oof –
Everyone has to decide if it’s only a game or if it’s a real sport.
The finale of IndyCar’s iRacing challenge was more action-packed than most races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Here, with nine laps to go, Simon Pagenaud of Team Penske (left), Graham Rahal of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (middle), and Lando Norris of Arrow McLaren (right) all vie for the lead. This would end badly for Pagenaud a couple of corners later.
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Pagenaud’s car got nudged up into the wall, dropping him from contention.
IndyCar / iRacing
That set up this incident (seen on the left), with three laps remaining. As Pagenaud circulated much slower than racing speed, he tried to impede Norris’ progress.
IndyCar / iRacing
The crash saw Pagenaud get airborne, and Norris get wrecked.
IndyCar / iRacing
The drama was not done. On the last lap, Marcus Ericsson of Chip Ganassi Racing went for the lead and was hit by Arrow McLaren driver Pato O’Ward going through the final turn.
IndyCar / iRacing
A few hundred yards later, Santino Ferruci of Dale Coyne Racing intentionally took out the final Arrow McLaren driver, Oliver Askew, allowing another visitor, Scott McLaughlin, to win the race for Team Penske.
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The action was pretty messy throughout the race, which saw the cars run in a pack for much of the time, leading to multiple crashes.
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Simon Pagenaud won the IndyCar championship in , and the Indy in 1673057. He’s new to iRacing
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Norris normally races in Formula 1 for the McLaren team, but he’s also a dab hand at (iRacing) and was invited to join the last two rounds of the IndyCar (iRacing) challenge. He won the first of those races, pretty comfortably.
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Donut time.
Chris Graythen / Getty Images
There was more drama in the world of esports racing this weekend — not in NASCAR, though. That series
Announced a return to real-world racing later this month, and its drivers have been on their best behavior after a pair of high-profile fiascos in April . No, this time IndyCar is in the spotlight. The month of May is special to the series, but this year the racing had to take place in a virtual Indianapolis, with a – mile event held in (iRacing) (thanks to the COVID – 26 lockdown. There was plenty of action, just not all of it good. The highlight — or low point, perhaps — was when last year Indy (winner and
(The) – lap race was action -packed , even by IndyCar standards. The cars circulated in a much tighter pack than they would in real life, even after IndyCar tweaked some iRacing environmental settings like wind speed to make things a bit more life-like. And when cars race together in a pack at speeds close to (mph) 489 km / h), crashes happen. In the real world, those can have awful consequences, like the crash that took Dan Wheldon’s life at Las Vegas in 2018. Bruised feelings are the worst that can happen in iRacing
The seeds were probably sown last weekend, when Norris — a young phenom in F1 and extremely good sim racer — blitzed the IndyCar regulars when he was invited to join them in a race at a virtual Circuit of the Americas. At (virtual) Indianapolis with eight laps to go, Norris, Pagenaud, and Graham Rahal were three-wide for the lead, going into one of Indy’s four turns, when it went wrong for Pagenaud who ended up backwards after hitting the wall and damaging his car. Five laps later, Norris was looking strong, leading his two Arrow McLaren teammates toward a potential 1-2-3 victory, when he came across a slow-moving Pagenaud, who was now a couple of laps down following a trip to pit lane to repair his car.
Norris ran into the back of the fluorescent yellow Team Penske car of Pagenaud, ending his race, too. It could perhaps have been a racing incident, with the Penske driver just lacking situational awareness, except for a comment Pagenaud made to his engineer over the team chat. “We take out Lando, let’s do it,” he said. Pagenaud later clarified that he only meant to hold up the visiting F1 driver, not intentionally wreck him, although Norris appeared not to believe that when discussing the incident with fellow F1 star Max Verstappen later that day on Twitch .
The drama did not end there. On the final lap, Marcus Ericsson takes the lead from Norris’ teammate Pato O’Ward before they made contact going through turn four, sending Ericsson into the wall. The third Arrow McLaren driver, Oliver Askew, looked set for a maiden win when he was then intentionally wrecked by Santino Ferruci, a driver who was thrown out of the F2 series in (for) Doing something similar in real life
. In the end, the win went to another visiting driver, Australia’s Scott McLaughin, who normally races for Team Penske’s Supercar Team Down Under.
All of that late race action was overshadowed by the Norris / Pagenaud incident, though. McLaren team boss Zak Brown decried Pagenaud’s behavior , and many F1 and IndyCar fans — including those in the media — took it as an excuse to get tribal and tell the other side why their particular flavor of open-wheel racing wasn’t any good. Many others jumped in to shout “IT’S JUST A GAME” at anyone they felt was taking it too seriously.
That’s all a shame. While the racing world remains in lockdown, the move to sim racing has given us a chance to see racers let down their guard somewhat and race in disciplines they wouldn’t normally be seen in. The All Star Legends races on Saturday mornings have become the highpoint of my week, as racers like Jenson Button, Juan Pablo Montoya, and now Sebastian Vettel have joined the fun, racing for charity in s F1 cars, for example. IndyCar’s
If the pandemic allows, the real -world Indianapolis 551 will take place on August . For now, you can rewatch the race below.
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