PROLOGUE
Nearly seven weeks ago, in the 16th race of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season at Pocono Raceway on June 14th, long-time competitor Denny Hamlin scored his 64th career win at the top level of competition, breaking a tie with the late Kyle Busch for ninth on the all-time wins list. Three days before that was Hamlin’s 20th anniversary of his first career win at the same track.
On June 11th, 2006, what was known then as the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series headed to the Pocono Mountains for the 14th race of the year at Pocono Raceway. Rookie of the Year candidate Denny Hamlin, making his 21st career start ever at the top level of NASCAR competition, arrived at Pocono for the first time and won, having never raced the track in any form of motorsport previously.
It almost seems fitting that Denny’s win to break the tie with Kyle “Rowdy” Busch came at the place where the former took his first victory.
Rookies don’t statistically shine at the top level of NASCAR competition (although Corey Heim has recently proven that statement wrong). However, 20 years ago, young Denny picked up on a notably tricky, triangular track quite quickly without any prior experience on it…
Well, let me rephrase that. It’s not entirely true that he never saw the track before. Virtually, Hamlin got his reps in at Pocono, hitting his marks on a computer.
In the NASCAR world, this was one of the first documented cases of Simulation paying off for Reality. Nowadays, Naval Base Coronado was in the sim before the track was even been built in the real-world. Many drivers turned to their own simulators to get a taste of the new course before shipping out to San Diego.
At the time of Hamlin’s first victory, it was more considered to be just another video game. For Hamlin, the final installment from Papyrus, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season, had one of the most accurate renditions of Pocono Raceway included in their simulation-style racing software. Whether he knew it at the time or not, Hamlin was one of the earliest adaptors of sim racing for training, putting in those laps at Pocono, competing in Dale Earnhardt Jr’s Dirty Mo Posse League on NR2003 as he simultaneously worked up his local short track ranks, eventually landing his deal with Gibbs to eventually take the mantle of the No. 11. Denny says he signed that development deal on the same weekend that he was a guest of Earnhardt Jr’s on the weekend of Dale’s first Daytona 500 win in 2004.
Fast-forward 20 years, and here we are with so many different Sim to Reality stories across all forms of motorsport, NASCAR especially.
CHAPTER 1: THE SHUTDOWN
It was just over six years ago that nearly every NASCAR driver was suiting up at home to race virtually in the eNASCAR Pro Invitational Series.
Did the 2020 global shutdown accelerate these stories? Most likely. NASCAR, and motorsports in general, were the only sports that were able to take their stars and keep them competing on a virtual playing field. In NASCAR’s case, the eNASCAR Pro Invitational Series saw full fields of Cup drivers racing from their living rooms while the FOX Sports commentators were able to treat it nearly like the real thing.
Full iRacing Replay: Dixie Vodka 150 at Homestead-Miami Speedway | Pro Series Invitational
Ironically, in that 2020 competition, Denny Hamlin scored the opening race win at Homestead-Miami Speedway against Dale Earnhardt Jr, then closed out the short series with a win at what turned out to be another Sim to Reality story—a recreated North Wilkesboro Speedway, the venue “preserved” originally earlier in the year by iRacing, then later brought back from its closure to rejoin the NASCAR calendar a few years later. Earlier this month, North Wilkesboro hosted its first NASCAR Cup Series points paying event since 1996.
There were already a number of Sim to Reality stories taking place before those couple of months, and those came into the limelight following it. Like, every time Ty Majeski loaded into a session, we were all reminded how he had the highest iRating in the oval community for a very long time. The same Ty Majeski that would go on to win the 2024 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title. We were also reminded that Josh Berry used to be a Coca-Cola Series driver, a three-time winner at that, and he was lighting up the Late Model world at the time, eventually landing him a ride with JR Motorsports before his current Cup Series gig with The Wood Brothers.
The Pro Invitational reminded us that the virtual competition is just as real. Hamlin and Jr were side-by-side across the line to open the series. We were reminded about Timmy Hill’s eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series-level skills at virtual Texas Motor Speedway. Then there was William Byron. It’s been talked about so many times before, how Byron grew up with an iRacing subscription alongside his own real-world ascent. Now, he’s a two-time Daytona 500 champion, a NASCAR O’Reilly champion, and one of the constant threats to win on a weekly basis in the Cup Series.
Many of the expected front runners, like Chase Elliott and Jimmie Johnson, were replaced by names such as Parker Kligerman and Landon Cassill near the front of the running, some long-time names in the sport that knew their way around the simulation. Earnhardt Jr wasn’t the only retired name back in the field either—2000 Cup Series Champion Bobby Labonte filled in for Martin Truex Jr for most of the races, and did incredibly well.
When the pandemic restrictions were lifted and real-world racing returned, the iRacing hype stayed. Many of the drivers that did well on the sim stayed running around in private leagues and around the official races. It’s not as prevalent today as it was back then, but that moment in racing history changed the perspective of
CHAPTER 2: SIM TO REALITY BEFORE IT WAS COOL
There were stories unfolding during the pandemic that were still not yet fully written, like Majeski’s and Berry’s. Many of these stories continue to add chapters as we speak.
Rajah Caruth was still some kid in A-Open trying to break his way into the sport at the time. He’d never sat in a real racecar before he was 16. Just before his real-world racing debut, he had found the eNASCAR IGNITE Series to participate in back in 2018—a competition tailored for 13-to-16 year old iRacers. His grind has been well documented, a part of it even Emmy-Winning.
Rajah quickly went up from Late Models, to ARCA, to the Trucks, winning his first Truck race in 2024. Raj followed that up with another win in 2025. Now he’s racing full-time for JR Motorsports and Jordan Anderson Racing in 2026, racing for an O’Reilly Series title.
Anthony Alfredo had already put a foot through the proverbial door, racing more online than in the real-world at the time, winning in the Saturday Night Thunder companion races to the Pro Invitational. Anthony was eyeing to get a full-time ride anywhere, breaking through for his first full-time NASCAR season unlike most, at the top level in the Cup Series for Front Row Motorsports. “Fast Pasta” continues to blur those lines, partnering with Logitech and Sim Seats while chasing real-world achievements. He used to run a private league on iRacing as well, called the Esports Racing League, which courted some of the best iRacers to partake in.
Ryan Vargas was taking every opportunity he was given, making deals that could be seen on real-world and virtual tracks, such as that well-known deal with TikTok. During the shutdown, he created eTruck Night in America, also garnering the attention of top talents and real-world personalities. That sentiment continues for the journeyman, as he’s raced worldwide, in different forms of NASCAR, including a part-time schedule in the ARCA Menards Series this year, and has even taken on different motorsports disciplines such as Monster Jam. Also, he’s one of the voices you’ll often hear during an eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series broadcast.
There are so many more that I could get into, such as Corey Heim and Jesse Love being just two of the names that would show up in some of the private iRacing leagues that I raced in, and were both annoyingly fast. Now, they’re both NASCAR National Series champions. Heim, already a two-time cup winner at Coronado and Indianapolis, will be full-time in Cup next year, and Love, who will take the reins of the iconic Wood Brothers No. 21, could definitely follow suit. There were many more that you’d often find on the service, like Garrett Smithley and the lean stream, or even the late Kyle Busch, racing in private leagues and events, just as competitive as he would be on Sundays. Just some iRacers, treating the sim right, and look how they’ve all turned out.
CHAPTER 3: COKE TO CUP POSSIBILITIES?
When you think about the iRacing esports scene, one series in particular stands out above them all—the one with $500,000 on the line as it stands today, that being the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series.
When it began in 2010, it was known then as the NASCAR iRacing Driver’s World Championship, and there was a lot less cash on the table. Still, the very first race had none other than Dale Earnhardt Jr in the field, already a successful real-world driver, taking on some of the very best iRacers in the world at that time. Earnhardt Jr scored that opening race victory at Daytona on February 9th. It was his only win in the series. Regardless, the link between worlds was stronger than ever, and it’s only grown from there, where some have managed to turn the top-level esport into a real piece of the pipeline to real-world competition.
The 2026 eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Championship Series officially kicked off on May 19th at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Temecula, California’s Vicente Salas is one of the 40 racing again in the 2026 season, locked in with Indianapolis 500 winner Tony Kanaan’s outlet for a third-straight season. While he competes at the top level of eNASCAR competition, Salas is also in the early stages of making his NASCAR dreams a reality.
🚨WE’RE GOING NASTRUCKIN!🚨I’m ready to get after it with my @youngsmtrsports guys in the #20 Miramar Financial Silverado this weekend! This has been my biggest dream and I can’t thank everyone who helped make this happen enough! VAMOS!🫶👊#all4Christ #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/84AldLuke0
— Vicente Salas (@vicente_salas14) March 18, 2024
“I feel like iRacing, and sim racing in general, is the closest thing that I could get at home within our budget to still race, and be competitive, and do something that keeps you mentally active when I can’t be at the racetrack,” Salas said during preseason Media Day.
The young Californian, now residing in North Carolina, has made starts in both the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series over the last two seasons. At 23 years old, that’s insanely impressive considering his late start into real-world action.
“I was basically 16 at the time when I started racing. I’m racing a bunch of kids that started when they were four, five, six years old, so I had a lot of catching up to do in a short amount of time if I wanted to perform at the level I knew I could perform at.”
The pandemic shifted his focus momentarily, as it did many others. ‘Chente had his iRacing account since 2017, but it was when the world shut down that he started taking it fully serious. “I got pretty lucky with the guys I got connected up with, and everything kind of happened in a certain timeline to where COVID happened. We were all kind of inside and I had time to actually get better at the sim… I wasn’t even supposed to be in this series. I was running it for fun, just for experience to run with the team. We somehow ended up making it. I think I started to kind of train and use it as a tool. Now, it’s not even just being a tool. It’s become a huge part of my life, and basically a second job for me.”
Last season, Salas won three eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Championship Series races and made his eNASCAR Championship 4 debut, finishing third in the final standings after a breakout season. So far this year, Vicente sits sixth in the standings with a pole position to his name through seven races.
NEW CONTENT // Qualcomm Circuit (Naval Base Coronado)
CHAPTER 4: CROSSOVER EPISODES IN QUALIFYING
One of the unique changes to the 2026 eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series season was the change in the ladder system. In previous years, there would be a Qualifying Series, a Contender Series, then the top-level Coca-Cola Series. This year, it was all considered the Coca-Cola Series, with an eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Qualifying Series portion of the schedule kicking off the season from February to April, then the Championship Series portion taking control from May to October.
The change in the schedule allowed for a more streamlined process to the top level, and it also gave more people the opportunity to be considered Coca-Cola Series competitors. It also allowed for a number of real-world competitors to chop it up against some of the best on the service looking for their shot at the top level.
Be sure to join us over at https://t.co/tOOewu4MBi for coverage of the top two splits in the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Qualifying Series action from Homestead-Miami Speedway!
Some familiar names returning tonight over in Split 2 👀@ENASCARGG | @CocaColaRacing pic.twitter.com/eQF89DbjiH
— iRacing (@iRacing) March 18, 2026
On any given Tuesday, names such as Kaden Honeycutt, Parker Retzlaff, or Carson Hocevar might be found in one of the top splits. Rajah Caruth also made a few appearances, claiming multiple split wins over the Qualifying Series season, at Daytona and Chicagoland.
Salas works out of the same virtual shop as NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series winner and points leader, Honeycutt. In fact, there were points through the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Qualifying Series season that we saw the two paired up, as Honeycutt challenged the up-and-comers on track with Salas atop his virtual box.
In 2025, Honeycutt went full-time in real-world truck racing, making the Championship 4 and signing with TRICON Garage towards the backend of the year. Now, the eNASCAR alum is a championship chaser in the Craftsman Truck Series, continuing his trek up the proverbial ladder. That’s the ladder that his friend and teammate, Salas, is hoping to replicate.
Honeycutt has already been there, and done that, having competed from 2022 to 2024 in the Championship Series for both RFK Racing and JR Motorsports. He was teammates with Retzlaff at RFK during the 2022 season.
Still, the ability for any of these former pros, and current Sim to Reality success stories, to jump in and race is another testament to how the lines get even more blurred. Honeycutt and Hocevar fought for Qualifying Series wins on Tuesdays earlier in the year, and now are going up against one another on the weekends for Truck Series wins.
CHAPTER 5: STORIES UNFOLDING IN REAL TIME
Salas isn’t the only driver still writing his Sim to Reality story while competing full-time in the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Championship Series. Maybe six years ago, this sort of deal would have been an anomaly, or a fun crossover, but now, there are so many others stepping back and forth between the top level of sim racing and their own rung of their own motorsports ladder.
Three that are currently locked into some crossovers this year are Garrett Lowe, Donovan Strauss, and Garrett Manes. Manes is staying incredibly busy upon his return to the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series with Rick Ware Racing, competing in the Toyota Gazoo Racing North America GR Cup as well as select NASA Spec E30 events. Strauss continues his CARS Tour schedule, plus makes his first big step up the NASCAR ladder later this year. Lowe will once again be heading back overseas to compete in some real-world action.
Drove from P12 to finish in the Top 5 in my GR Cup debut!
Catch Race 2 @ 2:50PM EDT : https://t.co/DNyu3lx77K pic.twitter.com/uYfjqd0vQn
— Garrett Manes (@GarrettManes) March 29, 2026
Garrett Lowe had one of the busiest schedules around last year, competing in his NASCAR Euro Series rookie campaign while taking part in his seventh full-time eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Championship Series season. He’s doing that very same thing again in 2026 with the added stress of having to re-qualify for the Championship Series prior to both seasons starting.
Garrett’s experience is a true blend of simulation and reality as he races together on the same team in both disciplines. On the virtual track in 2025 and 2026, Lowe piloted the No. 99 Burosud with Bremotion BS+COMPETITION Chevrolet. It was nearly identical to his real-world ride, with most of the same stickers scattered among the livery, as BS+COMPETITION AND Bremotion were linked for both efforts last year and again in 2026.
In the last build update, iRacing released a NASCAR Euro Series car, which Lowe helped to dial in with his knowledge of the real world machine. Just a few days before that release, Lowe earned his first career pole position in the Euro Series at Brands Hatch. Meanwhile, on the sim side, after winning at Iowa a few weeks ago, he’ll fight to get back to the Championship 4 again later in the year.
Developing the EuroNASCAR with real world driver Garrett Lowe
Donovan Strauss made his real-world NASCAR debut at North Wilkesboro Speedway, driving the No. 4 Niece Motorsports Craftsman Truck back on July 18th. He’s also been behind the virtual wheel of the Williams F1 Team Gaming No. 4 once again in 2026. Currently, Strauss sits just outside the eNASCAR Playoffs, in 15th, still looking for his first win of the season.
Strauss has some championship pedigree in the eNASCAR ranks as half of the Team Championship winning run by Williams in 2024, together with the series champion that season, Parker White. Like most everyone else, while his goal is to win and get to the top of the eNASCAR ranks, he’s also using these races as training for the real-world product.
Just the start, and more to come. @nightclubssuck @NieceMotorsport pic.twitter.com/1yqpLLFTwz
— Donovan Strauss (@DonovanStrauss) July 21, 2026
“I say the biggest thing you can take from iRacing to the real world is just being around cars, and your race craft,” Strauss explained during eNASCAR Media Day. “The moves you make, and how you race on the sim, it can translate to real life and it can make you more comfortable in certain situations. I’ve raced a good bit in official stuff this year, just trying to just get acclimated to racing around cars again, trying to improve my race craft as much as I can because it helps on the real world side, and I think it’s always beneficial.”
CHAPTER 6: AN UNDERSTANDING OF HOW SIM CAN SHAPE REALITY
It’s not all about the racers, however. There have been plenty of cases where simulation driving talent has gone on to careers in the Motorsports industry outside of the racecar. One that’s been spoken about on countless occasions is the story of Keegan Leahy. Nowadays, the Canadian sim racer turned his 2021 eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series championship season, as well as all of the successes before and afterward, into a full-time engineering job over at the 23XI NASCAR Cup Series program.
The grind translated. pic.twitter.com/vp4RUpltor
— NASCAR Gaming and Esports (@ENASCARGG) March 26, 2026
In a race won by Tyler Reddick at Circuit of the Americas back in 2024, Reddick, teammate Bubba Wallace, and team Co-owner Hamlin credited Leahy with the team’s increased competitiveness. Today, Leahy isn’t the only eNASCAR alum among the ranks. Leahy is joined by two other Championship Series competitors from a few seasons back, Eric Smith and Santiago Tirres, as well as Patrick Moose, who attempted the Qualifying Series this season.
That path could be a similar one for the reigning champion, Steven Wilson. While Leahy’s story with 23XI began at the team’s inception, Wilson just joined Spire Motorsports for Coca-Cola iRacing Series competition at the beginning of 2025. The partnership lead to the winningest season in eNASCAR history for Wilson, and landed him a position as the simulation driver for the team’s real-world efforts, which have already paid off with a Carson Hocevar win at Talladega and a Daniel Suarez win in the Coca-Cola 600, plus multiple Truck Series wins already in the 2026 season.
“I just started working for Spire as their official sim driver as of this year,” the new two-time champ said during Media Day. “That’s been fun, working with Carson, Daniel, Michael (McDowell), and everybody, trying to kind of learn the ropes of everything, learn the engineers and what they’re doing and what they want from me.”
Two races into the new eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Championship Series, and Wilson’s already gotten back to virtual victory lane. Now sitting at 18 career wins across 92 starts, Wilson’s legacy as one of the greats is already sealed in the virtual racing history books. That talent was sought by Spire before he even started his run towards his historic second title. While the name of the game is still simulation, he’s learning how to stay on top of his eNASCAR game while separating his time into real-world racing applications.
“It’s a different experience, driving-wise. You’re not just sitting there, running race laps, with unlimited testing. They’ve got a set plan every week, and they want to make sure they get it done in the limited amount of time that we have. It’s kind of different from what we do on iRacing, whenever we want to hop on and run some laps, that’s what we do. There’s stuff to get used to everywhere, at every racetrack that we go to, but it’s been fun.”
CHAPTER 7: AN ALL-EMCOMPASSING PATH FOR MANY CAREERS
The great thing about Sim to Reality is that it’s not just about racing or working towards the preparation of a car.
Sim to Reality can be almost anything.
Journalists, photographers, marketing managers, broadcasters, designers—if you name it, if that sort of job or task exists in real-world motorsports, it can likely be applied in some way to the iRacing simulation, or at the least, explored with taught experiences.
Parker White and Wyatt Tinsley are two recent examples of eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series drivers getting media credentialed during real-world race weekends to work with publications on telling the story of the event. As someone who also trekked a similar path before in my own life experiences, it’s incredible how the two worlds can translate.
— Parker White (@ParkerW95) March 1, 2026
Another former eNASCAR competitor, Blake McCandless, was walking back and forth between the two over the last few years, working CARS Tour broadcasts from the real-world booth while also portraying one of the voices of the eNASCAR Coca-Cola Series races. McCandless then qualified to be one of the top-40 in the Championship Series last year. His journey on the media side continues in 2026 as a pit spotter for FOX Sports, NASCAR on NBC, and CW Sports.
There are some higher education establishments out there, such as Belmont Abbey College, that offer a Motorsports Management degree among their curriculum. Some of the current students in the department have also taken to the virtual side of things, competing in the eNASCAR College iRacing Series powered by PlayVS College League over the last few seasons.
Before I went to Media Day earlier this year, I met up with James Pike, one of the professors at the Abbey, and also another voice of the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series during the Countdown to Green pre-race show. Pike introduced me to some of his students, Dr. Trey Cunningham, who is the Program Director of the MA in Motorsport Management, and the group introduced me to their new dedicated sim lab.
Every student I met that day not only competes in the College Series, but they all have a different path they are currently working on achieving in real-world motorsports once they’ve graduated. All of those paths have a connection to the sim, whether they know it or not.
Jake Innes has a background in racing already that he’s been able to hone in on and utilize the College Series for potentially reigniting a racing career. On the opposite end entirely, Jacob Martin is going down a marketing path, already working with Ryan Ellis in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series on collecting sponsorships for that effort.
Jalen Atkins is hoping to break into the media center as a journalist. Thaddeus Beekwilder wants to get into motorsports photography. Tom Appleton is looking to get into a broadcast production role. Jeremiah Taylor doesn’t know what he wants to do yet, but just wants to be a part of NASCAR in some way or fashion.
It’s all completely relatable, and all things that can be tied into sim racing. The racing is the easiest connection, but the rest all have their similarities that can be done on iRacing.
With the ability to make custom paint schemes on iRacing, Marketing majors might use a blank canvas as an opportunity to sell sponsors, mock up designs, not only for a virtual effort, but in Jacob’s case, to show a potential sponsor how they might look before the paint ever touches the car… or rather, the vinyl gets wrapped on the real thing.
Journalism and Photography hit close to home for me. Spectate a race, use the virtual camera tool, speak with the drivers, and paint the picture of the event. The virtual racing story can be told just as well as any real-world one, perhaps even easier. It’s also evident, by the production quality of every eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series event, that broadcasting and production is something that can be done as well.
And if you’re not sure yet, like Jeremiah, the fact is that iRacing is also a great way to have fun with friends and classmates at the end of the day.
EPILOGUE
There are plenty of members that load up iRacing with no aspirations to go racing, or do something in motorsports.
Not every simulation story needs to lead to reality. There are some that just want to be the best iRacer.
The Pioneers’ Casey Kirwan, the 2022 series champion, is out here living his best life, at the top of his game, and he’s stated on many occasions that racing in a real car just isn’t for him.
That isn’t stopping him from being one of the biggest streamers on the platform and continuing to make his mark at the top level of virtual competition.
For every Sim to Reality story that pops up, there will be hundreds, if not thousands that don’t manifest. That gap is slowly closing, and there are still plenty of improvements to come that could help shrink the gap for those looking to take that path.
With all of that said, the accessibility to make it happen has never been this streamlined.
It’s exciting to see it play out in real time, and I can’t wait to see what could possibly come next.
Image of Kaden Honeycutt in Featured Image by Chris Graythen/Getty ImagesÂ
For more information on the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series, visit eNASCAR.com or iRacing.com/eNASCAR.
For more information on iRacing and for special offers, visit iRacing.com.ÂÂ