Castro, Crossno Lead IndyCar Ovals

Once again, the venerable Milwaukee Mile attracted a bumper crop of IndyCars,

The seventh week of the iRacing.com Indy Car Oval racing took us to Wisconsin to battle on the historic Milwaukee Mile a four turn oval with 9.25 degree banking and an appetite for the rubber on your tires. The Milwaukee Mile saw 561 drivers in both the IndyCar Oval Fixed and Open series trying to race their way to glory, however many sim-racers had their tires eaten by the track surface and ended-up biting the wall.

The week produced fairly clean and competitive racing as displayed in the IndyCar Fixed Oval Strength of Field race. The 3012 SoF race saw 21 drivers battle for the win with 13 on the lead lap and 20 classified as running. Tim Doyle (Atlantic) was on the pole position for the race and got off to a good start. By the Lap Eight Doyle had come under fire from Andre Castro (NY) and lost the lead, as a result he fell back to the second place in a battle with Matt Cooke (Canada). Entering Turn One with Doyle on the outside and Cooke on the inside, the Canadian missed the corner and collided with Doyle.  The impact sent both cars into the outside wall for the first and only caution of the race, putting both drivers 47 laps down and out of contention for the win.

Doyle (4) and Cooke find the wall as Castro (3) and Lambertson (6) motor past.

Following the restart, the top four broke away as they picked-off slower and damaged competition from the melee of the midfielders who had jockeyed hard on the restart for track position and cost themselves dearly. Castro went on to dominate the 55 lap race after he took the lead five laps into the race and also set the fastest lap time of 22.165 seconds. Matt Lambertson (Pennsylvania) finished in second position 1.185 seconds behind after starting in the sixth position, underling the sense that — week by week — he is slowly becoming a title contender. Third place finisher Will Lamb (Carolina) came in 3.222 seconds behind Castro. Brandon Trost (Penn) finished fourth once he focused on his driving and charged to the front. Rounding out the top five was Bryan Tong (West) who finished 11.261 seconds off of Castro after starting in the fifteenth position.

The point standings for the iRacing.com IndyCar Fixed Oval Series saw Castro expand his point lead with 1247 points. Second position (1183) is Lambertson who is now one of the major players in the battle for the championship. Third position (1030) driver Doyle needs to turn his luck around if he wants to continue having a shot at stealing the title away from Castro. The fourth position (1016) is held by Jonathan Goke (Mid-South) who has raced in six of seven weeks and looks to be Castro’s biggest opponent to winning this season’s title.  Rounding-out the top five (1011) is Cooke, who still presents a threat to the championship.

Castro leads the charge down the backstraight.

The point standings in the iRacing.com IndyCar Open Oval Series sees many of the same front runners as the fixed series. Cooke in position two (862) and Lambertson in position three (823) are among the group as they chase down point leader Randy Crossno (California) who has 956 points. Fourth place (792) is held by Georg Naujoks (DE-AT-CH) with Rob Unglenieks (Michigan) rounding-out the top five with 785 points.

The eighth week of the iRacing.com IndyCar Oval Racing takes place at Iowa Speedway, a 0.875 mile oval which will see the IndyCars battle under the lights and surely draw-in some stars to run for the win. As the teams gear-up for a battle in the cornfields we can only speculate there will be fireworks when someone clips and spins on the apron.

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