If anyone scoffs at the reality of iRacing compared to actual racing, William Byron will quickly come to iRacing’s defense.
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The Team Hendrick driver was a very successful iRacing driver in his early-to-mid teens, winning races and championships online. In fact, it was Byron’s success in iRacing that led to a tryout with Team Hendrick and the rest is history.
His win on Sunday at Iowa was a perfect illustration of how realistic racing at Iowa in person is comparable to iRacing. Byron has now won at Iowa in three different series in real life: Cup, Xfinity and Trucks.
He prepped for most of those wins by competing in iRacing, in a sense, like a full-scale simulator. “There’s certain tracks I’ve had a lot of success on,” Byron said during Sunday’s post-race media availability.
“The funny backstory with this place (Iowa Speedway), and kind of Pocono ropes into that as well, is when I was a kid, the iRacing schedule would always line up with the racetracks in the summer and that’s when I’d have the most time to iRace, [it] was in the summer.
“I would race this track a ton on iRacing. So I feel like that’s why it’s been a good track for me (in real life), is I just have thousands of laps kind of in my head of how the rhythm of this place goes.
“And even with repaves and everything, I feel like I just spent so much time as a 14-year-old, 13-year-old just racing on iRacing on Iowa and Pocono. I feel like those tracks in the summer, it honestly lines up pretty good. Those are usually our fastest tracks.”
They are Byron‘s most successful tracks as well. And it all began by sitting behind a computer monitor and keyboard before he made the successful transition to sitting behind the wheel of a real-life race car.
