The first running of VCO INFINITY was back in May. We spoke to one of the standout teams from that event, WAS COOKIN Racing Adventures, in the leadup to the ProSIM edition of INFINITY.
Image credit: WAS COOKIN Racing Adventures
Starting today, VCO Esports are bringing their popular INFINITY event back. 40 teams of five drivers will take to five different tracks in five sets of cars, with one 45 minute-long race every hour for 24 hours.
In the first edition, it was little surprise to see Team Redline come out on top. But, they were only just able to elevate themselves above Urano eSports. Other teams that won races during the event were Coanda Esports, Apex Racing Team, R8G Esports, BS+COMPETITION, SRC Mivano Corse and Obsidian Racing.
All of these teams are professional organisations who make esports racing their living. But the beauty of INFINITY is that it’s also open to amateur hobby teams.
WAS COOKIN: David Among Goliaths
WAS COOKIN Racing Adventures is a squad made up of sim racing enthusiasts who managed to finish eighth in VCO INFINITY. They even won one of the races, when their driver Jack Sedgwick converted pole to a win in the Touring Car race around Spa.
Along with fellow drivers Joshua Chin, Nicol Foggie, Teemu Toikka and Fraser Williamson, they managed to finish ahead of pro teams like Veloce, Arnage, TRITON, Race Clutch and Fordzilla.
It’s easy to forget sometimes that in this world of big organisations like Redline and Coanda, that the majority of sim racers are just competing for the fun of it.
INFINITY is happening once again and this time around, teams are mandated to use a real-world racing pro. In the leadup to ProSIM INFINITY, we were interested to learn a bit more about WAS COOKIN Racing Adventures.
We reached out to them and got to talk with team manager and affectionately referred to as “executive chef” Mike Spangler.
OverTake: What were the beginnings of WAS COOKIN Racing Adventures and what are some of your most prominent achievements?
WAS COOKIN Racing Adventures:
WAS COOKIN pretty much just came about as a bunch of friends who all met through sim racing. We all play different games together, watch racing or sports and generally just hang out together. A lot of the people that are in WAS COOKIN are members of different sim racing teams, but we try to do fun events together when everyone isn’t tied up with other commitments. When it comes to sim racing, we’re basically just a pickup team of pros, former pros, or other top level sim racers out to have some fun.
I’d say our biggest accomplishments include winning the Melons 24 race in 2021, multiple top 5 finishes in the Mooncar 24, and making it into the 2021 Daytona 24 Hours iRacing Special Event top split. Unless you want to include complete domination of various Wreckfest lobbies over the years, which I think we’d all agree is our biggest accomplishment to date.
OverTake: How would you say you guys differ from some of the most prominent teams in sim racing?
WAS COOKIN Racing Adventures:
I think we differ from other teams because we’re here for fun, something we think has been forgotten about with the sudden growth in sim racing the past couple of years. We have the talent to compete and win at a high level, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
OverTake: When you heard of VCO INFINITY, what were your thoughts on the concept?
WAS COOKIN Racing Adventures:
When we heard about INFINITY earlier this year, we jumped at the opportunity to get into the event. It sounded like something that was right up our alley and we still talk about how much fun we had with INFINITY to this day.
We knew we had a bunch of guys across the various disciplines that could do well in the different races, which we thought would be a big advantage versus the professional teams that are pretty much only focusing on things like Porsche Cup or GT3.
OverTake: What were some of the challenges that you discovered with INFINITY?
WAS COOKIN Racing Adventures:
We actually had two drivers pull out a few days before the first event because of real world commitments, but we were absolutely not going to withdraw, so the shuffle to find two more people available on short notice was definitely stressful. Forever thankful for Teemu and Nicol for getting in the kitchen with us.
As far as during the event, qualifying was absolutely huge as far as gaining a good race result, and we struggled a bit there. Overall, we actually thought INFINITY was easier than your typical 24 hour race because of the race breaks for drivers between rounds, and that if you had a bad round, it didn’t end your 24 hours.
OverTake: How did it feel to be the only non-professional team to win a race and beat many pro teams?
WAS COOKIN Racing Adventures:
Honestly, incredible. Jack getting a win against that field was without a doubt the highest of highs for us. We went into the event with the goal of finishing top 10, so you can say we went in with high expectations, but we knew we were capable of doing it, we just had to run our race and follow our plan.
It was only about 8-9 hours in when we really started believing that we could do it, and just by being consistent, we were able to finish P8 and do better than we think anyone expected us to. I think we earned some respect after INFINITY, and that no, we’re not just some meme team.
OverTake: Heading into ProSIM INFINITY, what do you think you can achieve after all you learned from the first edition?
WAS COOKIN Racing Adventures:
Honestly, I think this second iteration is going to be a lot more difficult, with teams taking it a lot more seriously. The real world pro driver aspect definitely favors some of the more well connected teams, and of the few real world pros that are part of WAS COOKIN, most of them are competing with their own teams or have other commitments.
With what we learned after the first event, I think we’re just setting another goal of finishing in the top 10, focusing again on consistency, scoring maximum points every race, and qualifying a little better. If we can do that, we’ll take that as a win. Keep things simple, have a blast, and hopefully come out with another top result.
Pros in ProSIM INFINITY
Many big name pro drivers are taking part. Team Redline have two entries into the event, with Australian Supercars driver Richie Stanaway in one entry and former F3 racer Lorenzo Colombo in the other. 2017 British GT4 champion Will Tregurtha is competing with Williams, who didn’t take part in the first running of INFINITY.
Urano are fielding two entries, one with 2020 British GT3 champion Sandy Mitchell and the other with GT Open AM runner-up Alexey Nesov. Apex Racing Team will enter two teams as well, with the likes of Skip Barber champion Elvis Rankin and Porsche Carrera Cup GB runner-up Adam Smalley involved.
Dörr Esports have sim racer turned DTM Trophy driver Moritz Löhner, and Euro NASCAR champion Lasse Sørensen is involved with his own team FYRA SimSport. Former real world driver Lyubov Ozeretskovskaya is also known on Twitch as LoveFortySix, and she’s also competing in her own team.
R8G Esports have French F4 racer Elliott Vayron, SimRC have Porsche Supercup champion Dylan Pereira and Fordzilla has Ginetta GT4 driver Josh Poulain. Team PGZ have Deagen Fairclough competing for them, who won the F4 Racing Star competition in May earning him a place in the F4 British Championship.
As for WAS COOKIN, their drivers from the first INFINITY like Sedgwick, Chin and Williamson remain. They will be joined by their designated pro, 2022 NLS champion Sindre Setsaas who has double duties with a real life race also happening this weekend. He will attempt to do the minimum six races within the first ten hours of the event with three different cars.
Drivers will race the Dallara IR18 IndyCar, iRacing Formula iR-04, Honda Civic Type R touring car, Porsche 911 GT3 R and the new BMW V8 M Hybrid LMDh, having to drive at least two types of cars. The tracks they will tackle are the Daytona Road Course, Red Bull Ring, Spa-Francorchamps, Road Atlanta and Fuji Speedway.
All 24 races in ProSIM INFINITY will be broadcast on the official VCO Twitch and YouTube channels from 9-10 December starting 17:45 CET.
Will you be following VCO ProSIM INFINITY? Tell us on Twitter at @OverTake_gg or in the comments down below!
