I made another really quick promo video today. Had no time to do it really so just put something together quick which gave all vital info and the promotion code. If you happen to come here when the promo code has been shut off, see the banner on this page for a permanent promo code with a saving of up to $20 for 2 years.
Anyway, here’s the video:
This race is a tale of what might have been: The evening before the iRacing Daytona 500 I changed my PCs motherboard is preparation for a graphics card upgrade and unfortunately although I reinstalled Windows 7, reinstalled a bunch of programs, got iRacing working, etc, I forgot to do something terribly important…
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!
I’ve been around simracing for quite some time and I can safely say that I’ve only felt the way I did during Saturday’s iRacing ROLEX 2.4 at Daytona once before: It was back in 2003 when I tasked myself with re-installing Grand Prix Legends (one of the iRacing development teams previous creations) and running a full-length 1967 Grand Prix at the Nurburgring (Nordschleife). It was a challenge I felt equal to at the time and there really was no greater feeling for me in simracing after achieving it. I’ve read many posts with similar thoughts on the iRacing Member Forums and I can’t say I am surprised. I loved it, too.
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!
