New names have been easy to find in Season 7. Familiar new names have been much rarer.
Across the first ten rounds, 62 drivers have made their IMS debuts. For many of them, that first appearance was also the last.
The Season 7 rookie class
Through Round 10
The ten in this story are different. Each has raced at least four weekends, taken a permanent seat and started at least four of every five rounds available since debut.
That is the distinction here. Not rookie speed, nor one memorable result. The ordinary act of returning until a name on the sign-up sheet becomes one of the people who make IMS feel like IMS.
A friend sent rbn an invite in March. He arrived with no clear idea what the server was, how the races worked or where he might fit.
Five months later, he won in the wet at Japan.
It would make a tidy model for a rookie season: arrive, learn, improve, win. The rest of the class refuse to fit it. Jacko needed no education in league racing and has spent the year making films about his weekends. Newt's first three D1 finishes went ninth, seventh and fifth before the season turned against him. Tedhead feared he would start his first race at the back and finished fourth. TheMDog has won so often that calling him a debutant now feels like a clerical error.
Together, these ten have made 72 starts and won five races. The numbers range from TheMDog's four victories to Arti Moreno's seven points, but all ten have already acquired something more lasting: IMS expects them to be there on Saturday.
Ten who stayed
| Driver | Seat | The season so far |
|---|---|---|
| Jacko | VCARB · D3 | 10 starts · one podium · a season filmed as he raced it |
| Newt | Audi · D1 | P9, P7 and P5 in his first three starts |
| Tedhead | Haas · D1 | Prepared for the back row; finished P4 on debut |
| BP | Cadillac · D1 | Five weekends out of five · 22 points |
| Arti Moreno | Audi · D1 | Four weekends out of four · all from Mexico's morning shift |
| rbn | VCARB · D2 | One win · two podiums · 78 points |
| Hotshotll_ | Aston Martin · D2 | Six weekends out of six since his debut |
| TheMDog | Ferrari · D3 | Four wins · five podiums · 176 points |
| bigwoottz | Haas · D4 | A reserve night became a permanent seat |
| xBlackSkull47 | Haas · D3 | P5, P2 and P5 in his first three starts |
Six arrival waves, ten familiar names
First IMS start · Season 7
- 01Round 13 arrivalsJacko · Tedhead · rbn
- 02Round 21 arrivalNewt
- 03Round 32 arrivalsTheMDog · bigwoottz
- 04Round 51 arrivalHotshotll_
- 05Round 62 arrivalsBP · xBlackSkull47
- 06Round 71 arrivalArti Moreno
Jacko edits the season as he races it
Jacko's rookie status begins and ends at IMS. He had been away from the F1 games for ten months before Season 7, but has played the series since 2001 and arrived with experience from other leagues.
He soon became D3's unofficial film editor.
Almost every weekend has been followed by a short highlights package. The mistakes stay in. So do the awkward contacts, the lag, the damaged wing and the clean battles that prevent a difficult race from becoming a wasted one. The films are made with iMovie and, when the mood takes him, Keynote. The polish is secondary to the record he is building.
COTA was preserved as a clumsy afternoon rather than recut as a heroic recovery. Monza began with front-wing damage and the loss of a possible top-five finish, but the film found its purpose in the long fight that followed. Jacko has a useful instinct for giving the other cars as much attention as his own.
That fairness survives beyond the edit. He will argue his view of a corner, especially when connection trouble has complicated it, without treating disagreement as a declaration of war. It is an old league racer's habit: defend your ground, then meet the same people again next week.
Ten D3 starts have brought nine top-10 finishes, a podium and sixth in the standings. The season-ending film is still to come. Jacko has already supplied the footage.
Eight race edits, from his IMS debut at COTA to Monza.
D1 does not offer a welcome committee
Newt and Tedhead are separated by one place in the D1 standings and share the same 27-point total. The arithmetic is their only similarity.
Newt began by asking for lap-time references. He had little experience of league racing on F1 26, worried about losing time through nerves and entered some weekends with barely any practice. None of it stopped his first three finishes improving from ninth to seventh to fifth.
Then came the other half of a D1 education. The points dried up, a faulty pedal contributed to lock-ups and a miserable run briefly left him ready to walk away. He fixed the hardware, accepted the mistakes it had helped cause and returned.
Tedhead received his warning in reverse. He prepared for the possibility of qualifying last, put the Haas ninth and brought it home fourth. It was a magnificent beginning and a dreadful guide to what followed.
His first season without the racing line has since included a brake pedal registering on the grid, damaged cars, restarts and enough unfinished business to make the chequered flag feel like an achievement. Frustration comes easily to him; so does responsibility once he knows he has got it wrong. He has learned both sides of D1 in full view of the room.
BP and Arti Moreno arrived later, without time for such a long first act. BP asked for D1 and was sent straight into it. Five rounds later, he has 22 points and none of the reserve one might expect from a newcomer. His Saturdays spill into the room: qualifying irritation, strategy, fantasy scores, jokes, then another race. By his second weekend, he sounded as though he had been there for years.
Arti's commitment is easier to measure by the clock. The IMS start falls at around eight in the morning in Mexico. D1 has offered seven points and no gentle introduction, yet he has made all four rounds since joining. He has raced through thin preparation and the sort of first-season collisions that can make another Saturday in bed seem rather appealing. The Audi keeps appearing.
Newt, Tedhead, BP and Arti have not been protected by their newcomer status. That is why they no longer need it.
| D1 newcomer | Since debut | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Newt | R2 · 8 of 9 starts | 27 |
| Tedhead | R1 · 9 of 10 starts | 27 |
| BP | R6 · 5 of 5 starts | 22 |
| Arti Moreno | R7 · 4 of 4 starts | 7 |
rbn found a winning car; Hotshot kept finding the grid
rbn's early D1 races were full of speed and short of reward. He could see the openings, race closely and explain where the opportunity had gone, but the result rarely survived the evening with him.
The move from Audi to VCARB, and from D1 to D2, gave that pace somewhere to land.
Japan produced the breakthrough. Starting fifth in the wet, rbn won for the first time. At Monza he followed it by going from tenth to second while nursing a front-left tyre he believed was close to the end. The newcomer who once needed help finding a race now arrives in Abu Dhabi on the back of 55 points from two rounds.
rbn will press a point when he believes he is right and has already proved capable of changing minds. Once the argument is over, he leaves it there. Racing can become heated without every disagreement becoming permanent.
Hotshotll_ has built his place from the opposite raw material. He asked how to obtain a licence, took an Aston Martin seat and has said very little since. He has also raced every D2 weekend available to him: six rounds, six starts.
There is a temptation to overlook a rookie with eight points and few speeches. IMS cannot run on highlights alone. It also needs the driver who signs up, arrives and does it again the following week. Hotshot's season has been an argument for attendance.
The routes nobody plans
bigwoottz did not arrive with a programme or a speech. He asked to reserve one Friday, hoped a seat might open and thanked everyone after getting his first race.
Then he came back.
The reserve appearance became a permanent place at Haas. Seven starts have brought a podium and 50 points, but he still carries the manners of somebody who remembers being grateful for one night on the grid. When his first reading of a moment is wrong, he corrects himself quickly. There is no performance afterwards and no attempt to preserve a dead argument.
xBlackSkull47 took another route. He arrived late and skipped the gradual introduction altogether: fifth, second and fifth in his first three starts across D2 and D3. Four appearances have already produced 60 points.
He races with the confidence of somebody who believes a gap belongs to the first driver brave enough to try it. That instinct occasionally takes him beyond what the corner will allow, but he has already grasped one of online racing's stranger truths: two drivers can experience different versions of the same collision.
One driver earned his place by returning until the reserve label disappeared. The other made four races feel like enough of an introduction. Both now hold Haas seats.
TheMDog has outgrown the rookie label
TheMDog skipped the apprenticeship. He has made nine starts, won four of them and reached five podiums. His 176 points are spread across three divisions, including three consecutive victories in D3. He has altered who IMS expects to see at the front.
The swagger is worn lightly. He can reduce himself to an ordinary D3 driver before the race, then drive like anything but one. He is just as quick to laugh at his errors as he is to move on from them.
The full effect of his season on Ferrari belongs to another story. Here, he stretches the definition of a debutant until it nearly breaks. A first year can be an apprenticeship. It can also be an invasion.
Abu Dhabi is only the penultimate race of their first IMS season. By now, each carries something that did not exist when the season began: a style the field recognises, results that belong to IMS and enough history here for a poor weekend to become part of a career rather than the end of one.
Another class will arrive soon enough. These ten will no longer be the names IMS is trying to place. They will be the people those newcomers have to race.
