As I was growing up, NASCAR races glowed across my family’s TV screen thirty-some weekends per year. They were standard fare on a Sunday afternoon, like mom’s chicken casserole or dad’s catnaps during the commercials.
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.