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McLaren’s Norris to race in IndyCar iRacing at COTA
McLaren Formula 1 driver Lando Norris is set to compete in this weekend’s IndyCar iRacing Challenge at Circuit of The Americas.
Norris has been a regular sim racer and Twitch streamer but has hit trouble in all three of the official F1 VirtualGP races so far, failing to start in the past two events due to connection issues. However, he has also been competing on iRacing as part of Team Redline and a Twitter exchange led to the British driver being invited to drive.
After current Arrow McLaren SP driver Pato O’Ward asked the team if it could get Norris a ride for the race at COTA, the team tagged the official IndyCar account who replied to Norris: “Check your iRacing account -- consider your invitation extended.”
Norris subsequently confirmed he would be carrying out his first test in preparation for the race on Wednesday evening at 3 p.m. ET and streaming it on his Twitch channel.
https://twitter.com/LandoNorris/status/1252701856251310080
IndyCar has been in discussions with McLaren about utilizing its drivers for some time, as it has regularly invited wild card entries in its iRacing events. Norris is the first to do so despite Fernando Alonso already committing to race in the Indy 500 for the team this year.
“We’ve been talking to Arrow McLaren SP, I’ve not had them specifically ask around Alonso yet,” IndyCar’s vice president of marketing SJ Luedtke told RACER before confirmation of Norris’ appearance. “I don’t know if he’s planning to jump in or not but I think given the connections with McLaren over in F1, we’ve talked with them about ways they can leverage that relationship at the right time in places to bring some of that energy as well.”
Chris Medland
While studying Sports Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, Chris managed to talk his way into working at the British Grand Prix in 2008 and was retained for three years before joining ESPN F1 as Assistant Editor. After three further years at ESPN, a spell as F1 Editor at Crash Media Group was followed by the major task of launching F1i.com’s English-language website and running it as Editor. Present at every race since the start of 2014, he has continued building his freelance portfolio, working with international titles. As well as writing for RACER, his broadcast work includes television appearances on F1 TV and as a presenter and reporter on North America's live radio coverage on SiriusXM.
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