Cooper Webster unstoppable in INDYCAR ButtKicker iRacing Pro Series second round at Long Beach

For the second-straight week to open the inaugural INDYCAR ButtKicker iRacing Pro Series season, it was a Team Redline Honda taking the checkered flag. Cooper Webster wasn’t among the group of Team Redline drivers that locked out the top-five finishing positions at Indianapolis, but he was unstoppable on Thursday night, claiming a dominant win at the Long Beach Street Circuit.

“I’m super stoked, I’m so happy,” Webster said post-race. “After Indianapolis, that was a nightmare for me, I couldn’t figure out where the pace was. I was just slower than all of my teammates… To come here, I just grinded. I worked as hard as I could every day, to try and get the pace back. The pace was good, and then it was down to putting a lap down in qualifying. I’ve been struggling lately with that, but this time was really good, and then it was just eyes forward in the the race… Super, super happy to bring it home.”

Webster started from the pole position, leading 35 of the 40 laps in the event, only giving up laps led to Apex Racing Team’s Peter Berryman and Williams Esports’ Sota Muto through the green flag pit cycle. Methodically cutting through the traffic throughout the night, Webster claimed his first win by over five seconds back to Berryman, and nearly seven seconds over his Team Redline teammate Diogo Pinto in third.

While Webster’s night was mostly uneventful, the rest of the field wasn’t as lucky. Another Team Redline machine, driven by Florian Lebigre, started on the outside pole position, but missed the braking mark entering Turn 1 on the first lap and wound up in the runoff area, falling from second to last almost immediately. The rest of the field managed to get into Aquarium Way, but some did not escape the fountain.

Brandon Traino (Apex Racing Team), Michael Romanidis (Coanda Esports), David Toth (Drago Racing), and more were collected in a multi-car pileup right in a choke point in the exit of the fountain. Toth continued on briefly, nearly making his way to West Shoreline Drive before the damage was too much to handle at speed, sending the car into a lazy flip which nearly ended the day for Luis Núñez (Nexxus Esports) and Adam Crane (Satellite Racing).

Up front, Jordan Caruso (Coanda Esports) was keeping close tabs on Webster. Once the leaders started catching traffic, however, pit stops became very enticing. Caruso opted to pit first, starting the race on the Firestone Firehawk guayule race tires, a green-walled alternate tire compound that, in the real-world racing application, is “composed of a new sustainable natural rubber derived from the guayule shrub, which requires less reharvesting than traditional sources of rubber,” per INDYCAR when the tire was announced back in 2022.

Webster, also on the guayule greens at the start, pitted two laps later. Caruso’s strategy might have worked out better for him, but he wound up remerging in the pack behind a slower Núñez, and ultimately lost a piece of his front wing in trying to navigate around him. The loss of the wing meant the loss of downforce and ultimately the loss of lap time, evident by his final result, finishing in seventh.

Front wing damage was rampant throughout the field, not as much a death sentence as it might be on a faster, more open-spaced venue, but still debilitating in its own right. This ultimately allowed Berryman up into the second spot, and Pinto in third, but they would need a miracle to have a chance at Webster, who was clear by five seconds entering the final 10 laps when the field fully cycled the pit stops.

Despite the attrition through the race, 22 cars still finished on the lead lap, with four more cars completing the race one lap off the leader. Last week’s winner, Edoardo Leo (Team Redline), was not one of those 26 drivers, retiring on the 23rd lap after heavy contact with the barrier. Michele Costantini (Coanda Esports) also failed to finish after crashing out of a possible top-five, racing hard with Team Redline’s Gustavo Ariel for the spot. Lebigre, by the way, managed to fight back to finish in 10th after his first lap excursion.

INDYCAR ButtKicker iRacing Pro Series results from Race #2 at Long Beach are as follows:

INDYCAR ButtKicker iRacing Pro Series points after Race #2 at Long Beach are as follows:

1. Cooper Webster, 72
2. Diogo C. Pinto, 65
3. Peter Berryman, 64
4. Gustavo Ariel, 62
5. Florian A Lebigre, 61
6. Luke McKeown, 60
7. Edoardo Leo, 59
8. Sam Kuitert, 57
9. Ricardo Rico, 44
10. Sota Muto, 43

With the win, Webster moves up into the championship lead by seven points over Pinto. Berryman moves up into third, with Ariel and Lebigre rounding out the top-five. Leo falls to seventh after his early retirement from the event. By leading a lap in the pit cycle, Muto moves into the 10th position leaving Long Beach.

Next up is a trip to the Midwest for the first Oval challenge of the season. Iowa Speedway will host. It’s a new challenge for all 33 drivers as this track did not appear on the Qualifying Series’ schedule. Also, Race #9 has been voted upon, and The Milwaukee Mile will be the venue. That makes five ovals on the schedule to complement the five road and street courses that were already planned. Milwaukee joins Iowa, Indianapolis, World Wide Technology Raceway, and Nashville Superspeedway on the oval side.

The broadcast for Iowa goes live at 8:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, October 3rd, on all iRacing social channels and the NTT INDYCAR SERIES YouTube channel and website.

For more information on the INDYCAR ButtKicker iRacing Pro Series, visit www.iracing.com/indycar-esports/. For more information on iRacing and for special offers, visit www.iracing.com.

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