Oliver Askew, McLaren, IndyCar, Circuit of the Americas, 2020

IndyCar confirms 25 of its drivers for official iRacing series

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IndyCar has confirmed 25 of its drivers will participate in the new IndyCar iRacing Challenge beginning on Saturday.

The field for IndyCar’s new Esports series includes last year’s real-world championship top three of Josef Newgarden, Simon Pagenaud and Alexander Rossi. Out of the top 15 drivers in the 2019 points standings only Scott Dixon, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Takuma Sato and Spencer Pigot have not been confirmed for the virtual series.

Drivers will compete in their regular team liveries. Further special guest drivers will be announced tomorrow.

The venue for the first race will be chosen by a poll of fans of two former IndyCar circuits: The Watkins Glen road course or the Michigan superspeedway. Drivers will participate in a 10-minute qualifying session followed by a race. The full event is expected to last around and hour and a half.

Five further events will be held over the following weeks. The new series will race at Barber Motorsports Park on April 4th, a track chosen by drivers on April 11th, a track chosen at random on April 18th, the Circuit of the Americas on April 25th and a non-IndyCar track on May 2nd.

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Car numberDriverTeam
1Josef NewgardenPenske
2Scott McLaughlinPenske
4Sebastien BourdaisFoyt
5Pato O’WardMcLaren
7Oliver AskewMcLaren
8Marcus EricssonGanassi
10Felix RosenqvistGanassi
11Kyle KaiserJuncos
12Will PowerPenske
14Tony KanaanFoyt
15Graham RahalRLL
18Santino FerrucciCoyne
20Conor DalyCarpenter
22Simon PagenaudPenske
24Sage KaramDreyer & Reinbold
26Zach VeachAndretti
27Alexander RossiAndretti
28Kyle KirkwoodAndretti
29James HinchcliffeAndretti
31Felipe NasrCarlin
41Dalton KellettFoyt
55Alex PalouCoyne
60Jack HarveyMeyer Shank
88Colton HertaAndretti-Harding
98Scott SpeedAndretti-Herta

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    Keith Collantine
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    34 comments on “IndyCar confirms 25 of its drivers for official iRacing series”

    1. Pay attention F1. This is how you do it.

    2. Makes F1 look ridiculous.

      1. Unfortunately f1 is screwed, they can’t do anything without their official game and no one wants a part of that. Sucks but no one to blame.

        1. Except for F1 allowing such a dreadful game to exist and Codemaster for being too lazy to code it properly, never has a company name been more of a misnomer.

          1. GtisBetter (@)
            26th March 2020, 18:05

            Actually, F1 2019 is regarded as one of the best F1 games ever made. And that includes Geoff Crammond his games. And codemasters are highly regarded as a racing company, cause there are only a few who really want to put the time and effort in racing games. They don’t always get it right and of course it’s no F1 sim, but it never pretends to be. It has a very broad audience in mind and was never intended to be used as competitive sim racing. You seem to be a very sad fan indeed

    3. It seems like in their rush be the first out the gate, Liberty ended up wish a bit of a messy first virtual race.

      IndyCar are slower with their announcement, but it seems to be much more coherent.

      In terms of organization, it’s not the end of the world for Liberty, “F1” does command a greater reputation, so they still can get it right if they can sign up enough current and reputed former F1 drivers into an F1 virtual racing series. Or heck, invite some IndyCar drivers as well, maybe they’ll be able to bring some of Indy’s audiences with them.

      Of course, that is overlooking the choice of games, because – while I’m not a racing gamer – from what I’ve seen in other comments, it appears that the Codemasters F1 game is arcadey, while iRacing is a proper racing sim.

      1. @phylyp I’ve always felt the Codemaster’s F1 games meet a very nice balance between Sim/Arcade.

        The physics & stuff feel realistic enough to make sense but don’t go so far as that the game becomes too difficult for the average gamer who are likely going to make up the majority of those who play it. And of course if you make it too much of a sim it becomes difficult to play with a controller which again is going to be how the vast majority of people play it.

        I enjoy them, Always have. I don’t race online so I just play the single player stuff with my Logitech Wheel/Pedals on PC & I have a lot of fun with them.

        1. Which model of Logitech Wheel & Pedals do you use?

          1. @partofthepuzzle A Logitech DFGT that i’ve had for years. It’s not one of the best wheels out but it does a good enough job for for my shoddy driving. I don’t do it as often as I used to & also don’t take it quite as seriously, I just do it for fun & the DFGT is fine for that.

            That said I would like & have been meaning to upgrade to something newer/better which I could also run on PS4 for a while (Thrustmaster T150 or 300 maybe) but something always seems to come up that I end up having to spend the cash on instead.

        2. @stefmeister – thank you for that insight, nice to have. It seems like Codemasters targeted accessibility while iRacing goes for realism, and both seem to generally hit their targets. I can understand Liberty’s dilemma and sympathize with them – to try and give a realistic way of virtual racing, but without cutting their own product off at the knees.

        3. I enjoyed their Dirt and TOCA games, but codemasters never quite hit my mark with any of their F1 games. I tried several, and was always left wanting a little more. Knowing that they were not designing a hardcore racing sim, they should have gone for more historical premises and deeper customization. Instead they dressed up GRID in tighter clothing.

          1. @ferrox-glideh I think I remember reading some time ago that having the official F1 license means they have to do certain things. Like they have to release a new game annually based on the current season & aren’t able to have much customization in terms of car designs/liveries etc… due to having to represent the current season.

            They have also said in the past that historical content is tricky as they need to do individual deals to license any classic car or circuit they opt to include which is not only an extra expense but if you only get a license for a few years your eventually faced with no longer been able to sell the game (Hence why F1 2013 is no longer available to buy on digital storefronts, Same with the older Dirt games).

        4. Yeah F1 game is much more accessible to a wide audience, which is great for casual racers (and still great for the eSports drivers who excel at the game), but when trying to get the drivers to take part, iRacing being much more realistic is a lot better. I was watching Jimmy Broadbent talking to Hulkenberg before the race on Sunday, and they were talking about how it feels like there’s no downforce on the F1 game, and all the speed comes from mechanical grip with the tyres, which is something iRacing and rFactor are able to avoid and make it more realistic and so more enjoyable for guys going from real life to the games, because it’s more familiar to them.

    4. Indy Car has a bit more flexibility as there is a bigger driver pool due to part time entries, but 25 drivers for the first race is still good work. The fact that drivers will use their own liveries is a very good addition, that I bet keeps the sponsors happy!

      What I would love to see would be Robert Wickens joining in. He’s already trying to get BWM to let him have a go in the car they adapted for Zanardi. Its got to be easier to reconfigure a gaming wheel to have accelerating and breaking controls than a real car. And it would make for a really nice story in these dark times.

      1. @eurobrun I knew a guy when I raced on iRacing that had a disability and had his wheel adapted. He used a Fanatec handbrake as a brake lever. There was even a thread in the forum with people sharing their experiences.

    5. YES
      This is how the fans like it

    6. One thing I’ve noticed is that TV sports channels are trying to fill their schedules with ‘Great Games’, Hockey, NFL, Soccer, you name it.
      So for instance here in the USA where ESPN and NBC Sports and have at least half a dozen channels channels, why the heck aren’t F1 and Indy doing the same thing, I’d love to watch some classic historic races……

      1. @budchekov – While it would hardly qualify as historic, or even a classic, F1 are going to stream the 2014 Bahrain GP this Saturday. And they already did the 2016 Brazilian GP.

        I agree they could dig into the archives and do more than one a week.

      2. Last week FOX ran a NASCAR race from 1986. Very interesting to watch just how different the sport was.

      3. Indycar does this all the time, you should check out their YT channel

    7. Thanks, !’ll pass, :)
      I have 2000 channels listed, a nice TV and a remote, watched the World Cup Final and some Kings games yesterday, I’m certainly no Luddite but this seems like a good time for F1 to get their product on ONE of those, lotta folks at home ;).

    8. I’ll…

    9. I don’t know either game, but I get the impression that F1 is always played with newbie no-damage settings, and iRacing isn’t, and then everyone says the F1 game is ridiculous. Maybe play it with the most realistic settings?

      1. @krommenaas iRacing isn’t a “game” as such, as it obligues you to do (or not do) certain things a game would allow (or not). For instance you cannot use another view other than cockpit view. And if a car doesn’t have traction control in real life, it doesn’t have traction control in the game. Same with ABS and what’s not… So it’s a lot more focused, plus there’s nothing around careers or whatever. It’s online only (although they have been implementing the ability to do offline races with AI for specific cars and tracks).

    10. I read this morning that Robert Wickins will participate in this! I’m not a gamer, and generally these events fail to hold my attention for very long, but I’m still glad that the various series are doing something for the fans. Kudos to Indycar, and yes, F1, watch and learn.

      1. Wow, that is very interesting, I will deffinitely check this out now. Thanks for the news!

        1. Juan Manuel Correa, who was badly injured in his crash with Antoine Hubert at Spa last year, was racing in last weekend’s rFactor 2 Indianapolis race. The broadcasters created this documentary/interview with him:
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7moWPcv4ko
          I also enjoyed their interview with Indycar’s Felix Rosenquist. He only very recently upgraded his sim rig to something more substantial, so the fact that he was the only real world racer able to keep up with the fastest pro simracers in the million dollar Formula E Vegas simrace 3 years ago was all the more impressive considering he had only ever had a £200 Logitech wheel clamped to his desk at home!
          You could really sense his pain when he said that he’d never had a chance to drive an F1 car over the course of his career. That is a crying shame. He’s shown great talent at Macau, Formula E and now Indycar. But no money = not even one chance.

    11. Here’s hoping it’s Watkins Glen, good to see Robert around, should be fun….

    12. I wanna see Mario Andretti run this so bad. I really hope Indycar will get him involved. I know I can’t be the only one wanting to see Mario mix it up with this younger group of guys!

    13. That’s very cool. I’ll definitely check that out.

    14. Sure some of the F1 driver’s could get together and get something going on iRacing aside from Lando and Max. Just circumvent the poor official game. The drivers hold all the cards here, no promoter or official body is required.

    15. wow, impressive line up, im glad indy is taking this seriously and are doing it with some more ambition. I hope Liberty takes notice..

    Comments are closed.