Welcome (back) everyone! This was a bit of data crunching from 2018 related to e-sports, specifically the online simulation iRacing.

Understandably, when you bring racers in real-time in hyper-realistic simulations of racing from around the world, add cultures and distance (and internet latency) and add plenty of adrenaline, incidents happen. Worse yet, iRacers spend a lot of time preparing for racing (or at least many do) and a ruined race from mishap is highly upsetting, if at least not as painful or expensive as thrashing a $100k+ car.

Nonetheless, theories abound about how to prevent these, and what predicts a wreck. This work brings together 43k individual driver experiences over several seasons of racing and analyzes when crashes happen, on what courses, to which sort of drivers in which positions on the grid. Some conclusions and suggestions are posited. Enjoy!