Chris Buescher repeatedly crashed his car Friday morning, but with no retribution.
Buescher spent most of the morning in a room he called “the dungeon.” It’s out at the Roush Fenway Racing building in Concord, N.C. He was working out his kinks in the iRacing simulator there. Because on Sunday, Buscher will compete in the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series race at 12:30 p.m. CT.
“I’ve crashed a lot of stuff and it hasn’t cost us a dime,” Buescher, a Prosper native said Friday in a phone interview. “So that’s a really good start.”
Though he’s had a successful pro career full driving No. 17 for Roush, iRacing was a new challenge. It was a worthy one, though, because while all other major sports came to a united halt due to the pandemic outbreak of the coronavirus COVID-19, NASCAR was the only one left standing, able to have its best compete.
NASCAR, like all other professional leagues, announced all its live events were postponed earlier this week. But iRacing, which has been around now for over a decade, provided an outlet for the league to pivot toward.
“What you are going to see on Sunday is a race broadcast that looks and feels almost like a regular broadcast,” Scott Warfield, NASCAR managing director of gaming, said. “It will have Jeff Gordon and Mike Joy calling the race and a lot of the same guys that would be racing for wins at Homestead Miami Speedway will be racing for wins at virtual Homestead Miami Speedway, just from the comfort of their homes.”
Buescher, though one of the more inexperienced drivers on the iRacing platform, vouched for its accuracy. No, the simulation isn’t perfect, but the changes made to it since the last time he used it a decade ago were substantial for him, and he was impressed.
“I’m looking forward to getting into the race on Sunday,” Buescher said. “I know it’s not the type of racing that we or our partners expected but everybody has been really good to us through all of this. We are all trying to make the best of our situation.”
Working as an esport, the group at iRacing could help NASCAR function until normal returns. While other leagues are working on streaming simulated games or turning to video games to keep an audience, NASCAR is ahead of the pack on this and second place isn't really in sight.
IndyCar decided to take advantage of this ability, announcing Friday afternoon that it and iRacing partnered to set up six virtual races including drivers fans have come to know.
Warfield said what makes iRacing a strong filler is that some of the best drivers in the world use it. Many of them, such as Dale Earnhardt Jr., Bobby Labonte and Kyle Busch, headline the Sunday lineup.
“At its core, why (iRacing) works so well is because it has the credibility of our drivers using it as a training platform,” Warfield said. A lot of the guys use this week in and week out. We’ve had cars come up through iRacing.”
The NBA and NFL can’t replicate that. Steve Myers, the executive vice president of iRacing, was happy they could help deliver during a time where people feel stuck in their homes. What iRacing developed is unique, because you can be LeBron James in NBA 2K20, but you can’t step out on the court and score on him.
“This is the first time that I can think of in sports, where you take something in the real world and put pros in the virtual world and throw that on TV,” Myers said. “From that perspective, it’s a really cool project to be working on.”
The product, which will be televised on FS1 and the FOX Sports app, won’t be perfect, and everybody involved knew that going in. This was put together in a matter of six days. What happens over the weekend will be part of a learning process, and nobody at iRacing expects to have all the answers by the start of next week.
But it will be fun, Myers said.
“As of right now there is no carryover from the virtual world to the real work as far as points are concerned,” Myers said. “I think we just want to take the baby steps this weekend to go off and have a good time. Some of these guys, it will be the first week they’ve ever done this. You will see people make mistakes and some funny crashes, but that will be the fun of it.”
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