Chris Walsh: From Military to Motorsport (Part 1)

Few drivers have had a career ascent that has looked anything like Chris Walsh’s. After all, it’s not often that you’ll see an active-duty member of the United States Air Force balance his military commitments with a professional racing career, but that’s exactly what Walsh has been doing. 2024 was his finest season yet, as he didn’t just win a TC America championship in the BMW M2 CS Racing—he also got to celebrate his season with BMW in Munich, and he helped bring his car to hundreds of thousands of iRacers worldwide as our newest Rookie-level Sports Car machine.

In part one of our two-part interview, Chris talks about his incredible journey from the military to getting behind the wheel, getting the M2 CS Racing into iRacing, and his championship-winning 2024 campaign:

First things first: for those who don’t know your name yet, you probably have one of the most interesting biographies of pretty much anybody in motorsport. What’s your background and how did you end up here as a professional racing driver?

Yeah, I get this question quite a bit. I’m never sure how to say it because it is a lot of stuff and it sounds really made up at times, it doesn’t follow a logical sequence.

If I were to go like way back to when I was a young kid, I was a big Gran Turismo fan and played F1 games on PlayStation. I was always enamored with motorsport, I just didn’t have access to it. So I played all the other sports, primarily hockey, but ultimately ran track and played football in college. I grew up wanting to join the military, and that’s what I ended up doing once I graduated college. I’m currently an Air Force Special Tactics Officer, which is the Air Force’s special operations ground force and is the equivalent of the Navy Seal or Army Green Beret communities.

When you go through that training pipeline, you get to ride dirt bikes as one of the phases of the training, and I remember the first moment I cracked the throttle open, I was like, I’ve been missing this. Why haven’t I been doing something like this my whole life? So I got into riding bikes a bit and just ended up getting onto the race track that way. That was kind of my first foray into real world racing, doing that on my own, but very sporadically. You know, I didn’t do any full seasons, and it was just when I had time.

Coincidentally, through all of that, I had also kind of sprung an interest to try out bobsledding, because I saw that you could do tryouts. I was a college athlete, and I was just like, hey, this might make sense and maybe scratch that itch. I went right after that and got onto the team. And I did that for about three and a half years until 2022, when I went to the Olympic team trials. I didn’t make the Olympic team, but nonetheless, it was a great experience.

Through that experience, I met Greg West—he was just finishing up his time in skeleton, and he got me introduced to iRacing. And that’s when I really got into sim racing—and with Covid at that time too, bobsled was shut down, and so I really leaned into that because I had kind of a lot of free time. And I was like, oh man, I love the sim stuff. That just sparked the idea of getting back to the race track.

It was probably 2020 when I really started getting onto the track. I never went to any formal racing schools and just really leaned on my sim experience, it was kind of a rapid progression. I did some Champ Car and WRL that year. And then in 2021, I had an opportunity to drive the M2 through an owner that I met. We did a one-off with SRO and I took a podium in my first pro race. I never drove the car until that weekend, never even been on slick tires. So that was a wild way to get after it. But I did all my, preparation stuff through iRacing, so that translated well for me.

Things just kind of went from there. In 2022, I did the same thing—I sold a car that I had to go do another M2 race in SRO. I hadn’t ever run a full season yet, I was still kind of piecing it together because the funding side is tough with racing. In 2023 then I had a little bit of support, was able to do some GT4 races, and then finally in 2024, I got the first full season support and a team that was interested in letting me run. And then we had this amazing championship season and I got to drive both BMW M4 GT4 and drive the M2. That’s kind of how I got to where I’m at today.

You also have a long history in esports, and you touched a little bit on getting linked up with Greg to get involved with iRacing. But how did you kind of get involved with us in terms of helping to get the M2 on to the sim?

It’s kind of like a dream come true, right? Like I love the sim. I love iRacing in particular, because I’ve driven them all and while they each have something to offer iRacing is my preference.  One day randomly I got reached out to by the iRacing staff. I thought this can’t be real, you know, sometimes you get an email and you’re like this must be spam.

But I get this email that’s like, hey, we’re looking at putting the M2 into the simulator. And we’d like to talk to you and see if you can partner with us so we can scan your car and do the whole thing. I just couldn’t believe it because it was out of the blue.

I responded immediately like, yes, I absolutely want to do this! So that’s kind of how that came about.

You’ve had a few years of experience with the M2 CS Racing platform, so you’ve had some great results with it. First of all, compared to some of the other things you’ve driven, what do you like about the M2 platform in the real world—and second of all, for iRacers, especially with this being a rookie car, how do you think that racing with the M2 benefits sim racers?

The thing I like about the M2 is, with its shorter wheelbase, it’s a surprisingly nimble car. It handles incredibly well. You think it’s kind of a bit heavier and bulky for a sports car, but I was always impressed with the handling characteristics of the car. You know, it has decent power. It’s not crazy powerful and electronically leaves a little bit to be desired in the real world. (You have to) be careful with the brake pedal because you’re getting a boosted street brake so the pedal lacks a bit of feeling.

It’s a GT4 Light, if you will. It’s just really good, and it creates a very confidence inspiring experience. You still get some of the basic principles of learning how to roll speed through corners and really work on trail brake technique and throttle application. It’s not so forgiving that you can just, you know, mash all the controls and get away with a lot of stuff. But it’s also not so powerful that it’ll get you in a lot of trouble. So it’s really a great entry point, I think, into touring cars. It’s exciting racing because all the cars are evenly balanced. You usually get some pretty good battles out of that type of racing.

Your last season in the car went particularly well, with you and the Carrus Callas folks taking the class title. Let’s walk through your season—it’s a very competitive class, and it also hits some of the best tracks in the world. What were some of the highlights of your season? When did it really become clear that it was a championship year and might be something really special for you?

I guess the first race in Sonoma was a kind of a wild one. We got a little bit of testing before the season started, but we got there and the track was having issues, so we didn’t get a whole lot of practice. Luckily I had been there one time before and I had a ton of sim prep, even though iRacing doesn’t have their layout. What I would do is go out and clear myself of penalties to run the layout the series uses, because it’s just a unique way that they run that track.

The goals and expectations from the team are that they want success and we want to try to win a championship. That was the starting off point for this year. And so I was like, okay, I’ve got to deliver results. Once we finally got on track after they made a bunch of track repairs, we were right there on the pace, so that was really encouraging. And then in those two races, I mean, we battled—I think we were 3 or 4 tenths apart for the majority of the 40 minutes for the race. I made the pass for the lead in both races, probably in the last 5 or 7 minutes of the race. And those are just really exciting ways to win a sports car race. So we realized, okay, we’ve got what it takes to be in the front of this field, and this looks like we have a good chance at a championship run for the season. And so that was really, really exciting.

From there we went to Sebring, a track that I’m much more familiar with and the home track to the team. So we’ve had a bit more testing there. We were just kind of in a different league that weekend. And so that really kind of gave me confidence that we could control this championship, we don’t just have to fight every weekend for it. We had a bunch of weekends where we were able to run away in the front because we found the right setup, had the right pace, took care of the tires, and got away from the other battles pretty quickly.

It shaped up faster than I expected that we had a chance to win a championship. And then I think we finished a round early where we clinched it. That was obviously awesome. That was the first race where my parents and my wife and kids were able to be there. So that was really a special moment to get to share that with everybody.

I’m looking at the points table right now and it looks like first, first, first, first, second, second, you know, more wins than not. That’s got to be a special season to be involved with.

You know the BOP game. So as the season wore on—you know, I’m not going to complain, but the BOP changed rapidly for the car and so that made it harder to be competitive at the end of the year. So you know, it happens. It’s part of sports car racing. You’re not going to agree with every decision, but nonetheless, I’m hoping to keep going up the ladder so it’s one of those things that you just kind of have to learn and deal with. I wanted to have won every race, but you have to deal with the adversity of motorsport and learn how to overcome that. But never finishing outside of second is really not a bad place to be.

Stay tuned for more from Chris Walsh tomorrow, including his trip to Munich for BMW’s Night of Trophies, his 2025 plans, and more!

Images via Chris Walsh

You may also like...

Recommended

2025 eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series schedule revealed

Recommended

2024-25 World of Outlaws Pro Series | Race Preview | Race 7: Huset’s Speedway

Recommended

THIS WEEK: iRacing Roar Special Event

Recommended

Chris Walsh: From Military to Motorsport (Part 2)