iRacing | Historic North Wilkesboro Speedway Coming to the Sim

[Paul Jeffrey]

iRacing are doing something a little bit different - producing a laserscan of the classic North Wilkesboro Speedway.

Revealing images of the team hard at work on the now derelict Wilkesboro Speedway site in North Carolina, iRacing are currently performing a laserscan of the track as they bid to recreate the venue within the iRacing simulation - with plans to create an historic 1987 version of the 0.625 mile venue.

North Wilkesboro Speedway is famous for being one of the most historic venues in Nascar history, having hosted the first of its 93 Winston Cup events as long ago as 1959. Unfortunately, the track has fallen into disrepair in recent years, having finally closed its doors to competitive racing at the end of the 2011 season, following its reopening in 2010 after a 14 year period of inactivity.

iRacing are currently scanning the circuit following efforts from former Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt Jr to clean up the venue in preparation for the visit from iRacing staff - something the fan favourite driver has been discussing with the developers for a number of months.

According to various news sources, several months ago Earnhardt Jr. discussed cleaning up the venue and allowing iRacing to reproduce it within the simulation when chatting about the track with owner Marcus Smith, on his regular podcast, 'The Dale Jr. Download'.

An exciting move from iRacing, and very interesting to see a laserscanned version of an historic circuit coming to a modern racing simulation.

iRacing is exclusively available on PC.

For more news about iRacing, head over to the iRacing sub forum here at RaceDepartment and get involved with the community today!

 

[Michel Bélisle]

I agree it would be awesome if they brought in some old school cars from the 70s, 80s, and even 90s.

I wonder why in most sims, you will get Formula 1 cars of old or GT cars or Le Mans sport prototype cars but when it comes to NASCAR cars, you rarely see vintage cars being offered. I wonder why?

 

[MadDAWG]

I wonder why in most sims, you will get Formula 1 cars of old or GT cars or Le Mans sport prototype cars but when it comes to NASCAR cars, you rarely see vintage cars being offered. I wonder why?

Because NASCAR dosen't want to admit how bad Brain France messed up NASCAR. There was a NASCAR legends back around the time of NASCAR Racing 3, but that is it as far as offical stuff. There are some old school mods for NR2003.

 

[M D Gourley]

I see your point. Though, something that would make the whole enterprise worthwhile, would be to add vintage NASCAR cars to the sim.

I am not much into oval. However, if they came up with an early 70's Richard Petty Plymouth Satellite or a Bobby Allison Chevy Monte Carlo of the same era, that might pique my interest.

Absolutely agree....I would purchase this as a combo DLC.

 

[Shad3R]

As a iRacing guy, we also have historic content on road, like 2012 Spa, old Sebring and all the Outdated GT3's

 

[arthur666]

I used to run an office across the street (TAB Retail) when I lived in NC. Very short track overgrown with weeds. Been closed for years. I remember years back when Top Gear was here I met James May.

Nice! I remember driving on 421, and when there was a race, Troopers would stop traffic for pedestrians because some of the parking was in a field ACROSS the highway. Old school.

 

[Pauli Ahonen]

What a waste!! Another track to drive around in circles What about the numerous kick ass tracks found in RRE? Autodrome MOST, etc... Nice elevation changes, etc..

It is north american game so what do you expect?

 

[Tommi Saari]

Worth a watch.

 

[Tommi Saari]

Btw, NASCAR uploaded ’87 NWR races to YouTube today.

 

[Mike Kadlcak]

I agree it would be awesome if they brought in some old school cars from the 70s, 80s, and even 90s.

And they should not stop there and bring also Indycars from those years as well.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

totally with you, guys, that would be cool. I suck big time at racing the current oval cars, but I'd be even worse in those monsters, though. But, we now have AI and I can't wait to take one of my NASCAR cars out and relive the glory of NASCAR 4 days .

 

[Jonny Austin]

Go drive RRRE then.

So when iRacing added Catalunya a few weeks back, I'll guess there were members who are predominantly oval racers saying just the same things as you, but from the other perspective.

Oh my god, what a waste... another road track.

Ricky Gervais summed up this sort of post nicely which has been around since the internet was invented.

 

[e621]

If you look at the pictures, the track surface is derelict. I guess they will have to smooth that out during post-processing. I am a bit baffled that they would do something like that versus scanning an actively maintained track.

Its almost like..... it was an iconic track on the NASCAR schedule!

 

[Wayne Hutchison]

My guess is that there's an 80's Earnhardt car coming to the sim at the same time...

 

[Jonny Austin]

My guess is that there's an 80's Earnhardt car coming to the sim at the same time...

That would be logical.An 1986 selection of cars would be great.It is the last year before restrictor plates & the field of drivers was unbelievable.Earnhardt,Rudd,Tim Richmond,Wallace,Elliott,Petty,Yarborough,Waltrip,Kulwicki.Nice looking cars as well with some legendary paint schemes.

With the new AI you could recreate the season & even for example make Earnhardt more agressive.

 

[TheBugattiFan]

What a waste!! Another track to drive around in circles What about the numerous kick ass tracks found in RRE? Autodrome MOST, etc... Nice elevation changes, etc..

You do realize a HUGE part of the iRacing playerbase is oval racing fans right? Plus at least it's digitally preserving a historic race track

 

[Sharpy Bonfire]

Before racing ovals in iRacing and doing only them rarely on other sims I was in "bah, ovals are always the same".

Oh bois how wrong I was... Surely there are some oval tracks that seem very close to each other, but theres lot of variation I was not aware of before and driving in packs is really different in different oval tracks.

 

[BrunoBæ]

My own 5 min experience in iRacing driving on ovals was that it was slightly easier to learn the track layout - than even the simplest road track existing.

 

[UK DarkPredator]

What a waste!! Another track to drive around in circles What about the numerous kick ass tracks found in RRE? Autodrome MOST, etc... Nice elevation changes, etc..

L