Intense battling in the late stages of the Brickyard 400
iRacing.com Brickyard 400 results (iRacing members only!)
The next event in the iRacing World Tour has come around already (second event in the month of July!) and this time it was the virtual recreation of a popular NASCAR event, the Brickyard 400. The race sees the top tier NASCAR Sprint Cup racing at the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway for 160 laps of high adrenaline action.
The event was scheduled at a pretty unpleasant time (01:30am) but as I have raced in every 2010 event so far, I made the choice to race and I’m very glad I did.
As suggested in a recent post I decided to avoid the early mishaps by starting from the pitlane, despite being gridded 5th in my split (which was the 4th highest split of the 11 splits). I’ve had such terrible results in the previous oval World Tour events that I set my goal at just lapping at the very back and just seeing what happens. A lot of drivers crash out and retire in these events, so I was just hoping to gain the positions from the retirees and leaving it at that.
The plan worked pretty well. In the early stages of the race everyone was extremely co-operative and willing to give room and it seemed most everyone was on the same page in realising it was a long race and there was no value in racing hard from the get-go. When the inevitable wrecks happened I generally had plenty of space and crept through the carnage unscathed. Mostly.
The first half of the race I stayed in positions 25th to 30th biding my time and then I started to slowly gain track position in the second half. As the laps unwound the field became more racy and I picked up some damage on lap 121 when my car was clipped whilst evading a wrecking car. I had worked my way up to 11th (I was positioning my car for the end-game) but the damage was severe enough for me to use up my one and only reset. Once restored, I had a great car again and it fared well compared to the rest of the field who had already used their resets and taken further knocks.
The last 30 laps were very intense – everyone was firmly in ‘race’ mode and no quarter was given. It made the race quite messy with yellows following yellows but in the short green laps in between the racing was fantastic.
I had an exhilarating battle in the dying laps and was able to finish 4th as we crossed the line for the last time.
Started : pitlane (was gridded 5th initially)
Finished : 4th, 113 points (8 incident pts)
iRating : +66
Safety Rating : A/3.30 (+ 0.07)
The next world tour event takes place on August 14 and features the Tour Modified at Thompson Speedway.
