Growing up a scant 40 miles from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Edinburgh, Trine freshman Wyatt Burton grew up loving the track and its signature race, the Indianapolis 500 – the largest single-day sporting event in the world. While Burton dreamed as a child of competing in “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” the Collegiate iRacing League gave the avid racing-simulation driver that opportunity.
And on Feb. 19, Burton seized the opportunity to give a virtual kiss to the yard of bricks that serves as the start-finish line when he won the CiL’s inaugural race at Indianapolis, the Golden Eagle Transfer Scholarship 500 at Indianapolis, presented by Texas A&M-Texarkana, by 0.038 second.
“You’re going 220-230 miles an hour the entire time,” Burton said. “You have to work your way through the field, you have to make your own strategy and hopefully it’s the one that ends up being right. Even if you do all that right, you still have to have a little bit of luck to get it done.”
With a penchant for the oval tracks, Burton has won two of the three superspeedway races in the series this spring, taking home his second checkered flag of the season with a win in the Eagle’s Nest 150 at Texas, presented by TAMUT Esports, at Texas Motor Speedway by 0.029 second. He then finished second by a narrow 0.009 second in the Eagle Esports Recruitment Challenge, presented by TAMUT Esports, at Michigan International Speedway.
The CiL series holds sessions in fall and spring, and Burton said he learned from challenges in the road courses in the fall. Entering this past Wednesday’s spring finale, Burton found himself in fourth place in the CiL points race.
“I struggled a little bit with road courses and I couldn’t pick up an oval win, but this season I’ve consistently been top five in speed with road courses,” Burton said. “I’m getting used to my setup at school and getting everything more even.”
Those competing in the CiL, which consists of four competition circuits – CiL Cup Series, CiL Formula College Series, CiL Collegiate Sportscar Challenge GT3 and Championship CiL Short Track Showdown – all use the iRacing simulator, which was originally launched for drivers to gain experience navigating different tracks.
Rather than racing video games, iRacing stands as more of a driving simulator. All courses within iRacing are produced via 3D laser scan, meaning that “every single bump you would find in real life will be represented,” as Burton explained. Actual race cars are also placed into wind tunnels, and their aerodynamics are studied to produce a driving experience that almost exactly mirrors what those on the NASCAR Cup Series or the NTT IndyCar Series would experience.
“The CiL does fixed setup races, which is another reason why it’s so competitive,” Burton said. “Everyone has the same setup on the car, we’re obviously driving in the same weather. The only thing we can change on the cars is our brake bias and you can change the front and rear anti-rollbar stiffness.”
Even driving at speeds nearing 230 mph, Burton and the other CiL competitors driving at Indianapolis Motor Speedway still logged well over two hours to complete the 500-mile circuit. Winning both the Indy 500 and the 150-mile race at Texas required the right combination of pit strategy and focus on both the course and the other drivers.
“I can do some number crunching in practice to prepare for the race, but during the race I was by myself so I had to do that on the fly,” Burton said. “That all changes when a yellow comes out, that can completely throw you off your game.
“The mental part of it, it’s definitely exhausting by the end of it. While you’re driving, you’re going that fast and there’s people feet or even inches away from you. The adrenaline keeps you going.”
