eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series

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eNCCiS
eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series
ENCCiS logo.png
Inaugural season 2010
Current Champion Us.png Steven Wilson

Series Information

The eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series is an eSport World Championship series officially sanctioned by NASCAR featuring the world’s most elite oval sim-racers. Drivers compete on simulated versions of the actual real-world NASCAR tracks in simulated versions of the current-generation NASCAR Cup Series stock cars available on iRacing. More information can be found in our member’s forums.

Rounds run every other Tuesday Night starting February 20th at 9PM ET. Each round will broadcast LIVE to the general public on the iRacing eSports Network via iRacing's and NASCAR's digital outlets.

History

Introduction

A vision that Bill France Jr. articulated more than twenty-five years ago became a reality with the formation of the NASCAR iRacing.com Series, an officially sanctioned NASCAR racing series.

On February 9th, 2010 online racing competition commenced with the first event of the inaugural 18-race, 39-week NASCAR iRacing Drivers World Championship. The series featured the 50 top-rated drivers from iRacing’s Pro Series and included former NASCAR Cup Series driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. Selected races from the inaugural season were broadcasted over the internet on iRacing.com. Weekly iRacing news coverage and standings were featured on NASCAR.com and inRacingNews.com.

NASCAR and iRacing worked together since the announcement of the partnership in 2009 to refine the structure of the series, establish a “sporting code” or rule book, as well as develop an identity for the series. “Bill France Jr. was ahead of his time when he initially had the vision of an online racing series. Thanks to evolving technology NASCAR fans can virtually compete at their favorite track and have their chance to end up in a victory lane,” said NASCAR Senior Vice President Paul Brooks. Tony Gardner, iRacing’s president, explained that iRacing’s staff has been busy fine-tuning the infrastructure and creating the organization that supports the vision of NASCAR online racing. “We’ve created our online racing service for racers and fans,” Gardner said. “We’ve done the hard work to make it simple and easy for NASCAR fans to join iRacing and get behind the wheel. You don’t have to be a computer engineer to do this. PC owners with a broadband connection only need to purchase an inexpensive wheel-and-pedal set from their local consumer electronics store or online. In an hour, they can be racing. It’s that simple. Everything an aspiring racer needs to know to get started is on our Web site, at www.iracing.com.”

NASCAR iRacing Drivers World Championship

NASCAR iRacing Series World Championship

NASCAR PEAK Antifreeze iRacing Series

iRacing.com and PEAK Antifreeze/Coolant announced in 2014 that PEAK will sponsor iRacing's top NASCAR-sanctioned online racing championship series. The eNASCAR PEAK Antifreeze Series powered by iRacing.com will see the world's top sim-racers compete for more than $20,000 in cash and prizes in precise digital models of Generation-6 stock cars over a 16-race schedule. The series features iRacing's laser-scanned versions of NASCAR's most challenging tracks.

“Online racing has become a valuable tool for a growing number of NASCAR drivers who utilize the technology to hone their skills,” said Blake Davidson, Vice President of Licensing and Consumer Goods, NASCAR. “The new partnership between iRacing and PEAK Antifreeze ensures that online racing will continue to grow for years to come and become further integrated into our sport.”

“Our title sponsorship of the NASCAR PEAK Antifreeze Series complements our historic involvement in motorsports, and serves as an ideal vehicle to increase PEAK’s brand exposure to a new fan base of racing enthusiasts participating in the sport through online racing,” added Bryan Emrich, Chief Marketing Officer for Old World Industries, the parent company of PEAK Antifreeze/Coolant. “The competitive quality of iRacing’s pinnacle stock car series is a natural fit for the PEAK brand, and we think that iRacing members and virtual racers will enjoy putting their skills to the test in the series.”

Cup Cars

Evolution of Cup Cars

Car of Tomorrow (2010-2012)

NASCAR’s Car of Tomorrow (CoT) was engineered to challenge the skills of even the best stock car drivers in the world. For iRacers who climb behind the wheel of the Impala SS, the fun-to-drive factor is high, but it takes experience to get the most out of it, and talent to race it successfully in a pack of other cars.

Powered by a Chevrolet V8 with more than 750 horsepower, the Impala SS weighs-in at 3,450 pounds. At 53.5 inches at the top of the windshield, the Impala SS reflected NASCAR’s desire to use additional aerodynamic drag to slow speeds at 2.5-mile and longer tracks, such as Daytona International Speedway and its fractionally longer sister track, Talladega Superspeedway.

All of the mechanical adjustments permitted in the rules and possible on the physical version of the car are possible on iRacing’s virtual counterpart. It’s a complicated car to set up and on a fast track a challenging one to race, but experienced sim racers will achieve a high level of satisfaction competing on America’s top stock car tracks with the Chevrolet Impala SS, and every iRacer can test with the car to sample what was once “off limits” to all but the top-level pros.

Generation 6 Cup Car (2013-present)

Chevy SS

The Generation 6 NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Car marks a welcome return to NASCAR’s “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” heritage. With a distinctive body style resembling its showroom counterpart, the Gen-6 Chevrolet SS is a bold 200 mph statement of Bow-Tie brand identity.

Beauty is more than skin deep, however. The Chevy SS sports underbody aerodynamics to make the car stable in traffic and fostering close racing. Key safety features include a forward roof band and center roof support reinforcing the cars’ structural integrity, along roof flaps to reduce the likelihood of cars becoming airborne in crashes.

Like all Gen6 cars, the Chevy SS has a 3300 pound minimum total weight (with no less than 1600 pounds on the right side) along with a carbon-fiber hood and deck lid, and a 53″ wide rear spoiler.

Ford Fusion

The Generation 6 NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Car marks the return to NASCAR’s “win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” heritage. With a distinctive body style resembling its showroom counterpart, the Gen6 Ford Fusion is delighting fans of the famous ‘blue oval.’

The Ford Fusion sports underbody aerodynamics that make the car stable in traffic and foster close racing. Key safety features include forward a roof band and center roof support reinforcing the cars’ structural integrity, along with roof flaps to reduce the likelihood of cars becoming airborne in crashes.

Like its Gen 6 competitors, the Fusion tips the scales at a 3300 pound minimum weight with no less than 1600 pounds (down from 1700) on the right side, and sports a carbon-fiber hood and deck lid, along with a 53” wide rear spoiler.

Toyota Camry

With its introduction in 2013, the Generation 6 Sprint Cup Car marked a welcome return to NASCAR’s “Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” heritage. And with a body style based on one of the world’s best selling sedans, the Gen-6 Toyota Camry is the latest step in the Japanese automaker’s bid to top Chevrolet and Ford in the NASCAR Sprint Cup pecking order.

Like the Chevy SS and Ford Fusion, the Gen6 Camry’s aerodynamics are designed to enhance the car’s stability in traffic and reduce the advantage of the lead car in a draft, thus fostering close racing. With nearly 900 horsepower on tap and a minimum weight of 3300 pounds (with no less than 1600 pounds on the right side) that close racing is sure to take place at high speeds, so safety is an important consideration as well. Thus the Gen6 cars incorporate forward roof band and center roof support reinforcing structural integrity, along with large roof flaps to reduce the likelihood of cars becoming airborne in crashes.

Setups

The eNASCAR Peak Antifreeze iRacing Series is an open-setup racing league. Teams need to work together in the weeks before an event to prepare a setup for each race. Many things go into building a strong setup, but the main ingredients are aerodynamics (from optimal ride heights), mechanical grip (from cambers and springs), and balance (loose/tight).

As is evident in many periods of the series, these ingredients have formed completely different recipes during the history of NPAiS.

2010-2013, The Early Years

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2014-2016

2014-2016 saw a rather "calm" period of setup innovation. Very few obscure or difficult setup ideas were worth a large advantage in these years, and the dominant ideas in setup building were to keep the nose as low as possible for the whole lap, and to run a large positive split (6"-15") in the track bar to achieve as much rear skew as possible. Some notable "tricks" during this period includes "coil-binding" the LR spring to drastically change handling characteristics between entry and exit of the corners, and having the RF corner of the car "lift up" on the straightaway to cool the RF tire. Another small advantage turned out to be coil binding the front springs, which seemed to slightly improve aerodynamics by allowing the air to control ride heights a bit better. Exploiting these small advantages helped each of the champions from this period (Conti, Humpe, Alfalla) to achieve their success. However, with these tricks eventually rendered obsolete, teams would have to wait for a large shake up in the physics to find innovations.

2017-2018

2017 saw a large change to the physics of the suspension, aerodynamics, and tires. Teams quickly realized that max cambers on the rear tires was extremely quick. It only took a week or two for teams to fully adapt to this idea, but it took much longer for every team to adopt max front cambers as well. Drastic handling changes needed to be dealt with, as well as weird tire fall-off characteristics, but eventually most teams converged on maxed cambers all around. By July, one team came up with an idea to exploit the speed from the cambers by taking advantage of a little-known concept, ride height "camber gain". With this technique poorly understood at the time, and the fact that this trick only worked for one-lap pace, the team was able to rack up many pole positions during the later half of the season without the secret getting discovered. The eventual champion, Ryan Luza, was able to use this idea in qualifying to start up front in the Championship race at Homestead. By the end of the season, several teams were actively working on this concept, and they would continue to refine it during the off-season.

More physics updates followed during the off-season. The precursor to the 2018 NPAiS season, the iRacing Pro Series, saw the development of a radical new concept - a "camber gain" setup taken to the extreme. Potentially the most bizarre and amazing era of setup building since the early days, this period saw all teams running extremely high ride heights to exploit camber gain as much as possible. Without an effective means of punishing drivers for overheating their tires, the benefits to running well over 12 degrees of RF camber angle far outweighed the negative handling characteristics. During this time period, a small number of teams completely dominated the series, especially on high downforce Tracks. On some occasions, one individual team could have over a 1-tenth advantage on the next closest competition. This new trend in setup building was not well received by iRacing or the community, and a new physics package would be worked on for the later part of the season.

Specifications

  • Chassis: Steel tube frame with integral safety roll cage – must meet NASCAR standards
  • Engine displacement: 5.86 Pushrod V8 engine
  • Transmission: 4-speed manual transmission|manual
  • Weight: 3325 lb minimum without driver and fuel; 3450 lb minimum with driver and fuel
  • Power output: 725 hp unrestricted; 445 hp with restrictor plate
  • Torque: 720 Nm
  • Fuel: Sunoco 260 GTX 90 MON, 98 RON, 94 AKI unleaded 85% + Sunoco Green Ethanol E15
  • Fuel capacity: 18.7 gal
  • Fuel delivery: Port fuel injection
  • Fuel injection type: McLaren
  • ECU provider: MES Freescale TAG-400N
  • Compression ratio: 12:1
  • Aspiration: Naturally-aspirated engine
  • Wheelbase: 110 in
  • Steering: Power, recirculating ball
  • Tires: Slick tire currently on v6 of the tire model

Series Stats

Champions

Driver Champions

Season Driver Team
2010 Gb.png Richard Towler Drill Aisle
2011 Us.png Ray Alfalla Swan Racing
2012 Us.png Ray Alfalla JR Motorsports
2013 Us.png Tyler D Hudson One Up Motorsport
2014 Us.png Michael Conti JScho Motorsports
2015 Us.png Kenny Humpe The TEAM
2016 Us.png Ray Alfalla Slip Angle Motorsports
2017 Us.png Ryan Michael Luza Simworx Racing
2018 Us.png Ray Alfalla Slip Angle Motorsports
2019 Us.png Zack Novak Roush Fenway Racing
2020 Us.png Nick Ottinger William Byron eSports
2021 Ca.png Keegan Leahy 23XI Racing
2022 Us.png Casey Kirwan XSET
2023 Us.png Steven Wilson Stewart-Haas Esports

Team Champions

Season Team
2010-2019 Not awarded
2020 Virtual Racing School
2021 23XI Racing
2022 Stewart-Haas Esports
2023 Team Dillon eSports

See Also

List of All-Time eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series Winners
List of eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series Champions
List of eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series Championship 4 Appearances