nASA Rallycross Challenge

OSS NRX

Overwatch Specialty Service NASA Rallycross Challenge
Inaugural season	2012A
Current Champion	Josh Clogg
Current season

The NASA Rallycross Challenge, officially the Overwatch Specialty Service NASA Rallycross Challenge, is an eSports league for Rallycross on iRacing. Founded in 2012 on NASCAR 2003, the series moved to iRacing in 2018. After mis-management resulted in a low car count, the series went back to NR2003 for one season. Since 2020, the series has been on iRacing. The series has featured numerous World Championship Series drivers, such as Connor Parise, Jake Robertson, and Beau Albert, among others. These pro drivers have described NASA as the perfect practice space for the iRacing Rallycross World Championship.

History

Early Beginnings (2012)

In June of 2012, Josh Mertz and Dylan Livengood partnered together to make a series modeling the real-world Global Rallycross Championship, utilizing the rally car mod on NASCAR Racing 2003 Season. The series ran on exclusively custom built tracks using Sandbox, along with custom car templates. The series modeled the Global Rallycross Championship, using Heat races, a Last Chance Qualifier, and a Feature. To be unique, there was an implementation of two joker laps in the Feature races.

The original NASA RallyCross Challenge, which was at a customized version of Croft Rallycross, was supposed to to be the only race, which took place on Sunday, July 1, 2012. Nine drivers appeared, all of whom loved the novelty of Rallycross on NASCAR 2003. As a result, the concept was turned into a serious league, and those drivers also ran the following race at Island Rally, which was a dirt implementation of Bridgehampton. Inter-league drama began before the third round in Negus which resulted in a few drivers withdrawing. Cross-league promotion resulted in the biggest field size for the fourth round at Riverside, which was 18 drivers. Momentum continued for St. Eustache and Valkenswaard to close out the inaugural season. Brandon Lambert won the championship by six points over Josh Mertz, as the Indiana driver finished last in Riverside a fortnight prior.

The series would continually have an average of 10 cars for the 2012B campaign. New tracks in this season included crude replicas of the 2012 Charlotte and X Games GRC circuits, along with a fictional circuit called the NASA Proving Grounds which supplied two races.

The 2012B season finale had a controversy for the championship. Adam Simons, a driver for MRT owned by Josh Mertz, ended up winning the LCQ on the road ahead of Mertz after Mertz was slow on his joker lap and the subsequently collided on the merge. Mertz blamed Simons, who promptly withdrew his entry. Dylan Livengood placed Josh Mertz into the feature to race for the championship, as Livengood was racing in Chris Wetz's car after the Texan had a family emergency.

2012C saw the additions of a fictional circuit in Gifhorn, Germany, to replace the track of Los Angeles. While car count started at 12 for the first two races, successful promotion matched the record of 18 cars at Gifhorn and Charlotte. Calendar mis-management resulted in a triple header of both Proving Grounds rounds along with Negus in one night to end the season. As a result, car count fluttered slightly.

Josh Mertz and Dylan Livengood had battled all season for the championship. Tensions were high given the triple header nature of the season finale. Midway through the feature of the final round in Negus, Josh Mertz came together with another driver and parked his car, fearing a penalty. This set up a tie scenario for the championship, which then had a sudden death, 3 lap tiebreaker race between Mertz and Livengood. Mertz won the race in a photo finish over Livengood, but it was determined later that Mertz parking in the feature was not a sufficient penalty. He was placed at the back of the feature and as a result, lost the championship by one point over Livengood.

The 2013 calendar year was supposed to be an exciting one for NASA, as the 2013A season began with high expectations and field sizes. 16 cars in Croft and 18 in Valkenswaard carried over into Gifhorn for round three, which had another 18 cars running in practice. However, this was not to be.

Cheatgate (January 2013)

Xander Clements, who made his debut midway through the 2012C season, won the final two rounds of the championship in 2012C. He blew his engine multiple times in mysterious ways in Croft and Valkenswaard, and in practice for Gifhorn was considerably faster than David Krikorian and the field. Krikorian, an established driver on NASCAR 2003, was widely regarded as one of the fastest drivers on the sim at the time. This prompted Dylan Livengood to investigate the telemetry of Clements' car.

It was found that Clements was utilizing an illegal grip hacking modification in order to be faster than the rest of the field. However, most of the cars that were running that evening were associated with Clements, because they also ran in Clements NASCAR themed league. When Clements was questioned by Livengood, he refuted, and when Livengood banned Clements, the field left with him. This resulted in Dylan Livengood's second championship, despite only racing three races.

Treading Water (Summer 2013-2017)

Inter-league drama, along with lack of promotion and a dying sim community resulted in car count hovering around 10 drivers per race until the announcement of Rallycross on iRacing in 2018.

First iRacing Attempt (Summer 2018)

In mid 2018, iRacing released the iRX content. The same two factors plagued the two seasons iRacing attempt, before the league transitioned back to NASCAR 2003. The decision was quickly reversed and the league was back on iRacing in 2020.

Champions

Season	Drivers’	Constructors’	Manufacturers’	Sportsman Drivers'	Sportsman Teams'	Sportsman Manufacturers'
NASA Rallycross Challenge
2012A	Brandon Lambert	Revolution Racing	Mitsubishi	Andrew Fessler	Fessler WRT	Ford
2012B	Josh Mertz	MRT	Subaru	Tristan Hagenstein	Great Lakes Motorsports	Ford
2012C	Dylan Livengood	Revolution Racing	Citroen	Andrew Fessler	Fessler WRT	Ford
2013A	Dylan Livengood	Revolution Racing	Mitsubishi	Andrew Fessler	Fessler WRT	Ford
2013B	Dylan Livengood	Revolution Racing	Volkswagen	Caleb Paul	No Fear Racing	Subaru
2013C	Josh Mertz	MRT	Mitsubishi	Tristan Hagenstein	Great Lakes Motorsports	Ford
2014A	Dylan Livengood	Revolution Racing	Mitsubishi	Brandon Nicholson	Revolution Junior	Mitsubishi
2014B	Josh Mertz	MRT	Subaru	Tristan Hagenstein	MRT Junior	Subaru
2015A	Josh Mertz	Revolution Racing	Mitsubishi	Daniel Bellamy	125 Rallycross	Subaru
2015B	Josh Mertz	Aftershock Motorsports	Subaru	Doug DeNise	DeNise Racing	Ford
2016A	Cody Erdmann	MRT	Subaru	Doug DeNise	DeNise Racing	Subaru
2017A	Cody Erdmann	MRT	Subaru	Zack Johnson	Johnson Racing	Mitsubishi
2017B	Philip Kraus	MRT	Citroen	Doug DeNise	DeNise Racing	Volkswagen
2017C	Josh Mertz	MRT	Subaru	Casey Lester	Lester Racing	Mitsubishi
2018A	Philip Kraus	MRT	Subaru	Noah Carmichael	East Coast Autosport	Ford
2018B	Josh Mertz	MRT	Subaru	Connor Parise	Vuzion Racing	Subaru
2018C	Philip Kraus	MRT	Subaru	Not Held
2019A	Philip Kraus	MRT	Subaru
2019B	Philip Kraus	MRT	Subaru
Simracer Coin NASA Rallycross Challenge
2020A	Matt Hartley	LRL Racing Team	Subaru	Not Held
2020B	Sindre Silva	Apex Racing Academy	Volkswagen
2021A	Sindre Silva	Last Lap Motorsports	Subaru
Simracer Coin NASA Rallycross Challenge presented by Nitro Circus
2021B	Luke Crouse	Last Lap Motorsports	Subaru	Ray Kingsbury	Last Lap Motorsports	Subaru
2021C	Luke Crouse	Fiercely Forward	Subaru	Andrew Howell	Digital Global Racing	Subaru
NASA Rallycross Challenge
2022A	Josh Clogg	TWR Subie Squad	Subaru	Justin Robichaud	Woven Planet Racing	Volkswagen
Overwatch Specialty Service NASA Rallycross Challenge
2022B	Alex Abedi	TWR Subie Squad	Subaru	Jamison Huffman	TWR Subie Doobie Squad	Subaru

All Time Statistics

Correct as of 5 May 2021

Most Wins

Rank	Driver	Wins
1	Josh Mertz	40
2	Philip Kraus	24
3	Chris Wetz	19
4	Cody Erdmann	18
5	Dylan Livengood	13
6	Connor Parise	11
7	Jake Robertson	10
8	Sindre Silva	9
9	Dylan Smith	7
10	Tanner Smith	6
11	Brandon Lambert	5
12	Marwan Moftah	3
13	No Winner (Revoked)	2
	Magnus Okkenhaug
	Elliot Porterfield
	Caleb Paul
	Beau Albert
20	Tristan Hagenstein	1
	Matt Kingsbury
	Matt Hartley
	Julien Schien
	John Quinn
	Joey Bailey
	Jacob Harberts
	Geoff Appelgren
	David Krikorian
	Brian Mercurio
	Brenden Berg
	Austin Darbyshire
	John Dipple