GamingRacingBy Jay Rigdon on

Last week was the debut race for NASCAR’s Pro Invitational Series, an esports venture featuring real drivers simulating races on the iRacing platform.

The inaugural event was a ton of fun, with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Denny Hamlin coming down to the wire. This week, with the action moving to both network FOX and FS1, we again got a very fun case, with Timmy Hill winning by a very slim margin.

But one of the wilder moments came a few laps prior to that, when Dale Earnhardt Jr. managed to drive through the virtual Big One. It came after an incredible save of his own; Kyle Busch came down the track without room to do so, and Earnhardt was forced to use some wizardry to save the car from spinning. From there, things got really crazy; the main voice is from Earnhardt’s crew chief/Twitch stream narrator, pictured in the upper right, with his spotter also coming over the “radio”):

It’s wild that the crash physics of the game are realistic enough that things unfold as they would in real life, Earnhardt’s driving was impeccable there. (Narrowly squeezing through as Hamlin spun around at the end was maybe the best part.)

Earnhardt acknowledged the crash on Twitter:

Earnhardt finished 6th this week thanks in large part to that evasion; he’d hit the wall earlier in the race, which knocked him seemingly out of contention for a top-10 finish.

Considering we’re living in a world that’s essentially without sports, having a few hours of close-to-the-real thing NASCAR events has been a blessing on Sunday afternoons. That we can also enjoy both the crashes and drivers avoiding them without any fear of real danger whatsoever has also been nice.

About Jay Rigdon

Jay is a columnist at Awful Announcing. He is not a strong swimmer. He is probably talking to a dog in a silly voice at this very moment.

View all posts by Jay Rigdon