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.

No, I’m not the first person to piece together a fantasy racetrack from existing elements. Formula 1 drivers including Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo have endeavored this exercise, collectively combining many of the same components, including Eau Rouge at Spa, the Esses at Suzuka, and the uphill first turn in Austin.

There are even a few real-world circuits that took inspiration from – or directly copied – corners from other tracks. Pocono Raceway designed its three turns after Trenton, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee. Circuit of the Americas has sections modeled after Silverstone, Interlagos, Hockenheim, and Istanbul. And the never-raced Hanoi street circuit drew inspiration from the Nürburgring, Monaco, Sepang and Suzuka.

My own design takes pieces from some of these famous F1 venues, but also pulls from classic North American road courses and global endurance circuits. And ultimately, if someone ever constructed this track either in the real world or the sim world, I’d imagine that sports car and endurance racing — not high-level open-wheeled competition — would be its calling.

The Circuit Stats

This circuit combines 14 sections from different tracks, ranging from straightaways to corners to the elevation changes that make them unique.

The total length adds up to 5.05 miles or 8.13 kilometers. That makes it 16% longer than Spa, the longest current F1 track, and on par with Thunderhill Raceway Park in California, where the nearly 5-mile combined circuit hosts a 25-hour endurance race each December.

From the highest point in turn 8 to the lowest point entering turn 17, the circuit features 124 feet or 38 meters of elevation change. But elevation isn’t all it offers.

Despite its patchwork nature, each of the three sectors includes some similar elements. The first is mostly flat, with corners progressively getting tighter and slower through the stadium-style turn 5. The second sector features most of the undulation, initially climbing and then falling through separate sets of high-speed esses. And the final sector is all about speed, with five separate straightaways that each terminate in a passing zone.

That variability would demand a compromise in car setup and would challenge drivers through the full range of their skill sets, along with their physical conditioning.

It’s a mental test as well, since unlike modern circuits, you won’t find acres of paved runoff surrounding this track. Instead, errant cars may grind to a halt in gravel traps, or be punished even worse by the barriers that border many corners. 

That makes aggression a risk while patience and consistency are rewarded. And given my own measured driving style and strength in endurance events, I don’t think my dream circuit could have it any other way.

Start/Finish to Turn 1 – from Road America

Section Length: 0.38 miles/0.60 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: -2 feet

A lap starts on my favorite frontstretch in motorsports. While we don’t make the gravity-defying uphill climb to the start/finish line at Road America, we begin at the crest of the hill and make a nearly 2,000-foot run down to the first corner.

Its trickiness stems from its simplicity. There are no kinks in the road, bumps in the braking zone, or Tilke-esque widening of the track to enable divebombs up the inside. Instead, it’s a straight shot into a bottleneck corner, and you can see it coming from nearly half a mile away.

That acts to build anticipation, whether you’re on a hot lap preparing for the first make-or-break corner, or in a side-by-side battle waiting to see who brakes later.

My own experience at Road America includes draft battles and breakaways in the Spec Racer Ford. The high speeds down the frontstretch at my circuit would promote a similar sort of tactical racing, culminating with the flat but fast entry to turn 1.

Turn 1 Apex to Exit – from Montreal turn 7

Section Length: 0.28 miles/0.45 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +11 feet

While turn 1 at Road America opens up a bit on exit, at my track, it keeps getting tighter. To enable that, I have stamped it with the exit of the second chicane at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

It’s a deceivingly long, winding corner, and for over-eager drivers who track out too early, they’ll find an unpleasant surprise awaiting them just past the exit kerbing, as described by former F1 driver and current Sky Sports commentator Anthony Davidson:

“But a driver must still be careful here because there’s a wall on the outside of Seven and we’ve seen in the past how running wide… can have the knock-on effect of putting a car either close to or into the wall.”

For dueling drivers, this turn creates an obvious pressure point and potentially for excitement. Holding the outside line puts you closer to the wall on exit but could help carry more speed down the following waterfront short chute.

Meanwhile, going fast enough up the inside could help you complete a pass by mid-corner, but if you’re not fully in front, you’ll have to check your speed and watch for wheelspin as a side-by-side fight continues into the next section.

Turns 2 and 3 – from Sebring turns 12 and 13 (Tower)

Section Length: 0.36 miles/0.57 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: -5 feet

Moving out of the claustrophobic armco-lined straight, the track now opens up in my favorite sequence of corners from one of my favorite endurance racing circuits, the Sebring International Raceway.

We begin with the wide, fast turn-12 kink. Given the lack of braking required here, it barely qualifies as a corner, and yet in some situations, it can be even more important than the turn that follows.

When defending a position, holding a middle to inside line can cut off any passing opportunities for the driver behind by forcing them on the longer, marble-littered outside line.

When attempting a pass, making an early move up the inside of Sebring’s turn 12 can set up a braking-zone dive into turn 13.

And when faster-class traffic approaches through this section, the same car positioning rules apply to averting or facilitating a pass.

Turn 13, or Tower corner, has the sort of uninspiring blueprint you’d expect of a 90-degree turn plucked from a flat airport circuit, but in practice, it’s a great challenge behind the wheel.

The raised inside kerbing limits how much you can cut the corner. Its profile and the straight that follows demand a later apex, which means driving in deep and turning in late. And the flat outside exit kerbs are flanked by grass and dirt, which gives limited room for running wide.

Turn 4 – from old Silverstone turn 13 (Bridge)

Section Length: 0.19 miles/0.31 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +5 feet

Consider this corner an act of altruism, righting a wrong in the recent history of race track renovation. When Silverstone was reconfigured in 2010, the technical new infield layout bypassed one of the circuit’s most iconic sections at Bridge corner.

At this airfield circuit, it was a rare corner with elevation, as the track exited the Abbey chicane, then dove downhill under the namesake roadway bridge before climbing on exit.

For bold drivers, it presented a passing opportunity, as I found during a three-hour Blancpain Endurance Series race in 2015. On the final lap, I made a move through Bridge to get by a fuel-starved BMW and steal a twelfth-place finish in our highly competitive split.

Perhaps that sort of move was a fulfillment of Martin Brundle’s prophesy about the corner when it was added to the circuit in 1991:

“It looks like an enormously quick corner, slightly banked as well; that’s where I’m going to buy a ticket for when I come and watch! There’ll be a few brave souls trying to overtake on the way in, which will be interesting, and if you get it right on the way out you should be able to overtake into the next left-hander.”

While Bridge’s place on the Silverstone grand prix layout lasted only two decades, it will live on at my circuit. And Brundle would be proud, as my Bridge replica exits into a grandstand-lined section where fans can watch those overtakes happen.

Turn 5 – from Hockenheim turn 12 (Sachs-Kurve)

Section Length: 0.15 miles/0.24 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +3 feet

The Hockenheimring has seen its own changes over the years, notably neutering the long straightways that ran through the forests and replacing them with much slower chicanes and hairpins.

But one element of the old circuit remains: the stadium section near the end of the lap that wraps around the unique turn 12.

Even driving old F1 video games as a kid, it was a corner in which I felt at home. As a slightly banked left-hander, it could have been taken from the short tracks at Martinsville or Hickory, rather than resting in the Rhineland thousands of miles away.

When Hockenheim landed on iRacing last year, I found equal comfort in this corner. Searching for my first official-series victory in more than two years, I used a last-lap pass through turn 12 to take the lead and the win in a Porsche Cup race.

In that case, it was a corner of opportunity, but it can also be a corner of misfortune. It’s tempting to overdrive the entry and take advantage of the banking support, but pushing too hard can still send your car wide, as Sebastian Vettel found while leading the 2018 German Grand Prix.

Add in the expectant gazes from thousands of fans seated around the hairpin, and it’s simply a must-have on my own dream circuit.

Turns 6 and 7 – from the Nürburgring turns 9 and 10 (Michael-Schumacher-S)

Section Length: 0.26 miles/0.42 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +91 feet

As the first sector ends and the second begins, we start our uphill climb with a copy of the Nürburgring’s Schumacher S.

The quick left-right sequence may be trivially flat-out for modern Formula 1 machinery, but in a GT car, it’s still a daring thrill that requires minimal braking, precise turning, and a bit of bravery even in a sim to carry speed over the kerbs as the track crests 91 feet higher than where this section began.

Along with the excitement of these climbing corners, I include this section because I’ve always been pretty good at it. When my teammate Karl and I were preparing for a league endurance race in the temperamental Ruf C-Spec a few years ago, I was a half-tenth or more faster in this section, even if I lost time elsewhere in the lap.

In that case, I was braking earlier but getting back to the throttle sooner and carrying up to 4.4 km/hr more speed off the corner and down the short straightaway that followed.

It’s an approach that required confidence in throttle application and a steady wheel, since accelerating too soon could send the back wheels sliding or the car careening off the road entirely.

But for a complex named after the legendary Michael Schumacher, would you expect it should require anything but precision?

Turn 8 – from VIR turn 10 (South Bend)

Section Length: 0.16 miles/0.26 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: -7 feet

This is the lone corner on my dream circuit that I’ve actually driven in real life, and I can confirm that it does drive like a dream.

The final turn of the Climbing Esses sequence, the road rises to a crest – and my circuit’s highest point – mid-corner before falling away on exit. Driving in too deep or tracking out too wide is almost always punished with a trip through the grass.

My first encounter with this corner came at the Bertil Roos Racing School, which my dad and I attended in June 2007. Our instructors had advised making a moderate lift on entry here, and while watching early groups of drivers on track, I saw several run wide, which gave me a healthy respect for this challenging corner.

After taking to the track myself, I quickly got the hang of it, and by our second session of the day, I was attacking it full-throttle almost every lap. While that’s probably no great feat in those underpowered cars, for my first time driving any car on a real racing circuit, it felt like a nice accomplishment to muster the courage to keep my foot to the floorboard through that fairly blind corner.

My dad and I returned to VIR nine years later, this time for charity laps in my Honda S2000. As I previously wrote, that paced session felt more like an open track for hot-lapping, and my sports car felt especially at home through the Climbing Esses.

I’ll take those experiences as a sign of confidence and a stamp of approval. South Bend, welcome to my fantasy circuit.

Turn 9 – from the Nordschleife (Aremberg)

Section Length: 0.27 miles/0.44 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: -51 feet

We’re back to Germany for the next corner, and this time, it’s taken from the longest circuit of them all: the Green Hell, or the Nürburgring Nordschleife.

Simply learning that track and its 154 corners took me several weeks, and while initially orienting myself, Aremberg corner – at the northwestern edge of the circuit – served as a useful reference point.

It was also one of the first corners through which I felt comfortable driving. Like Hockenheim’s stadium hairpin, perhaps the camber to the road suited my oval-racing background, even if Aremberg is turning right instead of left.

It’s a tricky turn for sure, with the road falling away throughout the corner, and any excess speed not easily scrubbed off without running into the gravel trap or the outside wall.

My approach has always been to take a wider entry, then fade to the inside while letting the banking support the car and guide it through to the downhill exit.

With a Nürburgring 24 Hour class win to my name, it seems I’ve done something right at Aremberg, and this fun corner deserves a spot on my circuit.

Turns 10 and 11 – from Road Atlanta turns 4 and 5 (The Esses)

Section Length: 0.42 miles/0.68 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +9 feet

Exiting my Aremberg copy, the descent continues through Road Atlanta’s Esses. The overall Road Atlanta circuit may just surpass Sebring as my favorite for multi-class racing, and one big reason is this section, where well-timed passes are possible, but patience is often a virtue for faster cars.

This is a roller coaster-like set of corners that I’d love to try in real life sometime. Each turn is tighter than the one before it, beginning with a gentle left-hander, followed by a plunging reversal to the right, then a subtle left-right slither as the road begins to rise up again.

Negotiating this sequence so far is generally possible full-throttle, assuming you adhere to the optimal line and don’t get guided astray by an over-optimistic prototype or – as I found during the closing hours of last year’s Petit Le Mans – a lack of illumination that sent me a few feet off line.

But the hardest part of this section awaits at the very end: a sudden, uphill jog to the left that demands carrying as much speed as possible to connect the esses with the straightaway that follows. The ample exit kerbing is tempting to use, but it can easily cause a car to bottom out and go sliding into the outside wall, or back across the track in front of traffic.

Because of that risk, successfully getting through this corner hundreds of times in an endurance race often requires a bit of caution, or pushing to only 90 or 95% of the limit. But qualifying here means leaving nothing on the table, and that makes this section especially exciting.

In fact, my self-described best drive ever was during a qualifying session for the NEO Endurance Series’ season-one finale. During my final run, with a bit of extra downforce onboard to better negotiate these snaking corners, I gained time through The Esses and carried it through the rest of the lap to land in fifth place on the starting grid.

It’s the only time I can remember trembling after getting out of a virtual car, having pushed as hard as I could to log a fast lap. Including this section from Road Atlanta on my own circuit will make sure that lap, and that feeling, will never be forgotten.

Turn 12 – from Belle Isle turn 3

Section Length: 0.35 miles/0.57 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: 0 feet

Having completed the undulating second sector, hopefully with the car still in one piece, we now begin the track’s long, fast final sector. It starts with a street circuit feeling, taken from Detroit’s Belle Isle course.

The bumpy, wall-lined exit of Belle Isle’s turn 2 has caught plenty of drivers – even in pace cars – by surprise over the years. Forgivingly, my circuit will join just past that trouble spot on the straightaway down to turn 3. But the bumps aren’t finished yet.

They pick up again on the approach to turn 3, and picking the right braking point using the markerboards on the fence can be challenging while your car is bouncing over the bumps.

In addition, the ideal entry to this corner requires keeping your car as far left as possible, often millimeters away from brushing the concrete wall.

Getting through the turn means taking a generous amount of the inside kerbing and using the narrow exit kerbs without running too wide into the grass – or the wall.

The long straightaway leading up to it also makes this turn a passing opportunity, but spotting your braking point while racing side-by-side with another car adds to the challenge.

My iRacing career includes two visits to this venue: first in the Formula Renault 2.0, then in the Porsche Cup series, which included a pass around the outside of turn 3. Both of those experiences left me wanting more from Belle Isle, so I’ll take a piece of it – bumps, walls, and all – for my dream circuit.

Turn 13 – from Le Mans (Arnage)

Section Length: 0.58 miles/0.93 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: -10 feet

The Circuit de la Sarthe in Le Mans, France, is famous for its long straightaways and fast, sweeping corners. But for my circuit, I chose one of Le Mans’ slowest turns, which is also one of the most important, both on the original circuit and on mine.

The section including Indianapolis and Arnage contains three corners, each slower than the one before it. First, there’s the high-speed kink leading into a braking zone. Then comes the banked Indianapolis corner. Finally is the tight right-hander called Arnage.

It’s one of the oldest corners at Le Mans, dating back to the 1921 layout with few changes since then. One big reason for its historical stability is the presence of a house just outside the corner that has limited any modifications, such as adding runoff areas.

That changed slightly in 2012, when a gravel trap was added and the outside wall was pushed back by a few feet, but Arnage still leaves little room for error. Take it from five-time Le Mans class winner Oliver Gavin:

“Arnage is the most frustrating corner on the circuit. It’s very slippery, very slow, and you feel that the car has almost come to a stop because you’ve been going so fast on the rest of the track. You can lose a lot of time in Arnage, and drivers frequently go off there. Unless you maintain 100 percent concentration, it’s very easy to make a big mistake in Arnage at some point in the race.”

Adding to the demands of Arnage is the long straightaway that follows, taking public roads all the way to the Porsche Curves. My circuit will detour before that point, but getting a good run off this slow, slippery turn will still be imperative.

Turns 14 to 16 – from Bathurst turn 20 to 22 (The Chase)

Section Length: 0.53 miles/0.85 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: -64 feet

My perfect circuit wouldn’t be complete without taking a piece of my favorite real-world track, the Mount Panorama Circuit in Bathurst, Australia. It’s probably no surprise that my own design shares several similarities with Bathurst, including its straightaways connected by slow corners, wall-lined sections with little runoff, and hilltop esses.

Frankly, I could have included almost any of Bathurst’s turns and had them fit with my circuit’s character, but I eventually settled on the section called The Chase, largely to serve a similar purpose on my own track: to break up a long straightaway with something more exciting than a basic chicane.

Funny enough, The Chase was viewed as exactly that when it was first added in 1987: “As for the chicane – if you want to call it that,” said Formula 1 champion Denny Hulme, “I wished it was never there.”

In the 35 years since then, it has proven its worth as a test of skill, as a passing opportunity, and even as a launching ramp for some incredible crashes.

While carnage on the mountain is often unavoidable when racing at Bathurst, I’ve always prided myself in being consistent and clean through The Chase, whether that was grinding to 5,000 road iRating using passes around the outside, pushing the limits in an eighth-place qualifying run for the 2019 Bathurst 1000, or clawing back lost positions in this year’s Bathurst 12 Hour.

And it’s one corner that neither Karl nor I can brag about being faster than the other. During our extended final practice session for this year’s 12-hour race, our average fast laps were exactly tied through The Chase section, down to the thousandth of a second.

That’s surely a sign of a couple of well-practiced and well-acquainted drivers with Australia’s fastest chicane.

Turn 17 – from Watkins Glen turn 10

Section Length: 0.23 miles/0.37 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +10 feet

I often describe Watkins Glen as my first favorite road course, since in the early NASCAR Racing games, it’s the first one I took the time to learn and love.

While tracks like Montreal, Road Atlanta, and Bathurst later supplanted it atop my list, Watkins Glen is still a special circuit to me.

In part, that’s because of my own sim racing success there, including five wins in six POWER Series events. During those league races over the years, Watkins Glen became the only track where I was disappointed by anything less than a win.

In addition, it’s a fast track with a great flow, even for downforce-limited stock cars and sports cars. Patrick Long notes that in a GT3 Porsche, you need to keep some throttle application throughout the entire corner.

The penultimate corner on my own circuit is also the next-to-last in a lap around Watkins Glen. The fast left-hander at turn 10 includes a bit of camber mid-corner that flattens out on exit.

While the modern Watkins Glen circuit has generous paved runoff beyond the kerbing, a tidy exit here is important for the short straightway – and the final corner – that follows.

Turn 18 – from Monza’s turn 11 (Parabolica)

Section Length: 0.90 miles/1.45 kilometers
Net Elevation Change: +10 feet

Closing out my fast final sector is a clone of Monza’s Parabolica – a seemingly never-ending right-hander that unwinds onto my track’s longest straightaway.

As with many of my selections, one reason for choosing this corner was my own success here. In a Jetta draft battle against a faster opponent, it was the one corner where I had an advantage, helping me set up a late pass for the win and defend my position on the final lap.

It’s also a great way to end a lap: with a final legitimate passing opportunity that turns into a chance for a crossover on corner exit. It’s no coincidence that the closest finish in Formula 1 history happened at Monza. That 1971 result was facilitated by Peter Gethin’s pass into – and defense out of – Parabolica.

On my circuit, Parabolica is only the start of this final section. It continues down most of the Monza frontstretch, followed by the second half of Road America’s main straightaway. All together, that’s nearly a mile of flat-out driving from the final corner all the way to turn 1.

When locked in a battle, that would present plenty of time to draft, pass, and potentially defend against a re-pass attempt by an opponent. And for multi-class racing, it would give a Daytona-like run of on-throttle time to let faster cars pass en masse.

One thing is for sure, though: you better get Parabolica right, or you’ll have a long time to think about your mistake, probably while watching other cars speed past you down the frontstretch.

A Lap Around

A simulated onboard lap shows each of these 14 sections in their native habitats, but with a bit of editing magic, you can see how they might flow together, from the flat first sector through the rolling hills that follow to the high-speed ending.

A typical lap in a GT3 car would time in at around 2 minutes 50 seconds, with an average speed of about 107 miles per hour or 172 kilometers per hour.  That’s somewhere in between the chicane-punctuated lap around Montreal and a speedier circuit of Road America – a fitting balance given the nature of my circuit, and the inspiration behind its design.

I’m sure I’ll never have the money or resources to literally move a mountain and build this track in the real world, and barring the release of a user-friendly track editor for iRacing, I doubt I’ll ever try it in the virtual world either.

But with many laps of experience through each of its sections, and plenty of great memories associated with them, I can imagine what it might be like to drive my perfect circuit — if only in my dreams.

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.

It can be your best friend or your worst enemy, and sometimes both within the same race.

It can make or break a strategy. It can show how nail-bitingly close or frustratingly far you came from that next position or, in a championship series, a few more valuable points.

And unlike even the closest opponent or fastest prototype coming up to lap you, time is always there. Always ticking. Always simultaneously staring you right in the face and breathing down your neck.

The best endurance drivers are those who can withstand the test of time, being patient enough, fast enough, and consistent enough to survive and succeed.

Drivers who fail often fall victim to their own mistakes — pushing too hard, for too long, or in the wrong places — or are unwittingly caught up in the mistakes of others. Over time, that sort of bad luck is bound to plague everyone.

In my first endurance racing season, though, it seemed that bad luck was unfairly targeting me and my KRT Motorsport team. In the first four races of the NEO Endurance Series, we gave up positions and points due to computer problems, software glitches in iRacing’s then-nascent driver swap code, and penalties. Our frustrations could have been measured by the time lost to those issues.

Despite having a decent pace and comfort behind the wheel of our Ruf C-Spec, we didn’t have the results to show for it. Our best finish was fifth in the season opener at Sebring, and that came after a faulty modem caused me to lose connection to the server on the first lap of my first stint.

Entering the final race of the season, we were outside the top eight in points — a critical cutoff that determined whether teams would automatically qualify for the following season or have to endure the difficult pre-qualifying format — and quickly running out of time to do anything about it.

My teammate Karl and I knew it would practically take an all-or-nothing effort in the finale at Road Atlanta, with at least a podium as well as some bad luck for our closest competitors.

Determined to uphold our part of that equation and let the rest of the chips fall where they may, we made the most of our last chance and finished with a result better than we ever expected.

Like capturing time in a bottle, it’s a come-from-behind story I won’t soon forget. This is the greatest drive of my sim racing career.

1. NEO Endurance Series at Road Atlanta – March 15, 2015

Time offers a chance for recovery. For preparation. But only if you use it wisely.

All too often in my years of endurance racing, I’ve let that time slip away. Sometimes, I’ve kept my racing schedule too full, balancing multiple leagues and driving several different cars that were tough to consistently jump between.

That was the case in NEO season 1, as I was running in that championship and another, the Masters of Endurance Series, on top of my ongoing oval racing career. With so much going on, time to practice simply slipped away.

In other cases, I’ve eschewed the workman-like task of practice for more glamorous official races or simply taking a break from the sometimes-draining world of sim racing.

Whatever the case, I’m usually never able to meet my pre-race practice goals, whether it’s testing and tweaking setups in different weather conditions, running multiple full stints on a dynamic track, or getting experience in traffic.

I wouldn’t make the same mistake leading into the season finale. Or, rather, I couldn’t. Our team’s fate depended on me being more prepared for this race than any I’d run all season, or perhaps in my entire sim racing career.

It would take an aggressive approach, but Karl and I were up to the challenge. In the days after the previous round, he “vow[ed] to double [his] preparations for that race”.

It wasn’t as simple as getting a setup ready. A new iRacing build would drop the week before the race, and Karl and I debated just how much work we should put in beforehand in case the C-Spec received major changes.

He argued that we should at least get a basic setup ready, and I’m glad he did, because when the build arrived and the physics updates were fairly minor, we only needed to make a few tweaks. Plus, we had both put in a dozens or even hundreds of laps around the track by then, so it certainly wasn’t a waste of time.

The week before a NEO race always feels a bit like cramming for a final exam, and in most cases, I constantly worry I haven’t done enough preparation and I’ll be embarrassed by my own performance compared to my competitors.

The lead-up to the Road Atlanta race was still busy, but in this case, Karl and I both felt prepared. We had done enough testing to have a solid handle on our pit and fuel strategy — something that we realized other teams obviously hadn’t done during the race itself.

We had also both put in several long runs, and Karl had staked out our competitors occupying that eighth-place position in the standings — one spot ahead of us — to see how we fared.

“I must say, we are looking good,” he said, noting their slower pace and frequent practice crashes. “All we need is to not screw up and beating them shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”

But just beating one team probably wouldn’t be enough. Another team behind us in the standings brought in a ringer for the race — a driver who wasn’t on their team but was one of the top GT drivers on the iRacing service. With him in the car, they could easily leapfrog us in points.

So we kept preparing and kept tuning. On the Thursday night before the race, we were debating the most minor damper changes in search of the last bit of mid-corner rotation and on-throttle stability.

It’s the most prepared I’ve ever felt for a race, and it showed in our pace. We were lapping within a tenth of each other, so it seemed we were getting the most out of the setup.

“I hope that means we’re both running at a good pro driver pace,” I commented.

We wouldn’t know for sure until the race weekend began and it was time to perform.

Qualifying is the ultimate test of time. It’s a race against the clock that doesn’t single-handedly decide your fate but can do an awful lot to influence it.

We had been consistent mid-pack qualifiers all season, but that wouldn’t be good enough in this race. At the short Road Atlanta circuit, the threat of an incident would be greatest in the middle of the field. Getting ahead of any potential carnage, as well as a few of our challengers, would help our chances of surviving, if not succeeding.

The first NEO season allocated an hour for each class to qualify on Saturday, and with so much time available and a mostly empty track to run on, it took a nearly perfect lap to post a top time.

Throughout the session at Road Atlanta, Karl and I took turns behind the wheel. Entering the final 30 minutes, he had recorded a time that was good enough for sixth place, but we both felt there was more pace in the car.

For my final run, I made a seemingly unorthodox setup adjustment. I added a click of wing to the car, figuring it could help find enough speed in the twisty first part of the lap to offset any losses down the two long straightaways.

Making use of that extra downforce would require pushing harder than I had in all of my practice runs and not making a single mistake. Halfway through my lap, I knew I was on pace to set a good time, and coming through the final chicane, I was physically trembling.

I crossed the line 0.118 seconds quicker than Karl’s best lap, moving us up to fifth on the grid — a position that held up in the closing minutes of qualifying while I was still shaking from my pressure-packed performance.

It wasn’t enough to match the alien-like pace of the top teams, but as a mere mortal sim racer, it was a timely performance that may be the best single lap I’ve ever driven. However, Karl and I both knew it would take six hours of equally mistake-free driving on Sunday before our fate would be secured.

Race day was all about making the best use of our time: going as fast as possible, limiting our losses in traffic, and spending as little time as possible on pit road.

We felt good about the former and the latter. We were both comfortable and quick with our setup, and we had a straightforward plan for a seven-stop race, figuring that saving enough fuel to make it on six wasn’t worth the risk.

But our other challenge, and potentially a make-or-break element of the race, would be traffic. At this track, prototypes would come through early and often, and we knew many drivers wouldn’t be too patient with the slower C-Specs through the narrow esses.

Staying as close to the front as possible would be crucial, and Karl wasted no time moving up even more at the start of the race. As we took the green flag, he made a pass for fourth, and once faster traffic arrived, the gap behind us kept growing.

As a crew chief, spotter, and spectator, time seemed to pass both satisfyingly quickly due to the constant action on track and excruciatingly slowly since there was still so much time — and so many encounters in traffic, especially for me — remaining in the race.

After Karl’s hectic single stint to start, it was my turn to get behind the wheel for a double. With more than ten seconds separating us from the cars in front of and behind us, I didn’t drop into a close battle, so my main job was to hold position.

It wouldn’t be easy, as the car behind us — fielded by our current team, SRN Motorsports — had finished on the podium multiple times that season, and their fastest driver Steve was still driving.

Today, he’s routinely a half-second faster than me even on my best days, but in that Road Atlanta race, I managed to match or even exceed his lap times, slightly increasing our gap to 15 seconds before the next round of pit stops.

Even with our stellar pace, it seemed that catching any of the top three teams would be tough. However, when Karl got back in, we caught a break. The same team ahead of us who employed a GT ringer for this race also had a slower driver in their lineup, and making matters worse for him, they inexplicably asked him to start saving fuel midway through his first stint.

Consistently lapping a second quicker than him, Karl ate up his advantage and passed him just shy of the race’s halfway point.

We were in podium position, but it was far from finished.

Our biggest scare of the race came 12 laps later. Karl was caught behind a slower C-Spec, and the class leader was quickly closing in on him. In the slow-speed turn 7 leading onto the backstretch, we got a bump from behind, and that was only the warning shot.

At the end of the straightaway, Karl ran a bit wide to avoid a collision ahead, and instead, he got divebombed by the leader in a move that driver later admitted was overly ambitious and borne out of frustration with being stuck in traffic — one of those all-too-frequent endurance racing deal-breakers.

Despite the shot across our port side, our ship was still sailing smoothly. Karl found his pace again, and to help our cause, the eighth-place team in the standings crashed while racing for position. Karl’s observation of them from practice felt prophetic, and it was certainly profitable for us.

Feeling more optimistic as Karl finished his double stint, I got back in the car for what ended up being the run to the checkered flag.

Those final three stints taking up two hours and change were my best of the race, and perhaps my best ever. I was matching Karl’s pace, but it didn’t feel like I was pushing. Instead, it seemed effortless. My practice and preparation had truly paid off.

Traffic was still stressful at times, but by the end, I felt like I had even mastered that aspect — at least enough to make in-race jokes about the same purple prototype who consistently got stuck following me through the esses.

As in my first two stints, I didn’t face any close battles, but I didn’t need any either. Our position had been earned through six hours of solid driving at the expense of other teams’ inconsistent pace and strategic missteps.

We were aided by a few on-track incidents as well, the most consequential of which came with an hour to go. The second-place team was twelve seconds ahead and I was only slowly gaining on them, but when they spun all by themselves out of turn 7 and nosed into the wall, that gap suddenly vanished.

That made the final hour of the race feel like one big victory lap, even though we were only in second. That’s not to say I let up on my pace. In fact, I ran one of my fastest laps of the race with just three laps to go.

But driving that quickly never felt risky. Our car was connected to the road, and Karl and I both had so much confidence that we never worried either of us would endanger our chances.

Our six hours of racing — the business-like approach at the start, the mid-race scare followed by the realization that things were working out for us, and the jubilation in the final stints — was all building to the moment we crossed the finish line.

As the clock ran out, it was as if time stood still.

We were second in the race and fifth in the standings, wildly exceeding even our most optimistic expectations.

In the minutes after the checkered flag waved, Karl and I couldn’t quite find the words to express our emotions. Those came days later.

“I would say everything went exactly to plan, but I never planned or dreamed of running as well as we did!” I told him.

“I think this was our best race in terms of preparation, planning, and execution, but I couldn’t have imagined anything like a second place,” he said, reflecting my own amazement.

“I’m really happy that we managed to stumble over each other in the vastness of cyberspace,” he added, also echoing my gratefulness toward a talented teammate who made this moment happen.

In a season and an endurance career that had started with so much frustration, we had finally broken through with a good result, and we saved our best for last.

Like endurance racing itself, it was about time.

But there’s another sort of reset button that drivers may sometimes consider using, and it’s a much more difficult decision to make. It’s sort of a mental reset — a change in your approach or even your career path to try to turn things around.

I’ve written about this before. In “How to Dump a Slump”, I talked about recovering from a stretch of bad races to regain confidence and rediscover the fun factor.

Early in my endurance racing career, I had to make a similar change. In season 2 of the NEO Endurance Series, my teammate Karl Modig and I found ourselves struggling to come to grips with the Ford GT. It wasn’t intuitive to set up, I never got the hang of driving it, and we lacked speed compared to our competitors.

The next fall, we had a choice to make. We could return to NEO and drive a GT1 or GT3 car — if we even qualified for the season — or we could take a step down the endurance ladder in an effort to reset our competitive focus and return to a car we enjoyed.

So we entered into NEO’s feeder championship — the Gathering of Tweakers Endurance Series, or GES — in the Ruf C-Spec. It was one of the first cars we ever raced together, and a personal favorite of our’s among the iRacing stable.

Entering the season, we hoped to be competitive, but didn’t expect to be contenders for victories or the championship given the talented teams and drivers who would join us in the class. Our also-ran experience in the Ford didn’t help our attitudes either, I’m sure.

In the first race at Road America, we were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves battling inside the top five all afternoon. Even amid some of the closest wheel-to-wheel endurance racing we’d ever experienced, we both felt right at home. It was a fast recovery from a season of struggles.

In the final hour, Karl had settled into a solid second place, eight seconds behind the leader and nine seconds ahead of third place. We were on track for a strong start to the season.

Then disaster struck.

The last-place C-Spec team spun in Canada Corner just ahead of Karl, and he had nowhere to go to avoid it. Our pristine car was suddenly a prune, dented and undriveable. From the front of the field to the back with one wrong turn of the wheel — and not even our own.

Was it time to hit the reset button again?

What followed was the second-best drive of my sim racing career.

2. GES at Imola – November 12, 2016

The Road America race proved to be a double-edged sword. It showed we had the speed and skill to contend for good finishes and potentially the championship — or at least a top-three overall finish and an entry into NEO’s season-ending 24 Hours of Le Mans — but all that newly gained hope was ripped away in a split second.

Despite our increasing desperation, there was no need for a drastic change. Instead of adjusting our approach, Karl and I decided to stick with what worked for us at Road America.

We put in several weeks of practice, and while we never had our setup completely dialed in — we both felt it was a bit unstable in a few corners — we were comfortable, and more importantly in this competitive season, we were both quick.

While most C-Spec teams in GES had at least one slower driver in their lineups, Karl and I had a very similar pace. Unlike in some of our other endurances races together, such as the GT Endurance Series qualifiers in the McLaren where I felt like a true backup driver in most races, I never felt like a liability when driving the C-Spec.

The night before the race, Karl accurately assessed our situation: I think that we’re somewhere around where we were at Road America; not outright quickest, but only a few tenths off the quickest guys and quicker than most second drivers.

True to that form, we picked up right where we left off in the previous race. Karl qualified in second and was part of an equally competitive lead battle from the drop of the green flag.

The three-way fight often looked more like the final laps of a sprint race than the opening laps of a three-hour endurance event. We clearly had the speed to contend for the win, but with such closely matched competition, it would take something special to give ourselves an advantage.

After a single stint to open the race, Karl handed the car over to me, and I picked up where he left off. The racing was still close, although that’s not to say my driving — or anyone’s — was perfect.

All of us occasionally pushed a bit too hard and drove off track, especially through the Acque Minerale section, which has a high-speed right-hand entry that overlaps with a short braking zone. In the C-Spec, it was a difficult combination to get right, especially in the heat of a battle.

As my first stint continued, the leader — also the fastest driver for the eventual series champions — slowly began to pull away while I was stuck in a back-and-forth fight for second but unable to secure the position. As Karl recalled recently, I was “quite frustrated” with them, and “they had a slightly quicker car in a straight line so we were really quite stuck.”

At that point, we began to consider our strategy, which was far from settled entering the race. We only knew that every team would need to make three full fuel runs and take a splash for a short stint at some point.

Sticking with our Road America approach, we had planned on alternating single-stints to start and having whoever felt better driving the final full stint and taking the splash for a run to the finish.

But maybe we could try something different. All throughout practice, I had been comfortable and quick on old tires. Plus, if we took our short stint earlier, we could fill the car up and put Karl in for the finish, ideally with clear track ahead of him.

So after a lap of back-and-forth battling for second place, Karl called me into the pits and set me free for ten laps on worn tires and low fuel. It was the right call, as I channeled my frustration into focus and ran my fastest lap of the race on 33-lap-old tires.

It was also an unorthodox move that seemed to confuse the broadcast commentators, who had watched us fall from the lead (after our opponents had made their last full-fuel stop but before we’d taken our’s) to the back of the top five.

It’s a bit of a funny one, this one, because they have kept on leading at spells in this race, but now they’re 39, 40 seconds behind the GTC leaders.

They chalked up our late-race struggles to Karl’s discomfort behind the wheel — a laughable assumption given the quick lap times he was turning. In fact, he was consistently a half-second to a second per lap quicker than our two erstwhile competitors, who both had their second drivers in by that point.

Once they made their final stops for a splash of fuel, we found ourselves with a 15-second lead and a suddenly stress-free run to the finish.

“I had actually not expected it to work quite as well,” Karl remembers about our strategy.

Neither did the commentators, who suddenly pieced together how our race had roller-coastered about.

You remember that we were talking about KRT perhaps having a bad day after what was a good start of the race? Well, it seems like they just had a short fill during their second stop, and that’s why they were so far behind.

Now that all the pit stops have been playing out, guess who’s in the lead? KRT Motorsport.

It shows, what do we know?!

Looking back, we’re perhaps the proudest that we even fooled our competitors, finding an edge in an otherwise incredibly close race and start to the season.

One of them was downright dumbfounded in his post-race interview.

At the end, honestly, we did not expect to come second, but KRT managed to somehow out-strategy us there, so we’ve got to hand it to them.

I couldn’t help but hand it to myself, either. It was a special drive for several reasons.

I had speed, and while not quite up to Karl’s pace, I was the fifth-fastest C-Spec driver based best 10-lap average lap times.

I pushed hard in the heat of a battle and handled the pressure without losing my cool or losing control of the car.

And I didn’t just adjust to our strategy, which wasn’t set until mid-race. I thrived in that situation, running quick laps when I needed to on tires that weren’t at their finest to put us in a position to win.

While Karl put in the bulk of our work, and our fastest laps, in the race, he was also quick to acknowledge my contribution.

“The fact that you didn’t make any big mistakes, especially considering how critical your laps on older tires were for the strategy to work out, deserves more credit I think,” he said.

For the two of us, it was also a collective triumph in our long-time tenure as teammates. While we’d won some races together, including the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring in a demanding two-man drive, it was our first — and, to date, only — endurance league victory.

That result also opened a new door for us. Shortly after the race, I got a message from my current team, SRN Motorsports, asking about Karl and my status and interest in joining with them.

I had raced against those guys for years and had tons of respect for them. Combined with Karl’s uncertain availability for a few other races in the GES season, it was an easy decision to make the move.

From there, the rest is history. Our team finished second in the final GES standings, qualified for the Le Mans finale and came away with a top-ten there, and we’ve returned to NEO together in each of the past two seasons.

Looking back, that Imola race wasn’t just a turnaround for our season. It restored our confidence as drivers. It was a meaningful, memorable victory in our career as teammates. And it changed the trajectory of our sim racing careers.

That was a lot of power from a single button.

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.

Before the team endurance racing era began on iRacing, I found my stride in longer solo races such as the Targa Virginia, often finishing ahead of faster drivers who dropped out early, made more mistakes, or otherwise didn’t have the stamina required for those events.

With that early experience in hand, when the endurance racing feature finally arrived, it felt natural to get behind the wheel for two or three hours at a time, plugging away at a decent pace while keeping the car on track.

Of course, even my own endurance occasionally found its limits, often when forced to push harder to pick up the pace or drive uncomfortably close to other cars.

Exhibit A was my well-documented crash out of the lead in the 2015 24 Hours of Spa. In that case, it wasn’t even a nearby opponent, but a faster lapped car behind me, that caused me to lose focus and lose control.

Even in this year’s iRacing 24 Hours of Le Mans, I spun and damaged our car when a prototype ahead of me unexpectedly checked up in the high-speed kink before the Indianapolis corner. Once again, it cost our team a chance at the victory, and although that prototype driver had been erratic during my stint, the blame — mostly of my own conjuring — still fell squarely on my shoulders.

Looking back on my endurance racing history, I can fortunately find some examples of success and solid driving even when faced with close competition and pressure to elevate my pace.

As the countdown of my ten best drives in ten years of iRacing continues, I shine the spotlight on two of these moments that epitomize endurance.

8. ISRA Grand Touring Cup at Suzuka – March 25, 2013

In its heyday, the ISRA league was one of the most popular and competitive on iRacing. Its premier series, the Grand Touring Championship, was ahead of its time in many ways, from its use of multi-class racing to the incident review system to the live streams and post-produced broadcasts, complete with commentary and sharp on-screen graphics.

The only thing it was missing was team racing and driver swaps, which wouldn’t arrive on iRacing for a couple more years. Instead, its schedule was made of solo events between one and two hours long.

Before other leagues and iRacing official series popped up to meet the endurance racing demand, ISRA’s GTC was the place to race. Series rosters often filled up within hours of registration opening, and when I joined for the start of the eighth season, I was lucky to get a spot at all.

During that season driving the old Ford GT2, I managed a few podiums but mainly tried to get comfortable in a multi-class setting. Looking back, I still cringe at some of the moves I made — such as suddenly changing my line to move for prototypes coming up behind me — that were fortunately corrected by watching and hearing from other drivers.

By the start of season nine, I felt better prepared, but with the lowest class switching from the Ford to iRacing’s first GT3 addition — the McLaren MP4-12C — and many of the fastest drivers flocking to that car, my job became even tougher.

My season started on a rough note with a DNF at Spa — perhaps a haunting hint of my future fate in that car at that track — but bounced back with more promising third-place runs in the next two rounds at Silverstone and Interlagos.

Suzuka was next on the calendar, and as I noted in my Summer Road Trip visit to the track last year, some of my only experiences at the track to that point were a couple of particularly forgettable Lotus 79 races.

My qualifying run was a reflection of mediocrity: sixth place out of ten cars, and two spots behind my then-teammate, René Weissflog.

However, it didn’t take long before chaos reigned and I found myself moving from mid-pack to the front of the line.

When the green flag waved, the GT3 field was still navigating the tight Casio Triangle, and contact between the second- and third-place qualifiers exiting that chicane left one of them spinning.

One of the drivers directly in front of me checked up for the incident, so I got past him on the frontstretch, moving me up to fourth.

A near-spin for the polesitter and race leader exiting the Dunlop Curve caused another check-up that helped me pass my teammate, and after the erstwhile leader ran wide in the Degner complex, I passed him as well.

Like a yanagiba knife through sushi, I had moved from sixth to second in half a lap, and I wasn’t done yet. A slowdown penalty for the new leader late in the lap handed me the top spot.

Leading an endurance race was a new experience for me. I wasn’t used to setting the pace, and I knew I’d eventually have to fight off a charge from the faster qualifiers who were down but not out.

My main consolation was that my teammate René had followed me through the first-lap frenzy and provided a friendly buffer behind me. A lap-three spin by the outside polesitter — his second of the race — also helped open the gap to him, although I knew I’d need all I could get if I hoped to hold him off in a 75-minute race.

From the first lap to the finish, most of that time is a blur for me. I don’t remember much about my driving, my strategy, or what my team talked about over the radio.

I was simply in the zone, turning laps, watching my mirrors, and keeping an eye on the steadily shrinking gaps behind me.

With 10 laps to go, I had a 15-second advantage over second place. With 5 to go, the lead had effectively been cut in half. That trajectory was setting up for a nail-biting, and potentially heartbreaking, finish.

Fortunately, a few decent laps and some cooperation from traffic helped stabilize my lead. That doesn’t mean it was an easy run to the finish, though. I still had to hit my marks and avoid any mistakes, all while the anticipation and anxiety grew as I dreamed of victory.

At the checkered flag, those dreams became a reality. I was five seconds up on second place and for once was glad that this wasn’t a longer race, because my lead and my nerves surely wouldn’t have lasted that long.

It was, to that point, the biggest win in my sim racing career, and even my other four GTC wins — all coming the following season in the McLaren — can’t compare to the feeling of accomplishment that the first one provided.

7. Blancpain Endurance Series at Silverstone – November 22, 2015

When team endurance racing finally did land on iRacing, the McLaren remained one of my cars of choice — or at least one preferred by my long-time teammate, Karl Modig.

He always seemed comfortable and quick in the notoriously temperamental McLaren while I often struggled to find a competitive pace, and in some cases such as our 24-hour try at Spa together, to even keep the car out of the wall.

Reflecting back on our races together in the Macca, Karl noted why it was such a tough car to drive, at least for me.

“It really was pretty hard to be consistent in as you always had to fight some trait in it, mainly mid-corner understeer,” he said. “To get the maximum pace from it, you had to be pretty aggressive in it, and that’s something that my style is probably better for.”

One of our campaigns together in the McLaren was the inaugural GT3 pro endurance qualifying series in 2015. We knew going in that we’d be a longshot to make the top 50, since all of the top teams had multiple entries.

We ended up sixty-fourth in the final standings, but I couldn’t help but wonder how much better we could have done if not for my up-and-down driving in the McLaren.

We started the season with a solid fourth-place run at Road Atlanta. I followed that with a clutch middle-stint drive at Brands Hatch in which Karl told me how quickly the cars behind were closing and I responded by increasing my pace to hold them off until I pitted. It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to Michael Schumacher’s uncanny ability to run a certain lap time on demand, and that race barely missed this top-ten list.

I followed that with my worst performances of the season in our two races at Zolder, where my stints were plagued by spins, car contact, and a struggle to run within a second of Karl’s lap times.

Up until that point in the season, we had generally opted to have Karl run the first and last stints with me in the middle. However, his tendency to take lots of off-tracks — and my ability to avoid them, even if running at a slower pace — in a series where we were limited to 30 per race led us to change our strategy.

Beginning in week 4 at Silverstone, Karl would start and run the first two stints while I would step in for the final hour.

While I was still the clear number-two driver on the team, my responsibilities behind the wheel would increase since there would be no relief driver to gain back any positions I lost. That was never more clear than in our two races at Silverstone.

I barely remember our first race of the week, possibly because it was in the pre-dawn Saturday morning timeslot. However, the results show I gained one position during my stint — from thirteenth to twelfth — and managed no incidents compared to the 24 racked up by Karl.

Memories of our second race are much clearer, and it’s that drive that lands at number 7 on my top-ten list. Karl made a great start to the race, moving from twenty-ninth to thirteenth before handing the car over to me.

From the start of my stint, my competition was close. As Karl recalled, “you had at least two cars after you for pretty much the whole stint.”

Despite my lack of confidence driving the McLaren and the overall pace advantage of the drivers chasing me, I managed to keep them behind — at least for the most part.

With five laps to go, one speedy BMW driver who had torn through the midfield and was lapping a second quicker caught up to me and easily got past. Although I could have resorted to defensive driving that late in the race to hold him off, the endurance racer in me knew that wasn’t the smartest move.

Even if I’d started running off-line, that faster driver likely would have still gotten by, and it could have opened the door for my two stint-long chasers queued up behind me to sneak past as well.

So in the motorsports equivalent of picking my battles, I facilitated a relatively easy pass for the BMW and focused once again on the green Bimmer and blue McLaren filling my mirrors.

Starting the final lap, they were as close as they’d been, well within drafting range of my thankfully top-end-endowed McLaren.

As that lap went on, something funny happened. I started catching the blue BMW who had flown past a few laps before. Out of Bridge corner, I was suddenly on his bumper and made a quick decision to cut left rather than run into him.

He was out of fuel — his penalty for unhindered speed throughout the stint. If I had held him up for even another lap, maybe he would have saved enough to make it to the finish.

That hypothetical didn’t matter, though. As I led our three-car train past him and across the finish line, I had completed one of my most pressure-packed hours of driving up to that point.

While I knew it probably would have been an easier final stint if I had Karl’s pace, on that day, I was able to fulfill my duties as a co-driver — holding position, keeping the car clean, and managing incidents (Karl left me with four to use; I took just one).

Even after plenty of longer and more prestigious enduros since then, my maiden ISRA win and stint-long stand at Silverstone remain some of my best performances. That’s probably because they remind me of the qualities and mindset it takes to be an endurance driver — namely patience, race management, and enough speed to get the job done.

In his reflection on our races together that season, Karl mentioned one other trait that he noticed in me: “being a bit of a problem-solver”.

I’m not exactly the McLaren McGyver, but as an endurance racer, I’ll certainly add that title to my résumé.

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.

Little did you know that a few small actions ignited a passion within me and made me who I am today.

Maybe it wasn’t always obvious, because I’ll admit it: growing up, I was a mama’s boy.  And while we were doing arts and crafts or collecting Beanie Babies, I’m sure you would have rather been pitching baseballs or practicing a golf swing with me.

One of our only shared interests seemed to be cars, so one small moment at a time, that became our thing.

A day at the races with my dad.

When you built model cars, I stood on my tiptoes to watch you work at the table, and I even tried some of my own.  Of course, as an engineer, your work was perfect. As a four-year old, mine was sloppy. But years later, I still remembered those moments as I began designing paint schemes for my own virtual cars.

When you played your old NASCAR Racing video game, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the computer screen.  I must have watched you drive hundreds of laps around the Charlotte Motor Speedway. I wasn’t too good at first, but I eventually turned things around and became just as adept as my dad at turning laps on those games.

Racing around Charlotte on the computer couldn’t compare to the feeling at the real track.  I’ll never forget my first time walking toward the speedway by your side. The roar of engines echoed off in the distance, and from the sound alone, I was hooked.

You scraped up extra tickets from your coworkers at RJ Reynolds so we could go to The Winston together, and because I loved it so much, you took me to other races as well.  We endured a seemingly endless rain delay at the Coke 600 and a painful sunburn at Bristol, but it was okay, because we did it together.

We even went to tracks when no cars were there.  As an amateur pilot, you took me as your passenger to fly over just about every track in the Carolinas.  And that one time I nearly got airsick flying back from Martinsville, you stopped at an empty airport and let me catch my breath.  You didn’t say much that day, but you didn’t need to. Your smile said it all.

My dad with his flying club’s plane.

Then came the time that all parents probably dread: the teenage years.  Sometimes, it probably seemed like the only reason I needed you was to get lunch money for school.

But when the time came to find a college, I didn’t need to search very far.  I knew I wanted to go to NC State. Just like my dad.

From our first visit, you showed me around campus — where you lived, where you went to your electrical engineering classes, where you watched the Wolfpack win countless basketball and football games.  You told me some of the same stories two, three… ten times. But it didn’t matter, because I was hearing them from you.

Then you bought me a car, and it was the car of my dreams: a Honda S2000.  On our test drive from the dealership, you pulled over on a back road and told me to get behind the wheel.

There was only one problem: I couldn’t drive a stick.

So through all the stalls, missed gears, and over-revs, you put up with me while I learned.  I was put through my paces when we ran into flurries on some country roads, but it was okay, because I had three of my favorite things there with me.

A little snow, an amazing car, and my dad.

After learning to drive it, you gave me the gift that kid Corey would have never imagined: a day on the race track.  Riding up to VIR for the Bertil Roos Racing School, I confessed how nervous I was about botching the complicated shifts in those open-wheeled cars, but you assured me that I’d be just fine.  And I was, because I learned it from you.

Dad and I on pit road at VIR.

We stood around in our firesuits on pit road, shooting the breeze about the tricky Oak Tree corner and the slow drivers in our group.  Sure, it wasn’t a day at the ballpark or the country club, but in my mind, it was so, so much cooler.

Years later, we went back to VIR for another incredible experience: a chance to drive my own car — my amazing dream car that you bought for me — on the track.

By then, the liver disease was affecting your mind, so you opted not to take a run for yourself, worried that you’d forget the track layout or slow down the cars behind us.  And when you thought you were recording a video of my laps but wound up just leaving my phone on the home screen, I could only laugh. I knew it wasn’t on purpose, and it didn’t matter anyway.  It was just part of another memory that we made together.

Over the years, my car has been the place where a dad and his son could talk.  It could be about racing or college memories (again).

Or it could be about life.  It was those conversations, and the wisdom you shared, that I value the most.

Even on our last ride together, the weekend before you went into the hospital, you told me something that every kid hopes to hear and every parent hopes to feel.

You said that you were proud of me.

My dad and I in the paddock after our hot laps.

Because of who you were and the example you set, I now see so much of you in myself.

I got your desire for perfection, whether it’s designing a car or doing my job.

I got your allergies and a crazy willingness to endure five years’ worth of shots to become less sensitive to them.

I got your logical mind, even if electrical engineering was my least favorite part of college physics class.

I got your tendency to tell the same stories over and over.

I hope I got your hair that never, ever thinned.

And I know I got your wide-eyed awe over cars.

The expression says “live fast and die young”.  You inspired me to do the former, even if it’s mostly in virtual cars.  Sadly, you were a victim of the latter and the unlucky hand life dealt you.

Although you left this world far too soon, I learned more from you in 31 years than others learn in a lifetime from their fathers.

Maybe I’ve always been a mama’s boy, but now that I’m all grown up, it’s undeniable that I’ve also become my daddy’s man.

Love always,

– Corey