Indy Go Go

If you’ve read my Driver Diaries to this point, you might know that in the world of sim racing, I’m a longtime stock car driver, a converted road racer, and no particular fan of races dominated by drafting.

So what on earth was I doing in an open-wheeled car at the high-speed, draft-intensive Indianapolis Motor Speedway?

The Indy 500 is one of those once-per-year special events with an irresistible lure, no matter your preferred racing genre.  It’s why we’ve seen drivers like Kurt Busch make one-off appearances in the real race.  The chance to compete, let alone win, at Indy can’t be passed up.

Unfortunately, in iRacing’s five-year history of organizing a virtual Indy 500, I’ve had to miss them all.  They used to fall on Memorial Day weekend, so my travel plans got in the way.  Last year, I was finally able to clear my schedule to race, but a server failure meant the event was canceled.

This year’s event was moved a week later, so with the possibility of another server problem notwithstanding, I decided to finally attempt to make my Indy 500 debut.  Over the past week, I put in hours of practice and tuning to get ready, with help from my teammate Bryan Carey, who is better acquainted with the IndyCar than me.

In my initial race runs, I had decent speed early on but started struggling with the tires and overall balance after about 20 laps or whenever I was behind another car.  Bryan and I added more and more downforce to our setup, deciding to compromise our initial speed in clean air for being more comfortable through an entire run and in traffic.  In a 200-lap race, we figured, just surviving would be a big enough challenge.

Our qualifying times put us in the second of 19 race splits, which meant we’d be competing against some of the fastest drivers.  I was gridded in 17th with Bryan in 18th, but several drivers ahead of me started from the pits, so I actually rolled off in 11th.  That helped me but it put a gap between myself and Bryan, which spoiled our plans to work together.

As the early laps clicked off, I was content to ride behind other cars while they battled.  About 20 laps into the race, those drivers started struggling on worn tires and I was able to pass them and pull away.  For the first 133 laps of the race — all run under green — this process continued: After pit stops, I would lose some time to the cars around me, but once their handling started to go away, I would blow by them.

A few times, I was able to draft off these cars early in a run, which helped my speed and kept me right under their wing so I could pass them more easily later on.  It felt almost parasitic; I told Bryan it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

By the time the first caution flew, I was up to fifth place.  But with the field bunched back up, I was worried my lack of outright speed would cost me some of the positions I’d taken all race to gain.  Luckily, the draft kept me competitive with the drivers around me, so I was able to more or less hold my position.

Another yellow flew with 38 laps to go — just outside the fuel window, but I tried to save some anyway while I rode in the draft.  Another caution with 20 laps to go doomed that strategy, but it put Bryan and me on a different one.  With enough fuel to go to the end and a setup that was just as fast on old tires as on new ones, we stayed on track while the leaders pitted.

We restarted in third and fourth, and the two cars ahead of us had noticeably struggled on older tires throughout the race.  I was able to pass one of them on lap 194, but while I tried to chase down the leader, the faster drivers on fresh tires were closing in quickly.

The race’s final caution came out the next lap, and this time, it was for Bryan hitting the wall while trying to take third place.  That set up a two-lap sprint to the finish — a green-white-checkered, in NASCAR parlance — with the fast guys right on my tail.  Check out my onboard view of the tense final laps:

Coming to the restart, I added a click of weight jacker so I wouldn’t be quite as tight in traffic.  When I got to turns one and two, though, the extra weight jacker plus a touch of the rumble strips loosened me up, so I fell back to third place.  I was just hoping to hold a podium finish, but over the radio, Bryan told me to watch the two leaders in case they wrecked each other.

On the final lap, his warning — perhaps a premonition? — came to light.  The leaders went side by side into turn three and one pushed wide into the other, sending them crashing into the wall.  I snuck through, avoiding the wreck by just inches, and powered through the final corner and down the canyon-like frontstretch to score a huge upset victory: from third to first in one lap.

All through the race, I kept thinking I shouldn’t be up here!  These guys are so fast!  I barely ever touch this car, let alone race it!  The fact that I was able to compete and battle with drivers who are otherwise out of my league in that car is a huge testament to our setup and Bryan’s wisdom to add more downforce and get the car handling well.

So if there is an Indy 500 winning recipe, it certainly begins with a good setup.  Patience is also key in a race as long as this one; I could’ve forced some passes on lapped cars and drivers on worn tires, but it might have ended my race (and their’s) senselessly early.  Also, Lady Luck was certainly an important factor, including her starring role on the final lap.

As for the celebration, the recipe was simple: 1% milk all the way.