is akin to blindly falling into the arms of someone behind you. Even if you believe that they’ll catch you, how hard are you actually willing to fall?

…but Verify

To get more insight into driving with downforce, I talked to my friend and teammate Dean Moll, who enjoys driving high-downforce cars and has lots of experience in prototypes and open wheelers. Growing up in Indiana, Dean said the Indy 500 guided his sim racing progression, including both the old Dallara IRL05 and new DW12 Indy cars in iRacing.

Dean started our conversation by assuring me that he’s no expert on driving with downforce, but he’s certainly more of one than I am. As proof, I witnessed him put in one of the greatest drives I’ve ever seen in last year’s Daytona 24 Hours, pushing our Daytona Prototype as hard as he could lap after lap en route to a narrow win.

Dean’s ability to drive deep into the braking zones in the Daytona Prototype helped our team score the win.

That uncanny ability to consistently find the limit under braking is one thing I’ve always struggled with, which is another reason why I’ve generally stuck with a slow-in, fast-out style. But even Dean said it was an acquired skill for him.

“It did not come naturally at first, but my driving style evolved over time to prioritize mid-corner speed,” he told me. “My approach in practice is to keep moving my braking point deeper into the corner while applying the same amount of braking until I can no longer make the corner exit without pushing wide.”

Even outside of a high-downforce car, those same traits show up in Dean’s driving style. Compare each of our fastest laps from the NEO Endurance Series’ 24 Hours of Le Mans race earlier this year driving the Mercedes AMG GT3.

Relative driving lines (top) and speeds, throttle and brake percentages, and steering angles for me (solid blue) and Dean (dashed purple) through the esses at Le Mans. Charts from Virtual Racing School.

Entering the esses, Dean stayed farther to the right than me, allowing him straighten the braking zone. He also used less steering input; by the middle of the corner, my steering angle was 20 degrees greater than his. This approach allowed him to carry about 5 km/hr greater mid-corner speed.

The advantage of my style — the fast out part — kicked in exiting the corner.  I was able to get back to the throttle sooner than him, and his bigger lift off the throttle over the exit kerbs meant I was a bit faster than him. Ultimately, our times through this sector were almost identical, further showing that no one style is always best.

Dean’s Top Tips

One thing that impresses me most about Dean’s driving style is that he’s always working on it. And in his quest to keep his cornering speeds higher, he’s picked up a few bad habits — “not slowing enough to the corner apex and picking up the throttle too quickly”, he said — that he’s trying to correct.

These mainly show up in GT3 cars, which don’t have the same downforce levels as an Indy car and therefore can’t handle that style as well. He said that working on those two areas alone helped him gain almost a second per lap in a recent GT3 race week at Barber Motorsports Park.

Dean also shared a few pointers for getting up to speed in downforce cars.

“You want to run the widest possible arc through the corner to maintain the highest speed possible,” he said. Of course, this was clearly evident in his style compared to mine through the esses at Le Mans.

Dean uses all the track to ensure a smooth line entering the esses at Le Mans.

“Second is braking application,” he told me. “When you first apply the brakes, the car is at speed and will have the highest downforce, so apply maximum pressure. As your speed slows, so does the amount of downforce, so you need to bleed off the brakes correspondingly in order to prevent locking up the tires.”

This approach to the braking zones is a stark contrast to my own braking style, which I described in the previous post.

“This is a little different than other cars where threshold braking is based primarily on weight transfer. The open wheel cars are good for learning this technique as you have the visual cue of seeing the front tire lock up in addition to the feel and sound.”

Aero on Ovals

Just as a certain driving style is more suited to high-downforce road cars, different downforce packages on oval cars also demand specific styles. These differences have come to light in recent years with NASCAR’s changes to the Cup Series aero package, first adding downforce in 2014 and 2015 before removing it in 2016 and 2017.

The virtual representations of these cars in iRacing also received the aero updates, and they certainly affected my ability to perform well. On the blog, I previously described the struggles I had with the Gen6 cars when they had a high-downforce package. It demanded driving the cars deep into the corner and keeping mid-corner speeds higher, neither of which fits my style.

Dean holds a big lead over me and the rest of the field at Kentucky.

Not coincidentally, Dean performed at his best with this high-downforce package, picking up his only Power Series win at Kentucky in early 2016, just before that year’s real-world lower downforce package came to iRacing.

While I struggled in the first few races of that Power Series season, once the aero changes arrived, I was back on my game. In the seven races with the old aero package, my average finish was 6.7. In the ten races with the lower-downforce package, my average finish was 3.7, and that series of strong runs helped propel me to the championship.

That’s a big change, and all because of that strange, invisible force that rewards your faith in it and amplifies your advantage from it.

I still don’t trust it.

An Oval Adjustment

As I mentioned in a previous post, one big decision about the direction of my sim racing path loomed last fall. After my long-time oval racing league home shut down, I faced the choice of finding a new league, running an official oval series, or stepping away from oval racing entirely.

Ultimately, I chose to switch from stock cars to sprint cars and run their official series, which has a small league-like community of brave souls who dare to take on that rocket with a rollcage.

In my first race in the car, I qualified poorly but raced through the field to finish in sixth. My main takeaway from the race was a close side-by-side battle I had with another driver, which I almost doubted was possible given how difficult this car is to drive even with no other cars around.

The next week at Iowa provided more of the same, including an awesome four-way battle for position late in the race. Iowa’s multi-groove surface meant there were options for where to race and pass, and that presented opportunities to make in-race decisions.

I was one of the first drivers to move up to the middle groove, and I passed at least one car that way. However, in the closing laps, I went low to attempt a pass for fourth place and was instead passed by another car running the middle. That put me in sixth for the second straight week, but the awesome and clean racing told me my decision to run in that series was the correct one.

As the season continued, I started finishing in the top five more often than not and I got progressively more comfortable driving and tuning on the car. I still have nowhere near the setup expertise of the top drivers, but that has made racing against and even beating some of them all the more satisfying.

As a rookie in the sprint car series, I finished seventh in points out of 29 people who ran the full season. After my first season in the car, one decision was easy: I wanted to return for another one, hoping for continued improvement and more experience driving a car with high horsepower and low grip in anticipation of the impending arrival of dirt racing.

In addition to running the official series, I was also introduced to a Sunday night sprint car league that plans to run both asphalt and dirt tracks beginning this spring. That means in the span of four months, I’ve gone from being an oval racing nomad to finding a new home with an exciting future driving one of the most challenging but fun cars on iRacing.

Making an outside pass in the sprint car at Iowa.

Finding an Old Favorite

Along with my return to official oval racing last season, I also committed to running a full season in the GT3 road racing series, hoping to improve my racecraft and stay fresh turning both left and right.

The GT3 series is one of the few on iRacing with multiple car makes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. That meant I had a decision to make about which car I wanted to drive.

Historically, I’d always run the McLaren MP4-12C, which is fast but not as nimble as the other cars in the series. For this season, though, I chose the Mercedes AMG GT3: a heavier but more well-rounded car compared to the McLaren that I’d driven a few times since its release last spring.

The first few weeks went fairly well, but each time I drove it, I noticed the same problem: By the middle of the race, the car got really tight in the corners, no matter which adjustments I made.

As I was preparing for a race at one of my favorite tracks, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, I was struggling with the same issue in the Mercedes. So in a mid-season change of course, I decided to switch back to the McLaren.

Despite having not driven it in more than six months, I felt immediately comfortable behind the wheel. After completing some practice laps, I signed up for a race that ended up being my best of the season, and perhaps ever in the GT3 series. After dodging a first-lap incident in one of the tight chicanes, I settled into a close battle with an Audi driver.

We were rarely separated by more than a second, and he kept the pressure on me all race long. In the end, though, I was able to hold him off for a second-place finish and my best points haul of the season. The change of car, it seemed, was another decision well-made.

A McLaren vs. Audi battle for second place in Montreal.

A Pit Maneuver

My other road racing focus in recent months has been the Gathering of Tweakers Endurance Series, or GES: a set of five team-based endurance events, each either three or four hours in length. My trusted teammate Karl and I joined forces to drive one of our favorite cars: the Ruf C-Spec, a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car in disguise that will soon be joined on iRacing by its Stuttgart-built counterpart.

In the first race of the season at Road America, we had good speed and seemed on track for a second-place finish until an unavoidable collision with a lapped car ended our race with just 30 minutes to go.

Facing a big hole in the points, we hoped to rebound in the second round at Imola. Karl qualified in second and was involved in a tight three-way battle for the lead in the opening stint. After I got in the car, I found myself in the middle of that same battle, eventually falling to third place but chasing down the car ahead.

As we neared the end of my stint, we had a decision to make. Each car in our class needed two more pit stops: one full-length stop for tires and fuel plus one short stop for a splash in the tank. Those short stops are generally reserved for the end of races, but Karl had an idea to change things around.

If we made our splash early and kept me in the car, I could run some laps on a clear track without being stuck in that battle for position. We could then make our full-length stop and put him back in the car, hopefully out-pacing the leaders during his final stint and coming out ahead of them once they made their short stops.

When he first suggested it, I was so focused on catching the car ahead of me that my response was something like “I don’t care what we do; you just tell me and I’ll do it”. As I thought about it more, though, it made perfect sense. I had been comfortable and quick on old tires and low fuel, so it stood to reason that I could put in some good laps without worrying about racing anyone.

I was sold, so we put that plan into action. After our final full-length stop, Karl fell back to fourth place in class and the race commentators, unaware of our strategy, seemed to think our race had fallen apart.

However, we knew better. In watching the lap times of the cars ahead of us, it was clear that Karl was catching up, and once they pitted, he had a nearly 12-second lead. The final laps wound down with the gap holding steady, and thanks to a smart and innovative mid-race decision, we managed to bring home the class win.

Karl crosses the finish line to win at Imola.

An Inviting Opportunity

That sort of in-race thinking is a great example of Karl and my shared synergy. We’re usually on the same page during the races, and often, one of us is providing exactly the information that the other person wants, even without him asking for it.

That’s a big reason why we have become such close and successful teammates together. However, we have come to find that we can’t do every race with just the two of us. While our sleep-deprived two-man effort in last year’s 24 Hours of the Nurburgring resulted in a victory, other past attempts at running such long races together have not been so successful.

Heading into the third round of the GES season, we faced another dilemma that our two-person team couldn’t solve. Karl would be out of town for that race, so we needed another driver to fill in for him.

As I started scrolling through the Rolodex of drivers we’d raced against in the past, I got a timely message from another team manager. He asked if Karl and I were mostly running by ourselves, and whether we’d be interested in joining his team.

The first question was easy to answer — yes, we were largely on our own. The second question might have been answered with a “no” in many cases since we mostly enjoyed our independence to race whatever we wanted together, but this particular inquiry came from a team we both respected highly.

We have competed against SRN Motorsports and their drivers for more than four years now, and in that time, we’ve seen a shared emphasis on the endurance part of endurance racing. In fact, they were our main competitors in the Nurburgring race after most other teams crashed out early on.

Still, choosing whether or not to join them would be the most difficult decision of the season.  It didn’t just affect one position or one race.  Rather, it would set the stage for our progression as drivers over the foreseeable future.  This was the most important decision to get right, so Karl and I took time to talk it over before reaching our decision, which was to join SRN.

While it was tough to say goodbye to our old teammates, we were both excited about our new opportunity. And the early dividends look positive. In our first race together, SRN manager Daniel Graulty was solid while filling in for Karl, and we finished in fourth place in the third round of the GES season.

Daniel negotiates lapped traffic in the final hour at Motegi.

However, in a post that’s so far been about mostly good decisions, I should note that our greatest weakness in the race was one bad decision I made. After running the first stint and feeling confident about my abilities on old tires in the previous race, I decided to double-stint my tires, pushing them a full two hours.

Initially, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. But by the final 10 laps of the second stint, the tires were worn and slippery, making the car twitchy and tough to handle. Twice, I either spun or half-spun, which cost us something like 15 seconds in total. At the end of the race, that likely made the difference between us finishing third or fourth.

No, it wasn’t my best decision. But in a season that was otherwise successful because of some good choices, I can live with one bad one. Just please tell my team to stop me and bolt on some fresh tires if I ever decide to try that again.

I’ve written previously about my memorable championship battles in ITSR, and since January of this year, I had been running in their series — including the Sunday night Power Series — three nights per week. Some weeks, those races were the only reason I even turned on my desktop computer, so to have that league suddenly disappear was not only a disappointment, but also a shock to my system.

Admittedly, it was nice to have a break for a few weeks. As fun as iRacing can be, just like any activity done often enough, it’s easy to get burnt out; I was certainly feeling those effects. However, the combination of some time away and a new software build, which included my all-time favorite circuit in Le Mans, motivated me to get back to racing once again.

With no ITSR league to return to, though, I was left searching for something — or, more accurately, somewhere — new to race. After poring over schedules, testing some different cars, and thinking about my own performance in recent months, I decided on a new direction for the new season that begins next week.

My sprint car, prepped and ready for the new season.

A New Twist on Turning Left

On the oval side, I want to remain active to keep my skills sharp, but my options are limited. I could join another league, but most are nearing the end of their seasons. Or I could run in the official iRacing oval series, but in my experience, those races aren’t as clean nor the drivers as respectful as in a league environment.

However, I think I have found an option that gives me the best of both worlds. The sprint car is notoriously tricky to drive — at least as much as you’d expect from an open-wheeled car with half the weight of a stock car but 100 more horsepower.

That means only a handful of drivers dare to tackle that car, so it has a small but apparently friendly community that organizes races two nights per week, which gives the feel of a league.

I tried the sprint car in one of iRacing’s season-ending fun series this week, and despite spinning in two out of my three races, I won my other start and became hooked on driving that car.

Although it won’t be easy to be a rookie in the sprint car series — even veteran drivers struggle to keep the car pointed straight from time to time — I’m looking forward to a new oval challenge. Plus, I imagine that getting more familiar with a low-grip and high-horsepower car will better prepare me for when dirt racing comes to iRacing in the next six months or so.

Testing at the Nurburgring with the Mercedes AMG GT3.

A Road Racing Refresher

Driving so much on the oval side this year meant I hadn’t run as many road races, and it showed. When I competed in an endurance event in July with my teammate Dean, I had good pace and consistency when I was running by myself, but as soon as I caught another car, I’d lock up the brakes, spin off course, or otherwise make mistakes.

I attribute that rusty racecraft to the lack of recent experience with running around other cars on road courses. To get more comfortable in those situations, I have also decided to run full-time in an official road series this season.

There are certainly plenty to choose from. iRacing offers no fewer than 20 road series ranging from the slowest of souped-up street cars to the world’s fastest open-wheelers. I’ve always been a GT driver at heart, which narrowed my options, but still gave me several to sort through.

In this case, the schedule was the biggest deciding factor. The Blancpain Sprint Series, which features GT3-spec cars, runs at all of my favorite tracks this season, from Bathurst to Le Mans to Montreal to… well, you get the point.

A schedule that enticing is hard to pass up, and while the series can have its share of aggressive drivers at times, unlike the sprint car, it’s hugely popular so finding a well-populated race with a competitive field shouldn’t be a problem.

Our team’s Ruf C-Spec, ready for the new endurance season.

My Bread and Butter

The fall and winter have become iRacing’s endurance season, with multiple leagues hosting their own team-based series featuring longer races and driver swaps. These events have quickly become some of my favorites, so I’m excited to get back behind the wheel this season. Like my other series choices, though, I’m going in a slightly different direction this time around.

For the past two years, my teammate Karl and I have competed in the GT classes of the NEO Endurance Series. In that league, we’ve had mixed results; our first season ended with a strong second-place finish in the season finale, but last season was largely a struggle.

This season, we’re heading to NEO’s sister league: the Gathering of Tweakers Endurance Series, or GES. That series is offering one of our favorite cars, the Ruf C-Spec. It’s the same car that Karl and I won with at this year’s 24 Hours of the Nurburgring, so we’re hoping that past success translates to a solid campaign in this series.

We will also be competing with the C-Spec in the Petit Le Mans later this month. That race plus October’s 24 Hours of Le Mans round out the 2016 iRacing World Tour endurance schedule that has already exceeded my wildest expectations.

After winning the 24 Hours of Daytona with the iRacing Today Motorsports team, Karl and I won the 12 Hours of Sebring and 24 Hours of the Nurburgring, then finished third in the 6 Hours of the Glen and second in the 24 Hours of Spa along with our teammates Andy and Bryan.

Those races include some of the toughest stints of driving I have ever done, from pushing hard to take the lead late in the Daytona race to fighting fatigue around the Nordschleife. If I can handle that, I hope I can handle whatever the new season has to offer, be it a horsepower-happy sprint car, the crowded and competitive GT3 fields, or the demands of the enduros to come.