I Raced in the 2020 iRacing Indy 500 [Mistakes Were Made]

"bwp240" (bwp240) 05/18/2020 at 12:30 • Filed to: iRacing Indy 500, iRacing, sim racing, esport, esports, indycar

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What has become a staple for the month of May and a yearly tradition for me is the annual running of the iRacing Indy 500. Once a year, iRacers from all over the world gather together on the famed 2.5 mile oval in Indianapolis for their shot at drinking the milk at the end of the day. This would be my 5th running of the race in its 11 year history.

Even though !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , I still get the heebie jeebies (hey, it’s as close as I am going to get to racing in the real thing) leading up to the race. The wekk leading up to the race is filled with practice and qualifying sessions. This year I was running the new aero screen feature on the Indycars this year. Well...

Who the hell put this giant pole in my face?!

In this race, I need to make my own setup. This is a pretty easy task, for a engineering genius, I am not one. Long story short, I am testing out a setup, found another one on the forums, tried it, learned it was a billion times better and stuck with it. Qualifying was the normal procedure where I go out an lay an egg. I was not going to be racing in the top split.

Race day had arrived. The Team Oppo crew readies the car for the race. We gridded up 11th of the 33 starters. Coming around to see the green flag was pretty run of the mill. The cars began to spread out and we began to feel our way around the competition.

Barney the Flagman waves the green flag for the 2020 Indy 500

Some people got a little too touchy feely and wrecked each other. This would persist for several laps and before I knew it 1/3 of the field was gone by lap 40. I was nearly included in that mess as I saw the car in front of me suffer some serious understeer and plow into the wall. Had I not seen that coming, I am sure my race would have ended by the 80 mile mark.

Well that’s not gone particularly well...

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), with all of the wrecked car, the field was much smaller than originally started. This yielded a race of epic proportions. The green flag came out with 150 to go, and was out until the checkers.

This would normally be all well and good except for one minor flaw. I noticed with 3 pit stops left in the race that my fuel strategy was off. I was going to be close to 6 laps short. I tried to save, but I knew it was to no avail. I strategized to come in and pit trying to short stint the race. It was about all I had left.
The Team Oppo pit crew did an amazing job throughout the whole race. Unfortunately, the crew member behind the wheel is an idiot and sped on pit road entry. I locked up the front wheels and slid through the first segment. The resultant 40 second penalty took us out of contention for a Top 5 finish.

There were several four letter words that described this moment...

However, we bounced back, made it to the end, and brought the Team Oppo Indycar Special home 7th place . The iRacing Indy 500 is an absolutely amazing event. It brings the look and feel of the marquee race, even if you are not competing in the highest of splits. There is a prominence to winning no matter the race (or split) The hype and draw of the virtual/esports Indy 500, 24 Hours of Le Mans, or the Bathurst 1000, etc. will live long into the future. I am grateful my name is emblazoned on the virtual Borg Warner, but I can’t wait until next year for the opportunity to have it appear again.

For the 5th time, crossing the line at 500 miles. Another iRacing Indy 500 in the books. Can;t wait to try again next year.

I also tried to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . It went almost as bad as my pit strategy. (it only goes to Lap 72, as my graphics card began melting down. Shutting the recording software saved my computer from meltdown.)

ItalianJobR53 - now with added 'MERICA and unreliability > bwp240 05/18/2020 at 12:33

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Me and a friend did one race 2 weeks back, just hung back till lap 130ish and let the field whittle down and then gunned it. I grazed the wall and messed my alignment and finished 8th, but friend finishes 2nd!

Its a lotta fun!

jminer > bwp240 05/18/2020 at 21:19

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Way to go! I bought a wheel setup back at christmas with the intent to get into sim racing, but this seems next level realistic.

bwp240 > ItalianJobR53 - now with added 'MERICA and unreliability 05/19/2020 at 16:32

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That’s what I usually do when I am in the back.  I started 11th so I tried to stay up front since I was already up there.  Unfortunately for me the field whittled itself down so much that no one crashed late in the race to let me fix my fuel miscalculation.

bwp240 > jminer 05/19/2020 at 16:44

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That is certainly debatable. The cream of the crop is between iRacing, Rfactor2, and Assetto Corsa Competition.

If you are looking for excellent online competition among actual people iRacing is the answer. If you are looking for more single player fun the original Asseto Corsa and Project Cars 2 go on sale on Steam all the time for stiff discounts .

If you want more info on iRacing, I wrote a couple articles detailing its inner workings because there didn’t use to be a lot of info. Keep in mind they are old and may not be the most up to date. They actually have a really good page on their site detailing the series ladders available: https://www.iracing.com/career-paths/

RayHartjen > bwp240 05/19/2020 at 17:09

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I read this article and enjoyed it so much I read your recap of the race you won. I greatly appreciate the way you and the other drivers approach racing, particularly on the hollowed (virtual) grounds of Indianapolis. The respect you showed is something I wish the real drivers would have shown a couple of weeks ago on NBC - that entire ending was a shame. I’ve been a huge race fan since 1971, when I read a great book, The Indy 500: Thirty Days in May, which chronicled the 1970 race, each and every day of that race’s month of May. As a seven year-old kid, it got me hooked. Later, we ended up living in Indianapolis, and I became a regular at the Speedway, not only for racing, but just to visit to get a fix of the place. I’m going to have to invest in some iRacing sim gear and meet up with you on the track. All this pandemic quarantine virtual racing has me hooked! Thanks for sharing your experiences.