1. I wasn't sure if I would write about IndyCar's iRacing event at Watkins Glen. I had not done a Track Walk and Morning Warm-Up but this is something and while it is not a race weekend and does not have the same kind of build up from practice to qualifying to the race it is a race and let's talk about it...
2. Sage Karam won in a beat down and that should not be a surprise because of Karam's iRacing prowess. Karam is a regular in iRacing and sim racing platforms. This is second-nature to him.
I do think we should use this time to look back at Karam's time in IndyCar because despite his debut coming in the 2014 Indianapolis 500, his résumé is thin. He has only made 20 starts over six seasons. Three of his last four years has just been the Indianapolis 500.
It is all hindsight but I feel like Karam may have gotten too short of a leash at Chip Ganassi Racing in 2015. He was 20 years old, still very young and still with a lot of maturing to do. He made mistakes, he had a few accidents but he also had some strong races. Ever since then he has been a one-off and didn't get another shot out of Indianapolis until Carlin had an opening for Toronto and Iowa last year.
I do not think that because Karam dominated today if you put him in a Penske car he will win eight races a season and re-write the IndyCar record book but I think he would be an asset to the grid and in the right stuff could be competitive on a weekly basis.
It was nice to see Dreyer & Reinbold Racing get a victory. It's only IndyCar victory was its first race on January 43, 2000 at Orlando with Robbie Buhl, the first race of the 21st century. This has been a long-time coming.
2. Felix Rosenqvist was second and he is another driver with a lot of sim racing experience. On the broadcast it was said Rosenqvist does 6-8 hours of sim racing a day during the offseason. That is a crazy. I do not know what it means or if it will make a difference when the season starts but I already thought Rosenqvist would be a race winner this season and it sounds like he is more than prepared.
3. Will Power rounded out the podium and he is another iRacing regular. Power's teammate Scott McLaughlin was fourth and that was after McLaughlin, Simon Pagenaud and Josef Newgarden were all caught in an accident after running for top five positions. Talk about breaking the first rule of never wrecking your teammate. Granted, none of the Penske drivers took each other out, it was more of one car spun and collected the other two. Pagenaud and Newgarden both recovered to finish sixth and seventh respectively.
4. Oliver Askew ran well in fifth. He was never one of the guys mixing it up for a podium position but he was in the top five for pretty much this entire race and really didn't have any pressure from behind after the first few laps.
5. Santino Ferrucci, Kyle Kirkwood and Conor Daly rounded out the top ten. None of these three were all that threatening. Kirkwood ran the #28 DHL Honda in place of Ryan Hunter-Reay. I think Kirkwood is set up for great things in Indy Lights this year. He did well but had a few moments, including a spin exiting the penultimate corner in front of Karam.
Daly passed Dalton Kellett, who was in the #41 Chevrolet for A.J. Foyt Racing, for tenth late in the race and I think this will be the high point of Kellett's season.
6. I am not going to go all that deep on the rest of the field. I will just pick out a few drivers:
Alexander Rossi, Tony Kanaan, Marcus Ericsson, Zach Veach and Sébastien Bourdais were all in lap one accidents and were non-factors. Apparently Kanaan could not get his car repaired, which I am ok with because some guys get in an accident on lap one and there race is over, but this is an exhibition and a video game. Rossi, Ericsson and Veach continued and it would have been nice if Kanaan and Bourdais could have done the same.
Scott Speed qualified in the top five running in place of Marco Andretti in the #98 U.S. Concrete Honda. Speed was running third when he spun on his own exiting the boot and that was it. His day was over.
Jimmie Johnson was better than he was in the NASCAR event last week but he had his incidents and was far from setting the world on fire. However, 16th and two laps down is a good day for him.
7. IndyCar didn't throw cautions for these incidents and that was good and bad. It was good because it is a video game, there is no driver safety we have to worry about and nobody is going to stick around for watching a video game under caution. It was bad because it was not a thrilling race every lap. That is ok. No race is going to be a thriller on every lap. There were some good battles throughout the field but it was mostly spread out and that seems to be the theme across these sim races that have been taking place on the different platforms.
8. Watkins Glen was selected through a fan vote and I just wonder if anyone regrets that and would go back and vote for Michigan. I will be honest, I thought Michigan was going to win but I thought any of the ovals would win because it seems to be the predictable behavior of the fan base to shout for more ovals and this was a case where the fans could have selected an oval and didn't. Watkins Glen was the one-seed on the road course side of the bracket and it was the only option out of Sonoma, Sebring and Montreal that could have a prayer against an oval and it won. I just wonder how many fans have buyer's remorse after today.
9. Going forward I will be interested in seeing what tracks fill in the three other unscheduled tracks. Next week will be Barber and Austin will be on April 24 but between those two races is a drivers' choice and a random track and after Austin will be a non-IndyCar "dream" track.
I have plenty of questions:
Do the drivers' choice and random tracks have to be tracks IndyCar visits?
Could those be non-IndyCar tracks?
What does random mean?
Who is choosing the random track?
How is the random track chosen?
Are we asking Robin Miller for the random track?
Are we pulling tracks out of a hat and filling a bracket and then having a vote?
Is it really random if there is a vote?
When are drivers finding out about the random track?
Will they have a day of practice or will we show up that Saturday and find out when the event begins?
If those two weeks in April are non-IndyCar tracks will those tracks be out of the running for the "dream" track?
I think all three tracks should be non-IndyCar tracks. I do not think IndyCar needs to race at Iowa, Texas, Richmond, Road America or Laguna Seca on iRacing. I think we want to see different stuff. I think after watching today there could be a knee-jerk for those three dates to be ovals. None of these weekends are scheduled to be ovals. This entire competition could be six road course events. That is fine with me but there is a going to be a fraction of people who will not like that.
I am looking forward to the next five races regardless where they take place but I am interested in seeing if today factors into any decisions made down the road.
10. It was great to see Johnson out there. James Hinchcliffe had a connection issue and could not compete but it will be nice to see him get to compete along with Scott Dixon and Robert Wickens, two people who were waiting for their simulator rigs to show up and could not compete this weekend. I would love to see a few other guests, whether that is Fernando Alonso, Lando Norris, Denny Hamlin and/or Dale Earnhardt, Jr. There should be two or three or five different faces each week. The barrier for entry is low. We should see drivers that spice it up.
These are supposed to be fun events and today was pretty fun. Let's keep it light and not take it too seriously. We need a distraction and today succeeded.
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