William Byron Credits Iowa Trifecta to iRacing Roots: “Those Are Usually Our Fastest Tracks”

If anyone scoffs at the reality of iRacing compared to actual racing, William Byron will quickly come to iRacing’s defense.

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.

Post Edited By: Abhishek Ramesh

Iowa Speedway iRacing William Byron

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Jerry Bonkowski

Jerry Bonkowski is a veteran sportswriter who has worked full-time for many of the top media outlets in the world, including USA Today (15 years), ESPN.com (4+ years), Yahoo Sports (4 1/2 years), NBCSports.com (8 years) and others. He has covered virtually every major professional and collegiate sport there is, including the Chicago Bulls' six NBA championships (including heavy focus on Michael Jordan), the Chicago Bears Super Bowl XX-winning season, the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs World Series championships, two of the Chicago Blackhawks' NHL titles, Tiger Woods' PGA Tour debut, as well as many years of beat coverage of the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA for USA Today. But Jerry's most notable achievement has been covering motorsports, most notably NASCAR, IndyCar, NHRA drag racing and Formula One. He has had a passion for racing since he started going to watch drag races at the old U.S. 30 Dragstrip (otherwise known as "Where the Great Ones Run!") in Hobart, Indiana. Jerry has covered countless NASCAR, IndyCar and NHRA races and championship battles over the years. He's also the author of a book, "Trading Paint: 101 Great NASCAR Debates", published in 2010 (and he's hoping to soon get started on another book). Away from sports, Jerry was a fully sworn part-time police officer for 20 years, enjoys reading and music (especially "hair bands" from the 1980s and 1990s), as well as playing music on his electric keyboard, driving (fast, of course!), spending time with Cyndee his wife of nearly 40 years, the couple's three adult children and three grandchildren (with more to come!), and his three dogs -- including two German Shepherds and an Olde English Bulldog who thinks he's a German Shepherd.. Jerry still gets the same excitement of seeing his byline today as he did when he started in journalism as a 15-year-old high school student. He is looking forward to writing hundreds, if not thousands, of stories in the future for TheSportsRush.com, as well as interacting with readers.

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