On Saturday 13th February, 2010 I was unable to run the 500, but got in a quick qualifying session for my race on the 20th just 15 minutes before the race session: I set a 48.075 and this would put me in 11th-place to start the race.

With 30 minutes of warm-up, it gave everybody plenty of time to check their setup, practice put stops, etc. I personally just practiced getting into and off pit road at speed and missed an opportunity to notice and correct that ‘terribly important’ thing once again…

The start of the iRacing Daytona 500.

We raced through a few cautions in the early laps, but things remained fairly constant for me until lap 15: It was the first time I’d really had to slam on the brake and when I did so it must have knocked my calibration off (recalibrating was the ‘terribly important’ thing I’d forgotten to do). At that point I was running 12th and just biding my time, but unknown to me the brake was now dragging and I hadn’t noticed the tiny sliver of red on the brake indicator.

Over the next 100 laps or so I just went backwards. At the time I believed I had lost an engine cylinder and was down on power, it wasn’t until about lap 114 that I realized what had happened, having finally noticed that the brake indicator was showing applied brakes.

Initially I just pulled back on the brake with my left foot while pushing on the throttle with my right, but after I began to experience cramping I managed to fix it for good on lap 164. However, during those last few laps I had had enormous fun: I normally wait until there’s ten laps remaining before I push really hard to get to the front, but knowing my position I used a combination of strategy, aggression and good luck to come back from two laps down to one, and come back from 22nd-place on lap 114 to 14th as the race ended.

Three-wide at Daytona.

So I ended with mixed emotions, just like everyone else: At one point I had resigned myself to just running for safety rating with a damaged engine, but I ended up having a lot of fun in some really tight racing. I had very few incidents (scraped the wall on lap 100, car contact on 190, the wreck on 194 and an off track on 198 while I got out of the way of the other cars on the final restart), but I still can’t help but think what might have happened had I not been trailing brake for half of the race!

My only real solace is that if this were real life, NASCAR would have probably forced me to start at the back anyway due to an ‘engine change’ in my PC… Starting back there I probably would have gotten involved in one of those early accidents and wouldn’t have had the fun I did during the race. Maybe next year I’ll be able to finish on the lead lap!

If you would like to run the 2010 iRacing.com Daytona 500, check out this promotional video I made that features a great promo (3 months, free COT, free Daytona – $32).

Anyway, let’s talk about my race…

I qualified in second-place with a 47.830. I was just using the (new) Advanced setup for the car (which is actually quite good now) and knew that I had a good shot.

I started well and slotted into third-place on lap one. Everyone raced side by side successfully with only one hairy moment when the car ahead of me touched the apron in turn four. On lap 30 there was a wreck ahead of me and I just managed to clear it. I pitted, coming out in sixth-place.

For the entire race I had been experimenting with the high line. It seemed that if I was overtaking on the outside I could do it by myself as long as I wasn’t near the front, once I got closer to the leader on the high side the air just knocked me back. After the restart from the caution on lap 30 I knew this and decided to wait until ten laps to go before I pushed for the lead.

So, with ten to go I went for it, I was moving up from fifth-place and luckily caught the fourth-place man as he had a blip in his connection. I just snuck my nose on the inside and he had to give way. At the same time the second-place car had bobbled up in the turn and I followed the inside cars through, moving into third almost straight away.

I wasn’t able to move into second-place until lap 64 of 70, when the second-place car bobbled in the turn just enough for me to stick my nose on the inside again. It was close, but being a clean racer he knew he had to give me the inside and just said “Damn it!” over the in-race radio… Now I just had to pass the man who had been leading since lap 17!

I certainly tried my best. I tried to look for a gap on the low side, but one never came. I tried to go high on the backstretch, but always decided to slot back into second. Eventually I decided that after hearing others complain about not being able to hold the car down in the turns, I’d try and see if I could make the leader have that problem… So I started to bump draft at the end of the straight, hoping he’d have to run up the banking and give me the low-side.

Unfortunately, the leader was always glued to that inside line and eventually I started to bump draft simply to try to stay ahead of the outside line which was forming. I crossed the line a mere 0.070s behind.

So, like I said: I am not sure if I will compete for a championship in the NASCAR Class A Series. Certainly feeling pretty good about the World Tour event though… Daytona 500, here I come!

My 2009 Season 4 had been a tough one. I moved from Massachusetts to Illinois part way through and took a vacation in England (working at the Autosport Show where we announced licensing of Williams F1 in the process). When I left for England I was in the top-3 of both the Skip Barber Series and Late Model Tour for my division, but when I returned I was nowhere. I really had worked hard to find the time to race this season and – being the person who creates and sends out the certificates – really wanted one for myself! Going into Saturday I knew that if I could just eek out a Podium I’d have one…

Saturday morning was spent (much like the Autosport Show) running laps in qualifying mode. I didn’t really care where I started the ROLEX 2.4, I just wanted to beat the laptimes that Steve Myers (iRacing’s executive vice president and executive producer) kept taunting me with! I’d left Autosport with the upper-hand, but Steve ended up beating my final qualifying time of 1:41.253 by a tenth. As annoyed as I was that Steve had beaten me (and yes, I was truly annoyed), he had inspired me to knock a full second off my previous best and had also allowed me to become comfortable going that pace.

With my wife fully aware not to call home between the hours of 11am-2pm, I watched the clock count down to zero and saw a whopping 949 others would be racing with me. After getting into my split (one of 24 races containing 39-40 participants) I checked the entries and qualifying order to find that although I was rated as being the 17th best driver in the field, I had managed to qualify seventh. I suspected a lot of this was because some had chosen to start at the back, or start from pitlane, but I was fine with that!

Clean getaway

On lap two Coleman and I flew past Andrew Hayes on the banking while I settled into what would become my first battle of the race: The battle for fourth-place with the #2 car of Glen Jerome.
Jerome and I ran nose to tail from lap two until lap 30, exchanging position three times. We had a great fight and gave each other plenty of room during those ‘sideways moments’ the Daytona Prototype throws at you. Then on lap 30, to my utter amazement, people started to pit! I checked my predicted fuel usage and it still said I was on-track to make it half-way, so I just reveled in the fact that not only had I moved into second-place, I had also lost Jerome in traffic.

As the laps wound down and I approached the half way point, I had run a remarkably clean race with just a couple of off track penalties at the chicane. My tires were really starting to struggle though and by lap 43 it became hard to keep consistent. I decided to try to save fuel, so started to run all the first-gear turns in second and the chicane in third. Coleman, who had pitted out of second-place earlier, had closed me down and I pulled up on the banking to let him by before I eventually pitted on lap 46.

Coming out of the pits I found myself right infront of fourth-place man Augusto Gabaldoni. Gabaldoni became my second major battle of the race as we sparred even closer than I had with Jerome. We ran for 16 laps together, swapped position twice and pushed each other to our absolute limits: It was Gabaldoni who went over it first with a slow, lurid spin coming out of the infield.

Gabaldoni spins, Wheatley in 17

Unfortunately, on lap 69, my concentration broke. I lost the car coming into the chicane and had to let Coleman by before rejoining the track, I started to obsess about how much that slide had worn my tires and really, that was it: Concentration was not going to return.

The rest of the race, for me, was about survival. I lapped as carefully as I could and watched Dan Caskanette and Chad Coleman pull away from me while I kept making small errors. I knew that if I didn’t make a large error – I’d be fine – I’d finish on the podium, so I just settled into the third-place finish.

Finally, a certificate!

You can’t see the track right infront of you anyway, because the angle is too great, while the rest of the oval is quite some distance away. Why not sit them on the infield, where the track is angled towards them and why because of simple physics – a car will likely never end up.

It is only a matter of time before the horrors of the year 1955 visit NASCAR…

I’d run a qualifying session earlier in the week (2009-02-07 9:30 pm), setting a time of 1:47.831. This meant that for the race I would be starting 9th, which isn’t bad considering I was iRated as the 11th best road course driver out of the 16 runners. My aim for the race was to be clean and finish 11th, or better.

I got a decent start (making up two places) and just took my time around the first corners hoping I wouldn’t hit anyone and that everyone else would return the favor… Thankfully they did and I held 7th for the first two laps until I missed my braking mark into turn 1 and ran wide, letting Doug Gegenheimer through as we started lap 3.

I held 8th for the next 4 laps and just concentrated on staying as close to Doug as I could. I was following him closely when I saw Brett Stephens pulling off to the right (he had gone off track a lap earlier and presumably limped back to the pit area with damage), so I had now climbed to 7th again as we started lap 8. Also during those 4 laps Michael Yoder had spun and Bruce Morse had passed me, leaving me in the same position on the track.

Lap 10 and I had dropped back a little bit behind Doug as we joined the oval at the back of the circuit. I gained another position though because Marc Vasaturo had spun from 4th and handed me 6th-place, just missing me in the process as he rejoined the track.

For the next 15 laps I stayed consistent and tried to keep Doug in sight on the banking of the oval, knowing that if he or those close infront of him slipped up I should be able to capitalize and take their positions. During these laps I set my fastest lap, a 1:47.306.

It was now lap 25 of 30 and as I exited the first turn I saw Bruce rejoining from the grass where he had spun after contact with another car; this put me into 5th-place and also meant that for the final few laps I’d probably be fighting Bruce off. One lap later though I gained another position, moving into 4th after Marcus Iglesias made car contact and fell to the back of the pack.

For the final 4 laps I drove hard (and made my only mistake of the race, an off-track on the exit of the first right-hand hairpin) while trying desperately to hold my position ahead of a hard charging Stephens and recovering Morse. I eventually made a mistake large enough that both of them were able to get very close, but to my surprise (and delight at the time), Morse fell off the road, leaving me with just Stephens.

With 2 to go, Stephens was all over my gearbox and I decided to take some more defensive lines around the infield turns of the Daytona Speedway. Coming onto the oval towards the Superstretch though I knew I was not going to be able to hold him off and let Stephens by on the inside into the chicane. I tried to stay close to him, hoping that he would feel some pressure and perhaps make a mistake, but he didn’t, and I ended up finishing in 5th-place, something I am absolutely delighted with.

All in all, a very enjoyable race where I feel I punched far above my weight and beat a lot of people I am not really that capable of doing. I only made that one small error when under pressure from Stephens and set my fastest lap while trying to be consistent on lap 10, a 1:47.306.

It is the start of a new season, 2008 Season III is finished and now, finally, we’re on Season IV. Here’s how my licenses started the season:

Under an hour before the race, I ran a practice and qualifying session. I felt pretty competitive in the practice using the default advanced setup, so entered the qualifying session at 7:45 pm, setting a time of 47.832. I registered to race at 8:00 pm and found that my qualifying time meant I would line up third in the starting order.

I got a decent start and very quickly found just how little you’re able to see when running in a pack of these new cars. They’re very wide on the back end and the rear wing completely takes away the ability most stock cars give where you can look through the windows of the car ahead for extra vision. So, feeling blind I wanted to get up-front and try to stay out of danger…

I managed to move into 2nd place by lap 2, but by lap 4 had dropped to 8th. I steadily moved up and on lap 16 while in 5th place, I saw an accident ahead of me after someone had taken too much of the apron in the turn… He came up the track and hit someone, who spun straight across my nose, taking my steering out of alignment.

I tried pitting, but when that didn’t work, reset the car. On lap 22 the race would restart and I found myself in a lowly 11th place. There had been a number of cautions already, so I figured it was likely there would be more and knew I either needed to hang back, or push forwards… I pushed forwards!

Over the next four laps I had an incredible run. I moved from 11th to 2nd almost magically as the spaces just opened up for me. There was a little scare when someone made door to door contact with me – but for the most part I just had to stay patient and wait for the gap.

For the next 17 laps (until lap 42) I ran in 2nd place, seemingly unable to make a pass (I knew that nobody would help me on the high side if I pulled out). Then, going around turns 3 and 4 at Daytona I saw the leader drifting up in the turn and knew I needed to stick my nose in the gap… Thankfully the other driver was clean and although he tried very hard to squeeze me into lifting off completely to give him room – I didn’t… I took the lead!

We went through another couple of cautions and then restarted for the final time on lap 62 of 65. I had heard the former leader talking during the cautions and had seen them working on the high line on the previous green flag laps, so I knew they would be coming hard – and they did – because with about 2 laps to go I had already accepted I probably wouldn’t win…

As it turns out, a car in the low lane drifted up and hit the side of the 3rd car in the high line, this slowed that third car down enough that he lost the draft to the cars ahead, meaning that for just a few seconds we were 3 on the bottom and 2 on the top and there was no way they were going to win that battle… They gradually drifted back and I won with a best laptime of 46.960 set on lap 23 (during my charge to 2nd place).

It’s unfortunate that my Safety Rating went down, but it’ll work itself out. At least now that I am Class A all I have to worry about is staying above 2.0 to avoid demotion!

I managed to get Sony Vegas from Amazon for an absolute steal (there’s still one there for about $33), so you may notice a few extra effects being slowly brought into my videos! I hope you like this one. It includes my charge between laps 22 and 26, me taking the lead, me leading the pack and then me holding them off for the win.