IndyCar: Aeroscreen’s virtual ‘debut’ easy to digest for haters, critics

By Asher Fair | Apr 2, 2020

WATKINS GLEN, NEW YORK - MARCH 28: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) (Editors note: This image was computer generated in-game) Felix Rosenqvist, Chip Ganassi Racing, Scott Speed, Andretti Herta Autosport, iRacing, IndyCar (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images) /

One overlooked aspect of the IndyCar iRacing Challenge opener is the fact that it technically marked the “debut” of the new Aeroscreen.

In May of 2019, IndyCar formed a partnership with Red Bull Advanced Technologies and introduced the Aeroscreen for enhanced driver cockpit protection beginning in the 2020 season.

This Aeroscreen, which was seen for the first time in Spring Training at Circuit of the Americas in mid-February attached to each of the cars that took to the 20-turn, 3.427-mile (5.515-kilometer) natural terrain road course in Austin, Texas, was slated to make its race debut in the 2020 season opener.

The season was slated to begin on Sunday, March 15 on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, but the coronavirus pandemic caused those plans to be drastically changed.

The season is now not scheduled to get underway until Saturday, May 30 with the first of the two doubleheader races at the Raceway at Belle Isle Park.

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Postponements and cancellations: TRACKER

IndyCar has since released a new 14-race schedule that, compared to the original 17-race schedule that was released early last September, features three cancellations, five postponements and one race that was actually moved up by one week.

Of course, this schedule remains subject to change, and there is no guarantee that the season will, in fact, get underway at the end of May as scheduled, given how fluid this global crisis is.

But in response to these unprecedented postponements and cancellations, IndyCar opener up the IndyCar iRacing Challenge, and the opener took place at virtual Watkins Glen International this past Saturday.

In terms of anything that isn’t actually real-life racing, iRacing is about as real as it gets. The complexity and unmatched intricacy of the simulation aspect of the game has led even the best drivers to classify it as more challenging to master than the real thing.

It was part-time Dreyer & Reinbold Racing driver Sage Karam who dominated the 45-lap race around the 11-turn, 3.40-mile (5.472-kilometer) natural terrain road course in Watkins Glen, New York. He took the pole position and led all but two laps, only giving up the lead to Team Penske’s Will Power during pit stops.

The 25-year-old Nazareth, Pennsylvania native won the race by 3.6174 seconds over Chip Ganassi Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist after lapping all but the top seven competitors.

But one overlooked aspect of this race, aside of the great opportunity it gave for under-the-radar drivers such as Karam to show off their skills in equipment equal to the rest of the field, is the fact that every car in the field had an Aeroscreen for the first time in IndyCar history.

So as strange as it sounds, the Aeroscreen technically made its IndyCar race “debut” in a virtual setting, and as a result, it wasn’t nearly as hard to digest for the haters and critics as might’ve been expected had it debuted in an actual live race.

Primarily due to aesthetics, the Aeroscreen was criticized by the IndyCar fanbase from the day it was introduced. There were false rumors of “hope” peddled on social media throughout the entire offseason that the device would not be ready for the start of the year, with some even rumors even suggesting that they wouldn’t be utilized at all this season.

Alas, the Aeroscreen technically hasn’t “debuted” in a live IndyCar race, despite being ready to go. But it has now, in fact, been used for an IndyCar race that has been broadcast to fans as a typical race would have been, and it still didn’t draw nearly the criticism it would have drawn in the real world.

Add on to that the fact that there are another five races on the IndyCar iRacing Challenge schedule prior to the new scheduled start of the actual 2020 season, and fans will have more than their share of time to digest the aesthetics of the device before actually seeing it used in an official championship race.

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By the way, if you had bet on seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson competing in the Aeroscreen’s “debut” IndyCar race when the new contraption was announced last May, you probably won a lot of money. So you probably didn’t win a lot of money.