(Photo: eNASCAR)
By Aaron Bearden

Much like in last year’s inaugural year, the eNASCAR Heat Pro League (eHPL) has been proceeding largely according to schedule thus far – holding weekly races since its season began on April 22.

For competitors in the virtual tour, things have largely stayed the same. The circumstances surrounding it, though?

They couldn’t be much more different.

The virtual league kicked off its second year of competition in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic – a society-shifting event that’s pushed all real-life sport to the side for much of the past two months. Races like the Indianapolis 500 and Monaco Grand Prix have been either postponed or canceled, and NASCAR is about to return with seven races in 11 days after a hiatus of more than two months.

Real-life motorsports have gone silent, but the esports world is burgeoning. Motorsport stars have taken to simulator services like iRacing and rFactor 2 for the past two months, and other racing options like F1 2019 and NASCAR Heat 4 have found increased interest as fans search for ways to fill their thirst for live sport.

That’s provided the eNASCAR Heat Pro League an opportunity… And a challenge.

“It’s been really interesting to the rise of eSports events,” Team Penske eSports competitor Brian Tedeschi told Motorsports Beat. “I think it’s really good that NASCAR and others have gotten in touch with all the different platforms they could to keep fans engaged.

“It’s definitely put of all of us on a rushed timeline, but it’s really exciting. It’s good that we got the season going, but from the competitor’s standpoint, we also have jobs and lives too. So it’s been tough going through all that while trying to maintain competitiveness in it.”

The eNASCAR Heat Pro League is a unique entity in the racing esports realm. Unlike the simulator-based tours like the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series and recent pro offerings like the iRacing IndyCar Challenge, the eHPL is contested on a console video game in 704games’ NASCAR Heat 4.

Competitors are split evenly into two fields based on the console used. After holding qualifying events at the start of the year, NASCAR teams that elected to participate drafted a competitor each from the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. Teammates compete in separate races, with a shared goal of bringing their organization success.

There are 28 gamers with 14 teams this season, and they’re contesting a 14-race tour. There will be 12 regular season races split into three four-race segments, where drivers will have a chance to lock themselves into the championship race. That’ll be followed by a wildcard race at Daytona International Speedway that awards a championship opportunity, followed by the title race itself at a currently-unknown track. A $200,000 prize pool will be awarded at season’s end.

Last year’s debut year saw the eHPL field incorporated into real race weekends, contesting the draft at Phoenix Raceway and holding its debut race during Coca-Cola 600 weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Drivers even participated in media activities at team shops prior to the start of the season.

The current circumstances made that impossible this year. The draft was held virtually, and competitors have had no chance to see their teams in person. They were shipped new Fanatec wheels shortly after the draft and quickly found themselves embroiled in competition.

“It’s been very different obviously due to COVID-19,” RCR eSports driver Joey Stone said. “The teams are still just as involved as they were last year, but you don’t really have that access to the technology you have with your teams. You miss a bit of the experience of being an eNASCAR driving for a professional race team. The way we’ve approached it this year is more of just being creative in our own ways at home.

“Richard Childress Racing have sent me all the stuff I need, like a sponsor banner, game day apparel, hats, everything. We still communicate on a daily basis through email and through zoom calls and everything. We’re using technology to the best of our advantage, which is not really a shocker. We’re in eNASCAR, it’s all about the technology.”

The 2020 season kicked off at virtual Homestead-Miami Speedway, with Justin Brooks and Nick Jobes bringing home victories – the first on pace alone and the latter with pit strategy. That was followed by an eventful trip to virtual Watkins Glen International, where Ganassi Gaming’s Maxwell Castro prevailed after a controversial last-lap crash with Germain Gaming’s Kyle Arnold.

While the finish was eventful and entertaining, it was met with some criticism from those that found it farcical and unappealing.

That’s a perception battle the eHPL has fought since its inception. It’s frequently compared to tours on simulator-level software services like iRacing, which holds the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series.

Many in the eHPL compete on iRacing as well, and they make a point to remind viewers that the two services operate in different realms. This isn’t full-on sim racing, and those involved are well aware.

“I think it’s really important for people to realize that it’s two completely different worlds,” Arnold told Motorsports Beat. “I’m an iRacing guy too. I have my A-class license and race a lot, it’s something I enjoy doing. But (NASCAR) Heat 4 is a console game, therefore it’s not going to be a sim racing game.”

Few know the difference better than Gibbs Gaming competitor Josh Parker. A decade ago Parker was a mainstay of iRacing, claiming the 2010 iRacing Pro Series Oval title that preceded NASCAR’s own series. He claimed his first victory in what was then the NASCAR iRacing.com Series World Championship three months later, and remained pro in NASCAR’s iRacing tour until the end of 2013.

He’d love to get back to the pro level in iRacing and has worked toward it, but the time required is too great. Parker has found Heat more accessible by comparison. “The balance, the time and effort on that side is a lot greater than this side,” he said. “It’s the reason why I stopped doing iRacing professionally a while ago, because of the time it takes to put into it.”

Accessibility is NASCAR Heat 4’s biggest core competency. Much like F1 2019, which Formula 1 has geared its own championship around in the Formula 1 Esports Series, the Heat franchise can be started for a relatively affordable entry fee. All an interested player needs to acquire is a console, controller and copy of the game.

The software isn’t up to iRacing’s level, nor does it claim to be. But it provides an entry point for NASCAR fans showing interest in the sport on the gaming side.

That’s why the esports league was made, and it’s the tour’s most intruiging selling point. Anyone with the minimal budget required and time to invest could theoretically improve enough to have a chance to make it to the eHPL, even finding themselves sharing lobbies with the Pro League drivers as they practice. As Arnold put it, you just have to “go buy a $30 game, sit there and put the time in.”

“I think the biggest thing is we can say to promote it is that this is accessible,” Tedeschi added. “This is really easy to get ahold of, and there’s a large community.

“I found my niche with a lot of different people inside and outside of the Pro League and it’s just kind of created a small little family. The accessibility makes it stand apart.”

Despite battling through the aforementioned perception issues, the eHPL put on a successful debut season in 2019. After launching in the midst of the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series and other pro-filled tours, the League has been keen to work together, embrace the rise of esports and keep growing this year.

“It’s really a team effort,” Stone said. “When they say it’s not all the drivers who do the stuff, it’s true. It comes down to the race teams that put the content out, to Motorsport for broadcasting these events and putting the awesome graphics out. It comes down to content creators coming together, like Rusty Walrus who is on the broadcast team now and does incredible stuff. You know, it’s just a huge team effort.”

Soon a new challenge will arise. The very hiatus that’s helped esports grow is about to result in a chaotic, condensed real-life motorsport schedule that may fill many days of the week. eHPL competitors expressed potential that the tour’s traditional Wednesday races could be moved to accommodate real-life NASCAR action.

It’s going to provide esports tours a test, but with the right circumstances the eHPL competitors feel capable of keeping their momentum rolling.

“We’re not doing anything different,” Parker said. “We’ve been doing this for a long time and we all love doing it. Obviously all we do is talk about it. It’s just that the world’s now being put in a position to look at us first instead of us being a shadow.

“Say you’re a six-year-old and have a toy down an aisle. You’re not going to look at that first when there’s something else right at the endcap and it’s right in front of your face. People aren’t going down the aisle to look anymore. They have it on the endcap for you to see right off the bat.”

Arnold believes running entertaining races with consistency can keep fans coming back in future weeks.

“Watkins Glen race came down to the last lap, last turn with me and Maxwell Castro,” he said. “Unfortunately I was the ball that day and he was the bat, but races like that are big. Competitive, clean races.”

“So as long as they’re exciting and good, I think that’s what’s going to keep drawing people in,” he later continued. “Especially once they learn our personalities, that we’re all people too behind the little gamer tags or names we go by.”

Coming from the short track world, where he’s run a Super Late Model, Tedeschi believes the opportunity to race and connect in the otherwise expensive motorsports realm could be key to esports’ continual growth.

“It’s still racing. … You still get all the same like brain stimulation, that thought process still goes on,” Tedeschi said. “You’re just not in a physical race car.

“I think the best thing we can do is show people that this is a platform that exists, where you can network with other race fans, race and get the opportunity to simulate racing in series’ that we’ll probably never get to race.”

Stone claims this period of social distancing has shown him the value the eHPL has, and the tour’s flexibility has him confident for the future.

“One thing I’ve learned from this whole experience of kind of being the only thing that’s running for NASCAR right now is just that there are fans out there – that you got a lot of people looking up to you as a unit to put on a good show,” he said. “And it’s a lot of pressure.

“When you think of these Cup guys, you might think they just go out there, get in their car, run a race and they go home. But there’s so much more to it. Incredible relationships with partners, fans that reach out to you for support, the endless hours to make sure these cars are find tuned and ready to go so you can make your team, fans and yourself happy by running well.”

“This has really opened my eyes to just seeing how important it is that we as a unit stay together and work hard,” he continued. “Not only make sure that eRCR is successful, but the NASCAR Pro League is successful, too.

“I think that’s just the overall mission for us, and we’ve learned a lot. We really have.”

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Aaron Bearden eNASCAR Heat Pro League Featured