Photo: Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
By Aaron Bearden
Post-race review and analysis from the eNASCAR Pro Invitational Series race at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
Who Won?
Denny Hamlin. The Daytona 500 champion used a well-timed bump to climb to the lead and a series-ending win to cap off the Pro Invitational Series.
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Denny delivers again
A virtual return to North Wilkesboro Speedway couldn’t conclude without a little bump-and-run.
In the first official race at the legendary North Carolina track on the iRacing service, the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series delivered a short track showdown that included a long green-flag run and contact in the final battle for the lead.
Denny Hamlin got the better of the late bump, moving his way past Ross Chastain to claim his second win during the virtual tour. Hamlin bookended the eNASCAR excursion, claiming the opening race at Homestead-Miami Speedway and bouncing back from mid-tour struggles for the second victory at North Wilkesboro.
“We were two guys going for the same spot,” Hamlin said of the contact. “I got a good run on him off Turn 2 and as soon as he saw I was going low, he pulled down the straightaway to try and block and we both just let off the gas at the same time.”
Chastain avenged the incident after the race, spinning Hamlin on the cool-down lap after a fourth-place finish. The move may have been the Floridian’s last in the No. 6 Ford, with Ryan Newman slated to return to the real-life car next weekend at Darlington Raceway after relinquishing it due to injuries sustained in the Daytona 500.
Undeterred by the post-race activities, Hamlin made his way to the front stretch for a victory burnout to close out the Pro Invitational Series in style. The Virginian was one of the stars of the series, championing iRacing’s cause, securing two pivotal wins and sharing an eventful moment when his daughter Taylor Hamlin turned his monitor off mid-race at Talladega Superspeedway.
“For me, it was fun to see the progression of the guys who had been doing it quite a bit, and you’ve also got the guys that are just starting it for the first time, have zero starts before the Invitational,” Hamlin said. “To watch them get better and better, and to watch the commitment that they all put in to get better…
“Listen, nobody wants to go out there and suck. Throughout the entire week, guys are running hundreds and hundreds of laps at these tracks to get better because they want to put on a good showing, they want to be competitive. That’s what drives us to be the race car drivers that we are in real life, is the fire to want to be better.”
Now the three-time Daytona 500 champion will try to lead NASCAR back into a surreal real-life run without fans in attendance at Darlington Raceway.
“I envision people are going to be pretty timid, at least for the first few laps, just trying to understand, checking your travels,” he said of the upcoming race, “There’s plenty of times where these things unload, the cars are hitting the racetrack, you’re not ready to be in a pack quite yet. That will certainly be different.
“But we do have the data from last year… I think everyone is going to be pretty confident going into turn one that the travels are right. I’m sure the crew chiefs are going to be very conservative with their travels to make sure the car doesn’t hit the racetrack on the first run.
“I think all in all it’s going to be like an old shoe. I don’t think from the TV’s perspective fans will see anything different than just a normal race that they would normally see at Darlington.”
Timmy Hill’s unofficial title run
Coming across the line behind Hamlin in second was Timmy Hill, who may have had the most consistent iRacing run of any competitor.
Piloting a No. 66 RoofClaim.com entry that paid homage to the classic Skoal Bandit scheme made famous by Phil Parsons, Harry Gant and others, Hill overcame a crash into the pit attenuator after using his reset to contend for a second eNASCAR win in the closing laps.
In the end, the victory wasn’t meant to be. Hill couldn’t reel Hamlin in over the final run to the checkered flag. But the Maryland native secured his sixth top-three finish in seven Pro Invitational Series events to cap off a stellar stint that would have him emerge as the championship leader if it were a real tour.
“It’s been a fun experience,” Hill said of the eNASCAR experience. “We had the best average (finish). We won the championship for the Pro Invitational. We capped the season off finishing second at North Wilkesboro.”
William Byron won a series-best three races and Hamlin bookended the tour with wins, but few made more of the virtual run than Hill. Given the opportunity to close the equipment gap he’s often faced in real racing, the 27-year-old scored a win at virtual Texas Motor Speedway and was a constant contender along the stretch.
Whether virtual success translates to real-life opportunities remains to be seen. Hill made waves at the start of the year by racing his way into the Daytona 500 and finishing third in the Xfinity Series opener, but his best finishes outside of that in each tour have been in the 20s.
Regardless of his real-life results, Hill will always remain a key figure of the NASCAR Cup Series’ short-lived pivot to iRacing – his emergence arguably the biggest bright spot of the entire tour.
Feel good finale
Through the middle stages of the eNASCAR era, teams, media and racers were occasionally criticized for taking the whole experience too seriously – particularly as Bubba Wallace lost a sponsor over a decision to quit a race at virtual Bristol Motor Speedway after an early crash.
It was fitting, then, that the series finale traded controversy for laughter and memories.
Saturday’s virtual return to North Wilkesboro Speedway was pure fan service from the moment the broadcast started. With NASCAR’s Cup stars running at the short track for the first time since 1996, both FOX Sports and the competitors dove deep into nostalgia.
Ray Evernham was featured in a segment before the race, going over notes from his win with Jeff Gordon in the track’s final Cup race. Gordon drove a scheme reminiscent of his ’96 run in the event, while others like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Bobby Labonte and Timmy Hill went for retro-themed paint schemes.
Larry McReynolds traded out crew shirts from his two North Wilkesboro wins in subsequent segments. Michael Waltrip threw on his Country Time Lemonade driver’s helmet at one point, and brother Darrell Waltrip made a brief appearance to revisit a track he conquered 10 times during his impressive Cup career.
Even iRacing got in on the fun, teasing a forthcoming release of two 1987 Cup car models with iconic schemes from Bill Elliott and Dale Earnhardt adorning them on the broadcast.
The race was an entertaining short-track showdown, led to the green by a driver (Cole Custer) that was born nearly two years after the real track’s final race.
But it didn’t really matter.
In this one particular instance, the race itself played a background role in the virtual revisit to an iconic facility from days gone by. Any thrills the on-track action provided were merely supplemental to the joy experienced in seeing a lost facility return to virtual life.
One week after the IndyCar iRacing Challenge saw its finale become a shambolic mess at the real-life tour’s premier track, NASCAR provided a feel-good finale that sent fans off happily to the sport’s real-life return – a pleasant conclusion to an ambitious virtual experiment that helped provide a sense of normalcy during a challenging, surreal time.
Other Notes
- If you’re going to pay homage to Dale Earnhardt’s Wrangler paint schemes, you have to run well at North Wilkesboro… Right? Richard Childress Racing made sure to do just that, delivering its throwback schemes a pair of top-five results with Tyler Reddick (third) and Austin Dillon (fifth)
- He never got the win that Hill managed, by Garrett Smithley emerged as another consistent presence toward the front during the eNASCAR era. Smithley finished sixth in the finale to wrap up the virtual tour with six top-10s in seven races.
- Kevin Harvick wrapped up his quiet Pro Invitational Series run with his best result of the tour, finishing ninth at virtual North Wilkesboro.
- There were two newcomers in the Pro Invitational Series finale. Former Gander Outdoors RV & Outdoors Truck and Xfinity Series contender Jon Wood made a surprise return in the No. 21 Ford, finishing 13th in his first NASCAR start since 2008.
- The other new face? None other than the 2017 Cup Series champion, Martin Truex Jr. The Joe Gibbs Racing veteran gave the virtual tour a try after returning home to his sim rig, finishing 20th after an incident-filled afternoon.
- Another fixture of the iRacing era was Landon Cassill. The Iowan wrapped things up with a crash that looked familiar for longtime fans of the spot.
- Believe it or not, you can fall out of an iRacing event due to a mechanical issue. Just ask Corey LaJoie, who broke a brake pedal during his final eNASCAR run.
