The races between grid and finish
“Why do i have a 6.8 rating bruh” Milan had just finished ninth in Austria D0. If all you knew was the official result, the rating did not look especially strange: he had qualified tenth and gained one place. Then Milan added the part the table could not tell you. “I went from p20 to p9” On lap one, contact with a ghosting car had dumped him from the middle of the grid to last. From there, in the fastest division IMS could put together, he passed or outlasted eleven cars and recovered to the points. He had not driven a P10-to-P9 race. He had driven two races: ten places backwards in the opening mess, then eleven places forwards through D0. Sammy explained why the number looked wrong. “it only reads quali position to finish position,” he wrote. “but it doesnt count overtakes.” His final message supplied the premise for this entire collection: “if you get bummed and come back through the field”. That happened repeatedly in Season 7. Drivers recovered positions the timing sheet never knew they had lost. Others reached the front before a restart deleted the running. A disconnection turned P3 into P14. A wing change turned a charge into an apparent one-place loss. The final results are correct, but they are not complete accounts of what happened. These are the races hiding inside them.
Austria’s missing middle
Austria: one place on paper, eleven on the road
Milan did it in a 20-car D0 field. Season 7 gave the L0 driver only two starts in the division, and he finished both in the points: seventh in Texas and ninth in Austria. Fourteen points from two appearances is a useful record. Austria was the difficult half of it. The opening-lap incident stripped away the value of his P10 grid slot almost immediately. Once he was 20th, every car between him and the points was a D0 car. He still returned to ninth. The official net gain of one is arithmetically true only because it compares the two moments that make the race look least eventful. The same Austria weekend produced another recovery that the finishing order compressed. CONNOROCE began D2 in 11th, fell to 12th and climbed as high as third. His own count was blunt: “Overtook about 20 cars during the race.” That number has to remain Connor's estimate—the classification cannot authenticate every exchange—but the movement through the field is not in doubt. Connor eventually finished fifth, only 0.139 seconds behind xAQxFr in fourth and 0.146 ahead of Walter in sixth. After spending the race working through traffic, he ended it in a three-car fight separated by less than three tenths. He had already finished third at the Texas opener, so Austria left him with 32 points and two top-five finishes from the first two rounds. That early form became a 12-round D2 campaign containing two podiums and 93 points.
Official IMS race broadcast.
Silverstone: Mag raced hungry; Ceetee gave away his own applause
MagMagnussen's Silverstone began with the discovery that D1 was starting two hours earlier than he expected. His immediate problem was not strategy or tyre temperature. It was food. “I got time to make a pizza before the race trust,” he wrote. Wadz told him he would still cook. Mag disagreed: “No bro i cant cook on a empty stomach.” The advice from the chat became more severe—“Hunger is needed”; “A hungry chef is a dangerous chef”—and Mag went racing without the preparation he wanted. He started third, half-spun and estimated that the moment cost him around three seconds. He recovered to second and finished 3.329 seconds behind Ussh. That proximity did not prove he would have won without the error, but it explained why he believed the opportunity had been there: “I feel like i had the pace to win that.” It was also his second runner-up finish in three rounds. Mag's opening sequence was P2 in Texas, P4 in Austria and P2 at Silverstone—61 points before the season was a quarter old. The pizza exchange made the race funny. The result made it part of a serious D1 campaign rather than a disposable piece of chat. Ceetee's D4 afternoon was buried for the opposite reason: somebody else's story was too good. WilierBread started tenth and won on his 60th IMS start, securing his first podium and first victory after 59 attempts without either. It deserved the attention it received. Behind him, Ceetee was producing the race that would become his only podium of Season 7. Before the start, he had announced it was “time to shit the bed so hard”. He qualified 11th, fell to the back and then worked all the way up to second on the road. He finished third, 3.346 seconds behind Bread, and called it “one of the best IMS races of all time”. Then he handed the moment away: “i went last to second but bread you take that driver of the day”. That was generous, but it also helped his own recovery disappear. Bread's wait gave Silverstone its perfect headline. Ceetee's last-to-second climb was the supporting performance that made the race around it as good as he said it was.
Two Silverstone podiums rebuilt
Official IMS race broadcast.
Las Vegas: the race Mersaki and rbn were not allowed to keep
The first D1 running at Las Vegas produced a complete alternative version of the race.
Mersaki was an L2 driver starting 18th in D1. rbn, also L2, began one place behind him. Those were not positions from which either should have been dictating the night. Yet the disorder pushed both of them through the field: Mersaki reached the lead, while rbn climbed to the group fighting for third and fourth.
Mersaki understood the absurdity before anybody had to explain it. “Something has to be wrong if I have went from p18 to p1😭😭😭,” he wrote.
He was right. During the first Safety Car period, cars entering the pits glitched and appeared as ghosted cars on the circuit. The lobby was compromised badly enough that the running could not stand. The race was abandoned and reset as a 35 per cent event. Everything Mersaki and rbn had done vanished with it.
Mersaki tried to negotiate from the strongest possible position: “How abt just call it a race with the order on lap 11? I think thats reasonable😭🙏”. It was transparently self-interested, which was why it was funny, but it also captured what a restart costs. For the people at the front, it restores order. For drivers who have already converted 18th into first, it confiscates a race they cannot recreate.
rbn knew the same thing was happening to him. “i would have P19 to P4 performance 🤣,” he wrote, followed by the simplest review of their cancelled evening: “we cooked xd”.
In the race that counted, Mersaki finished tenth. rbn was classified 15th after retiring. Those results belong to the rerun; they do not retroactively make the first charge less real. Season 7 contained an L2 driver going from 18th to the lead of a D1 race, and another going from 19th to the front four. Neither appears in the standings.
Las Vegas produced two different races
Official IMS race broadcast.
Spa: Ted finally got the start he wanted, then had to do it again
Tedhead's anger after Spa makes more sense when the weeks before it are restored.
He had opened his D1 season with fourth in Texas. The next three rounds brought 15th in Austria, tenth at Silverstone and a retirement in 16th at Las Vegas. By Spa, the L1 rookie had spent three weeks trying to turn his pace into another meaningful result.
He started 12th and launched into third. “I swear if I'm not p3 I'll riot,” he wrote while the restart order was being discussed. Then came the reason: “Best start of my life.”
Disconnections forced the reset. The order went back to qualifying positions, putting Ted in 12th again and removing everything he had gained. In the running that counted, lag and contact caught him in more trouble. He finished 19th.
His first reaction was furious: “Like I have the best start of my life p12 to 3 and we restart for people's shit Internet to take me out on restart.” The next message was one word: “Class”. Later, once the immediate anger had passed, he apologised for it. “Sorry for my anger tbh,” he wrote. “Just annoying putting time in last 3 weeks for no points.”
The reset erased ten minutes of racing and Ted's first payoff after a run of difficult weeks. The official result replaced it with another zero.
rbn lost a second major recovery in the same reset. From tenth, he reached the group running third and fourth before the interruption. After the restart, wing damage helped leave him 22nd. Las Vegas had already taken a P19-to-P4 drive away from him; Spa deleted another charge one week later.
The Spa restart erased the best part
Official IMS race broadcast.
Opts reached the podium before the connection took it back
Opts Tryhard began Las Vegas D3 in the worst possible place: 21st out of 21. His pre-race plan was for everybody ahead to solve that problem themselves. “Nah everyone infront take eachother out so I can come through 😁”
The field did not clear completely. Opts came through anyway.
He reached third, gaining 18 positions from the back of the grid. To understand the scale of that climb, his first three D3 results of the season had been ninth, tenth and 18th. He had never officially finished above ninth in the division. For part of Las Vegas, he was running six places higher than his previous best result.
Then the game disconnected him. He was classified 14th.
“I should of got dotd,” Opts wrote after the race. When challenged, he supplied the missing evidence: “P21 to p3”; “Game fucking kicks me out like im not having a good day one bit”; “I was literally p3 at one point.”
He would finish Season 7 without a podium. That makes the lost P3 more important, not less. Las Vegas was the moment he drove at podium level and never received the result with which people usually prove it.
A podium that never became a result
- 01GridP21Last in the 21-car D3 field.
- 02Live raceP3Eighteen positions gained.
- 03DisconnectOutThe game removed him from the race.
- 04ClassificationP14The podium disappeared from the record.
Official IMS race broadcast.
Australia: JD recovered to third—twice
JDJT3593 arrived late for Australia D4 with enough form to remain a threat from the back. He had won the first two rounds in Texas and Austria, finished second at Spa and arrived with 89 points, ten clear of Higosh at the top of D4.
The chat knew the pattern. “jd starts last but its not like he starts at the front when he wins,” came the pre-race assessment.
JD started 16th and reached third. Contact and a spin knocked him backwards again. He then rebuilt the same recovery and returned to third for the finish. He had reached the podium, lost it and done the work again.
Higosh won and McBeth74 finished second. McBeth took the public Driver of the Day vote, then joked that he “didn’t even do anything”. JD's answer was not subtle: “yh u did nothing i went from last to 3rd twice in that race”.
The vote did not change the championship value of the result. JD left Australia with 15 more points on an afternoon that could easily have become his first complete collapse of the season. The recovery helped preserve the lead that underpinned the rest of his D4 campaign: four wins, seven podiums and 251 points by the end of Season 7.
JD reached third twice
- 01StartP16Late arrival put the leader at the back.
- 02First recoveryP3A podium from last.
- 03Contact and spinBack againThe first recovery was undone.
- 04FinishP3He rebuilt the podium a second time.
Official IMS race broadcast.
Baku: Kat refused to let the title gap grow
Kat's title comeback is remembered through the large swings at the end of the season. Baku stopped an opening-lap setback from making the task even harder.
After Qatar, Webbah led D2 with 110 points. Walter had 99. Kat had 77, leaving her 33 behind the leader before the field reached Azerbaijan.
She started sixth and was spun on lap one. From there, the question was not whether she could rescue a glamorous result. It was how much of the championship she could prevent the incident from taking away. Kat recovered to fourth and scored 15 points. Webbah finished fifth with 13. A race that began with Kat pointing the wrong way ended with her reducing the deficit by two.
“From being spun to p4 I’ll take it,” she wrote. Then, once the recovery had settled: “Had such good pace lwk, was flying”.
Baku did not decide the championship. What it did was deny one bad first lap the chance to decide it. Instead of leaving 33 points behind with fewer rounds remaining—or falling further back—Kat kept the contest alive long enough for Japan, Monza, Abu Dhabi and Brazil to transform it. She ended the season champion on 194 points, 27 clear of Walter and 35 ahead of Webbah after the final verdicts.
Baku damage limited
- 01Before Baku−33Kat trailed Webbah after Qatar.
- 02Lap oneSpunThe title gap was exposed immediately.
- 03FinishP4Kat recovered ahead of Webbah in P5.
- 04After Baku−31Two points gained on a damaged day.
Official IMS race broadcast.
Abu Dhabi: Forestal put an L2 licence in the D0 top five
ForestalWaif1's Abu Dhabi result cannot be understood as a routine P14-to-P5 recovery. The licence and division are the story.
Forestal was L2. D0 was the fastest division in IMS. He was therefore racing two competitive levels above the licence beside his name, against the drivers the league considered its quickest. His previous D0 finishes in Season 7 were tenth at Las Vegas, 11th at Spa and tenth in Japan. A finish in that range would already have been respectable for an L2 entrant.
Instead, Forestal started 14th and came through to sixth on the road. Lorenz's post-race ten-second penalty promoted him to fifth in the final classification. He finished behind only Demaiko, Zopz, Cloud and Karl, and ahead of established L0 drivers including piastrigoat and Raptorr. It was his first D0 top five and five places better than his previous best finish in the division.
JD's message arrived while Forestal was still provisionally sixth: “Ngl I said forestal p6 shit , fair fucking play son”. Forestal had exceeded the prediction by taking an L2 licence from 14th to a top-six place on the road in IMS's fastest division. The later penalty made the official result even stronger.
An L2 driver in the D0 top five
Abu Dhabi was also only the first part of Forestal's weekend. He followed D0 P5 with 12th in D1 and fourth in D2: three races, three divisions, 29 points and 16 net positions gained. Across Season 7's main D0–D3 divisions he made 21 starts and gained 65 places in total.
There were obvious reasons the drive received less attention. Demaiko took his first D0 victory. Zopz completed a last-corner recovery to second. Williams secured the BOTT title. The later verdicts created another round of discussion. Forestal's race sat underneath all of it, but it was not smaller than those headlines. By competitive mismatch alone, it was one of the hardest recoveries of the season.
Official IMS race broadcast.
Brazil D2: Connor called Alfie slow; Alfie supplied the reply
The Brazil finale had little space left for a fifth-place story. Kat completed the D2 title turnaround, while TheMDog produced the impossible-looking result at the front: 17th to first. AlfieNerfBoy's race unfolded behind both.
When Connor discovered who his teammate would be, his reaction was immediate. “Oh my teammate is Alfie ffs,” he wrote, followed by the assessment: “Alfie slow”. Alfie joined in, joking that his L3 status existed for a reason and predicting TheMDog would pass him within two laps. Another driver answered: “The underestimation is crazy.”
Alfie was an L3 driver entering D2. His earlier D2 results that season had been ninth in Texas, 13th at Silverstone and 14th in Las Vegas. He had not scored in the division since the opener.
He started Brazil tenth, fell to 17th and recovered to seventh on the road. “P10-P17-P7,” he wrote. “Ill take that.” The verdicts later promoted him to fifth, his best D2 result of the season and his first top-five finish at that level. Connor finished 11th.
TheMDog's winner's story deserved the headline. Alfie's recovery deserves the next paragraph: an L3 driver, written off in his own team chat, fell to the back and still ended the season with a D2 top five.
The answer to “Alfie slow”
- 01GridP10An L3 driver entering D2.
- 02Low pointP17Dropped to the back.
- 03On the roadP7Ten places recovered.
- 04Final verdictP5His best D2 result of Season 7.
Official IMS race broadcast.
Brazil D4: two quiet recoveries inside the finale
Higosh's win and Zloober's close second carried the D4 finale. Behind them, Ceetee and TheShrizzzler each completed a race whose final line concealed almost all of its movement.
Ceetee qualified fifth and ran fourth before front-wing damage forced a stop. The repair dropped him to the back. He recovered to sixth. The classification therefore shows P5 to P6—a one-place loss—despite a race that passed through the front four, last place and most of the midfield.
His own account was more useful: “was up to 4th got a new wing dropped to last and made my way back up to 6th”. It was a fitting final entry in a season where Ceetee's one podium had also required him to climb from last.
Shrizz started 11th after reporting two impeding incidents in qualifying. He spun at Turn 4 on the opening lap and fell to last, stopped on lap six, then asked the hard tyres to survive roughly 30 laps. He made it back to tenth.
P11 to P10 is the smallest possible official gain. It says nothing about the first-lap spin, the early stop or the length of the final stint. Shrizz needed only three words for all of it.
One-place changes, full-race stories
“Calm race innit”
