Anisa Khalifa: NASCAR is the most popular motorsport series across America, but its roots run deep as a regional sport in the South — especially in our home state of North Carolina. That history has heavily influenced the growth of motorsports in the US, which has produced a lot of Southern drivers — and fans. But in recent years, a surprising new trend has begun to level that playing field: the explosion in popularity of esports.
Unidentified Speaker: We’re going to be able to grow a whole new generation of talent. You’re going to have drivers that are going to be better, they’re going to be smarter because they’re going to be on the video game from 4-years-old on, graduating into a simulator.
Anisa Khalifa: I’m Anisa Khalifa. This week on The Broadside, my colleague Jerad Walker brings us the story of a new generation of racing simulators and how they’re changing the face of the sport at nearly every level.
Jerad, are you a racing fan?
Jerad Walker: No. No, I am not. But you’ve got gearheads in your family, right?Anisa Khalifa: I do! Yeah, my uncles and my brother are all really into cars…I actually have one uncle who built a Mustang in the garage — rebuilt it when he was 16. And ever since then he’s been tinkering with one car or another. So I grew up around cars. I played some racing games back in the day, because anything my big brother did, I had to try at least once.
Jerad Walker: Of course.
Anisa Khalifa: And it's fun!
Jerad Walker: Well I don’t have that connection. I own a car. That’s about the extent of my knowledge.
Anisa: So what got you interested in a story about racing?
Jerad: There was a movie that came out last summer called Gran Turismo.
(SOUNDBITE FROM FILM GRAN TURISMO)
Unidentified Speaker: What is this?
Unidentified Speaker: It’s a contest. The best Gran Turismo players in the world get a chance to compete in professional racing.
Unidentified Speaker: Dude, this is real?
Jerad Walker: It’s based on a true story about a young video game player from England named Jann Mardenborough. About a decade ago, he earned a professional racing contract after playing the game Gran Turismo...
(SOUNDBITE FROM FILM GRAN TURISMO)
Unidentified Speaker: I’m sorry. You really think you’re gonna take a kid who plays video games in their bedroom. You’re gonna strap him to a 200 mile an hour rocket. It’ll tear him to pieces.
Jerad Walker: I love an underdog story, so I got really fascinated by this concept. There are only a handful of race car drivers out there who’ve made this kind of transition from the virtual world to the real world. But they do exist. So, last summer I hopped in my very sensible 2017 Subaru Outback and headed up to a NASCAR event in Richmond, Virginia to meet one of them.
Anisa Khalifa: Okay, paint me a picture of that.
Jerad Walker: It is loud. I mean, it’s really loud. Richmond Raceway is this massive concrete oval surrounded by stands that can seat nearly 50,000 people. I was there for the qualifying round which happens on the day before the race, so it was basically empty except for a few dozen crews working on their cars on pit row. And that’s where I met a 21 year old driver competing in the NASCAR Truck Series.
Rajah Caruth: I’m Rajah Caruth, driver of the number 24 Wendell Scott Foundation Silverado in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series for GMS Racing.
Jerad Walker: Rajah Caruth has a very untraditional background for a NASCAR driver. Most of his peers are white and a lot of them come from racing families — they have these long lineages and many of them have deep roots in the South. In contrast, Rajah’s one of the only Black men on pit row. For the past few years he’s been attending Winston-Salem State University, an HBCU here in North Carolina. But he grew up outside of the region. He’s from Washington, DC. And no one else in his family has ever raced cars.
Anisa Khalifa: So how'd Rajah get into this then?
Jerad Walker: As a kid he was obsessed with the animated movie Cars…
Anisa Khalifa: I love that!
Jerad Walker: And that was his window into the sport.
Rajah Caruth: So I grew up being a fan, watching races on TV, on YouTube, playing NASCAR video games. I went to my first race here at Richmond when I was 12. I didn't start racing online until I was 15. And then got my first real life start when I was 17. So really late compared to everybody else I race against.
Jerad Walker: Starting at 17 put him at a tremendous disadvantage. Most of his competitors began organized racing with go-karts when they were 6 or 7 years old.
Anisa Khalifa: That's a big gap. So how did he get his break?
Jerad Walker: It was via a hyper realistic simulator game called iRacing.
Rajah Caruth: I played like NASCAR 15, NASCAR Inside Line 2011 on the Wii, and then PlayStation 3. And I saw iRacing at first and was like this is just the next video game. Like it looked really cool. And like I could just drive NASCAR on it.
Jerad Walker: But then something huge happened. When Rajah was a sophomore in high school, another iRacing gamer named William Byron signed a NASCAR Cup Series contract to race real stock cars at the highest level of the sport.
Rajah Caruth: And really, that was the moment that I realized ‘Well, this is my chance.’ And I've always wanted to race and I knew like, this is what I want my career to be, and my life's work. So that was my one shot.
Jerad Walker: So he trained obsessively on the sim and became a dominant driver online. From there he was identified by a NASCAR developmental program and got a chance to race real cars in some lower level competitions. That’s where he started his climb.
Anisa Khalifa: There's no way that's as easy as it sounds.
Jerad Walker: Oh no, it’s super hard to do this. There are just some things that the sims can’t prepare you for. The vibrations and noise in the vehicles at full tilt are incredible. And it’s hot. On the day I visited Rajah in Richmond, the temperature on the track was about 140 degrees.
Anisa Khalifa: Wow.
Jerad Walker: Yeah. And I was uncomfortable all day long and I was never inside of a stock car. And then there’s a final hurdle. And this last one is obvious, but it’s probably the biggest one. You can get hurt — you can die. Most people simply aren’t mentally built to overcome that.
Anisa Khalifa: And that's a mental armor you need to take on the track with you, along with all that metal.
Jerad Walker: When did the reality of possible danger inside of a cockpit click in your mind?
Rajah Caruth: It's always been there. From the first time I did it because honestly, like I was when I first did it, I was scared, you know? This ain't easy, you know, and it wasn't a walk in the park.
Anisa: How is it even possible to go from playing a video game in your house to racing professionally in the real world?
Jerad: I spoke with Steve Myers about this. He’s an executive at iRacing. And he says motorsports are truly unique.
Steve Myers: There isn't really a sport that I can think of that more closely represents the real action to the virtual one, where you could play a video game or a simulation, and do all the same actions that you would in the real world.
Jerad Walker: It’s not like soccer or football where esports and real sports are totally separate concepts. There’s no way you could be really good at a video game like Madden and then translate that skillset into becoming a real NFL quarterback. But in a virtual world like iRacing…
Steve Myers: You're using the same hand inputs, you're using the same, you know, foot movements, all of the same mechanical functions that you have to race in the real world, you're doing in the sim as well.
Jerad Walker: Steve says developers have spent decades improving the graphics and the code in these games. And they’ve gotten to a point where it’s pretty close to the real-world physics of a race.
Anisa Khalifa: Ok. But even if the car in the game handles the way a real car would, a computer can't simulate how it feels to be hurtling along a racetrack at 200 miles an hour.
Jerad Walker: Yeah, but to heighten the realism, gamers are investing in rigs that include physical things, like steering wheels, pedals, and gear shifts that help them replicate the feeling of driving a real car.
Steve Myers: It's what you want to make of it. And that's what's great about this as a hobby, it's, you know, some people, you know, I've seen people spend $100,000 on full motion rigs. You know, you feel like you're spinning in a real car because the whole whole machine moves. But the vast majority of our customers buy just a regular retail steering wheel and pedal set that you can get at BestBuy or Amazon or anywhere. And you just plug it into your PC. And those are anywhere from $200 to $300. And you're literally racing within 30 minutes.
Jerad Walker: And while $300 may not be cheap, it’s pretty economical for race car driving. It can cost 15,000 dollars a year to race a car at the lowest level of the sport. And you’re eventually going to get into a wreck.
Steve Myers: And you know, you wreck a race car and you bend a frame, you're not putting that car back on track again. So again, you're talking about 10 or $15,000, at the most basic level, to be able to get a car back on track again. And that's just not realistic for 99% of the people in the world.
Anisa Khalifa: This all sounds… kind of revolutionary.
Jerad Walker: It is! I mean it’s broken down these huge barriers to entry for drivers. And Steve says it’s part of a generational shift at nearly every level of NASCAR.
Steve Myers: I can't see a time now going into the future where that's not going to be the case. Because this really is, especially with the direction that the sports are going this is the only way for people to train.
Anisa Khalifa: Coming up after the break – we find out how racing simulators are changing the action on the track.
Welcome back to The Broadside. I’m Anisa Khalifa. Now Jerad, we’ve talked about the way racing sims are beginning to change who drives cars in the real life sport. But that’s not the main audience for these games, is it?
Jerad Walker: No. It’s kind of an unintended consequence. They make these games primarily for gamers. And it’s a massive audience. They’re everywhere. In fact we didn’t have to look very far to find one.
Al Wodarski: So should I go ahead and start racing?
Jerad Walker: Yeah man. Let’s go racin’!
Al Wodarski is one of the audio engineers here at North Carolina Public Radio.
Anisa Khalifa: Love Al. Had no idea he was a gamer.
Jerad Walker: Yeah. And he plays Gran Turismo.
Al?
Al Wodarski: Yeah?
Jerad Walker: How long have you been playing race car games and race simulators?
Al Wodarski: Um, on and off maybe a good ten years but I don’t play them very often.
Jerad Walker: What do you make of the fact that there are a handful of people on the planet who have made the jump from this or something like this game to high level professional race car driving?
Al Wodarski: I can’t imagine because–granted I play on beginner level. I’m not a pro at this. But it seems to me like this is really different than the real thing.
Jerad Walker: You’re not ready to go 200mph?
Al Wodarski: Noooo, no no. I’m not ready to hit the wall and I’m not ready to bounce off other cars either.
Anisa Khalifa: Jerad, I would assume that most people are like Al…
Jerad Walker: Yeah. You can also put me in that boat. And 99 percent of gamers have no intention of becoming professionals. I chatted with NASCAR’s Director of Gaming & Esports — a guy named Ray Smith. And he says that they see this stuff as an outreach tool. Casual gamers are potential NASCAR fans and they think sims are a gateway into the sport.
Ray Smith: It gives them a sense of what the driver is going through. So I always say you know, you jump on a sim and then you go to the race or you watch the race, all sudden you have a better understanding of what that driver is going through when they're going in turn one or, or how difficult it is to get in a straight line after you get out turn four. So it just, it heightens the understanding and how you can engage the sport when you're able to access the simulator, and then take in the sport as a fan.
Jerad Walker: NASCAR has been smart about capitalizing on this. They were really early to embrace esports and have been in a partnership with iRacing for over a decade. And that partnership now extends to some surprising places beyond just the video game.
Ray Smith: In the past couple of years, they've been called on by several groups to build tracks or resurface tracks and get that design right before they go to it in real life.
Anisa Khalifa: So they're building virtual prototype tracks and then testing them with sim drivers.
Jerad Walker: Yeah. The goal is to make sure they’re safe and entertaining before NASCAR spends millions of dollars building them. They recently did this for a road race that was held in one of the busiest cities in the world.
(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS BROADCAST)
Unidentified Anchor: In less than 24 hours history will be made in Chicago as NASCAR takes over some of the city’s busiest streets.
Ray Smith: iRacing went out in 2020 and scanned downtown Chicago to start developing this idea. Like, I don't know what goes into inventing a new race in a downtown area. But I couldn't imagine doing it without iRacing testing it.
Anisa Khalifa: So these sims are no longer an afterthought, but an essential part of NASCAR's real world operations.
Jerad Walker: Yes. And the culture of sim racing has also started to cross over into the way drivers compete in the real sport. Sometimes in really dramatic ways.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV BROADCAST)
Unidentified Announcer: Now, just five laps to go from Martinsville!
Jerad Walker: There was an incident in 2022 during the second-to-last NASCAR race of the regular season at Martinsville. A driver named Ross Chastain was in 10th place and desperate to finish higher in the standings so that he could make the cutoff for the NASCAR playoffs.
Unidentified Announcer: Ross Chastain trying to get by the 9! Again that points battle to determine who is the final Championship 4 driver. Now Bell pulling away with those fresher tires!
Jerad Walker: And in the final turn of the final lap, he did something shocking.
We should probably just watch the video. That’s probably the easiest way to describe what’s happening.
Anisa Khalifa: Let's do it.
Unidentified Announcer: Take a look at what he did!
Second Unidentified Announcer: I have never seen anything like that before in my entire life!
Anisa Khalifa: Oohh–oh my…
Jerad Walker: Instead of braking like everybody else in the turn, he slams into the side of the wall at full speed, destroys the side of his car, and blows past five other drivers to finish in 5th place…
Anisa Khalifa: The car is on fire. The complete side of the car is just gone.
Jerad Walker: Smoke everywhere.
Anisa Khalifa: Smoke everywhere. Wow. Did he do that on purpose?!
Jerad Walker: Yeah, it’s a thing called the wall ride...
Ray Smith: So the wall ride, you know, in video game land, you put your car right up against the wall, and just gas it, it's like getting on a roller coaster and controlling the speed. So you're really not turning it too much. You're really just hoping that the car matches the wall, and it's a clean ride. And you can just shoot around the corner at speeds that just don't really work. Because usually when you're at a Bristol, or Martinsville or Richmond, you're breaking down to 50-60 miles per hour to get around that corner. What Ross did was just gas it and go speeds that you're not supposed to go around corners at that speed. And that's why that move is outlawed now.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV BROADCAST)
Unidentified Announcer: And look at the right side of the car! It’s destroyed.
Ray Smith: Always frowned upon in video games to do that, and never thought it could be done in real life. And Ross Chastain pulled off one of the most iconic moves in motorsports.
Second Unidentified Announcer: It almost doesn’t look real!
Unidentified Announcer: It doesn’t!
Second Unidentified Announcer: It looks like a video game. It doesn’t look real, he’s going so fast!
Anisa Khalifa: We mentioned this earlier, but I’m curious to hear what Ray thinks about the increased attention that esports and sims are getting from things like the release of the movie Gran Turismo.
Jerad Walker: He’s excited. I mean racing sims are not a secret in NASCAR or motorsports in general. But I don’t think the wider public is aware of the connection yet.
Ray Smith: I love that that movie came out. The conversation, you know, has risen, like, can you actually do that? Yes, you can actually do that. And that's a true story. And we have other true stories of people that aspire to be professional drivers starting that journey in the video game. And those skills actually make it all the way through to when they become professional drivers.
Anisa Khalifa: Jerad, do you buy that? Can anyone — you or me or Al — do that? Or do you need to be born with some sort of special ability?
Jerad Walker: That is the million dollar question, right? That’s kind of what I wanted to find out when I started researching this. And I don’t think I can definitively answer it myself. But I did ask Rajah Caruth. He’s the young NASCAR driver who I hung out with in Richmond. There’s probably nobody more qualified on the planet to answer that question than him.
You were obviously born with some sort of preternatural ability, but —
Rajah Caruth: I can’t say I totally agree.
Jerad Walker: Really? So this is my question, can anyone go into a simulator and after training in a simulator make the same jump? Is it possible?
Rajah Caruth: I think… And I'm typically not the best with giving myself credit. And people tell me like, I have a natural talent. And a lot of times, I don't feel like that I just feel like, I try and I work harder than anybody else I race against, and I have to bust my butt to get to their level, because I haven't been doing it a quarter as long as them. So that being said, I feel like, if you put in the time and you apply yourself to learning the craft and learning the sport as well, then you can be as good as anybody.
Anisa Khalifa: This episode of The Broadside was produced by Jerad Walker and edited by Charlie Shelton-Ormond. Al Wodarski was our audio engineer and also showcased some incredible video game moves. Sean Roux provided additional audio support.
A big thank you goes out to the folks at NASCAR and especially Matt Humphrey for his help during NASCAR race weekend in Richmond. Special thanks also to Eric Teel and WFAE in Charlotte for technical assistance.
The Broadside is a production of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. You can email us at broadside@wunc.org. If you enjoyed the show, leave us a rating, a review, or tell a friend to tell a friend!
Thanks for listening y'all. We'll be back next week.