Timmy Hill was a guest on this week’s NASCAR Live hosted by Mike Bagley. Hill called in to the show to talk about his win in the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series O’Reilly Auto Parts 125 at the virtual Texas Motor Speedway this past Sunday. The win was Hill’s 674th on iRacing.
Audio: Hill on NASCAR Live
Bagley: This is a new norm that we’re going through right now. Did you ever did you ever think that iRacing and online simulation racing elements would punctuate a situation like this where as everything is shut down, but at least we have this to keep everybody somewhat bonded together here?
Hill: You know, it was really unexpected. When real life racing got shut down iRacing kind of reached out to all the Cup drivers and said, ‘hey, you know, this could be really cool if we could do something like this.’ We didn’t know how much it would blow up and how big it will actually get and then FOX jumped on board and said,’ hey, you know, we would like to get involved.’ I’m glad they did because it’s been a nice relief entertainment and a good way for fans to least take a couple hours of their day and kind of get some entertainment out of it. I know for us drivers, we really appreciate it. You know the kind of gets a little competition in and we’re all very competitive and we all want to want to race and do well and iRacing provides a great platform for us to all get on there and kind of beat and bang and have a bunch of fun.
See Also: iRacing Pro Invitational Series
Bagley: I’ve seen guys that have the big like NASA type, you know pods and all this and I’m one of those guys. I’ve got a Logitech G29 and just a normal computer and put it on a computer desk and go and have a lot of fun. I know you have a similar situation. What do you tell the person out there that is potential iRacer that wants to do this and wants to wants to find out what all the hubbub is about?
Hill: What’s neat about iRacing is it’s a very affordable way to get involved in racing. You know, I think the average fan says, ‘man, I feel like I can do this, but there’s no way I can afford to go to my local track and race’ and you know, if that’s something that you’re unable to do, iRacing provides a nice platform to that average fan who says, ‘hey, I want drive.’ Come on race with us and you won’t have to do it for that expensive because I know my entire setup cost less than $1,000 and you can run for however long you want to run. Thing about iRacing is they almost have sort of a prize person the fact that if you run enough races they kind of give you credits back and you can almost pay for different vehicles and keep progressing in iRacing. iRacing is neat because you know, like I said, you can have tens of thousands of dollars investing your setup like Denny Hamlin does or something like what I have something like what you have where you can just take a wheel buy it for 200-300 bucks, bolt it to your desk and you’re off and running. So we’ll see about this and I what I can tell the other fans is you want to get involved in racing if you watch the race this weekend on FOX you can see that I did very well with essentially a very low budget set up and you can get involved in racing. So I really promote that and would love to see more people get involved in it and you can even race with some of your favorite drivers because they’re all on here racing throughout the week.
Bagley: Give us a little insight, 125 laps went by pretty quick long green flag runs. Not a lot of crashing, not a lot of wrecking, had a couple here or there. But how did you piece together the win that you walked away with on Sunday afternoon?
Hill: So this race is quite a bit different from Homestead because like I said, there was quite a bit of green flag racing. So that’s what we were all really hoping for. You know, we didn’t want to put on a crash-fest like Homestead kind of started out to be last week. So I think all of the drivers putting more effort, more practice to be better. So throughout this week practicing for this race, I was kind of really working on some longer runs and in the race yesterday at Texas is we actually even had green flag pit stops, which is very unique. We didn’t see that at all at Homestead and I wasn’t really sure if I see that here at Texas, but it became a race of tire management, you know pit strategy – when to pit, when not the pit ,when to push your car when not to push your car. At the end of the day after all the long runs were complete it got set up for a green-white checkered. So throughout the race I was trying to really protect my car, protect my tires and slowly make my way forward and I positioned myself in the top five. Once I get in the top five anything really happen. In the closing laps, I found myself in position to a chance to take the lead and possibly win the race. It was opportunity that couldn’t resist and I think we had some contact and moved William Byron out the way and ultimately that led to me winning the race. So I think everything kind of play to my favor.
See Also: Texas iRacing Recap and Results
Bagley: When you talk about saving your equipment in iRacing how like or how different is it to when you go to save your equipment when you’re in your real race car?
Hill: It’s a lot of ways a lot the same, you know, depends on what tire that Goodyear wants to bring to the racetrack, but depending on the racetrack some are worse than others as far as how much the tires kind of degrade and fall away and slowdown in the real life and some racetracks, they don’t fall off at all. So what was neat about Texas was they fell off of a bunch and iRacing does an excellent job of having tires that do kind of fall away and rubber does get laid down on this racetrack service and people, I think, almost don’t even know that. I mean, iRacing is very detailed and trying to make this simulator as realistic as possible. They take notes from drivers from teams, and they really take what people say to heart and they try to really benefit the users in ways so that if they can get a realistic feel. So going into this race on iRacing most of the drivers, who made long runs in practice understood that there was going to be tire fall-off and the guys that didn’t make long runs I think they paid the price because they would charge forward thinking they were Superman and then after a while they weren’t. Hats off to iRacing for making the tires as realistic as they can possibly be.
Bagley: It was it was amazing to watch because this (Texas) track actually what you raced on was recently updated in iRacing. They try to keep the tracks has updated as they can but they had just installed where they put in the new patch or the new track to accommodate the widening of Texas Motor Speedway. It had been reconfigured in the last couple of years. That was put in there. That’s what you raced on. How like Texas Motor Speedway on iRacing is it compared to real life? We hear about laser scans and all that but as far as you know going off into a corner feeling a bump in the real car, do you feel that in iRacing as well?
Hill: Yes, and to kind of describe what you’re talking about to the fans is Texas was repaved and widened out in (Turns) 1 and 2 and iRacing they don’t just take the old track and then say okay we’ll kind of put some color on it to change the coloring on it and then we’ll extend it. They don’t do that. They had to ship their whole their whole team out to Texas and re-scan the whole race track again, which takes a lot of work, a lot of effort and hats off to iRacing for doing that and it takes a while to keep that going. So they just like you said put the new surface on iRacing just about a month ago. So very new to a lot of guys and all the guys didn’t have enough practice on it. When we get into the racetrack on the server you look at the at the track and as I’m going down the back straightaway, look at turns three and four and even down the front straight look at one or two you say to yourself man that looks so real and when they laser scan these racetracks, yes, you do feel the bumps where they actually are. Texas being a new repave is very smooth not a whole lot of character in that race track yet, but tracks like Atlanta have a lot of character. You feel everything. You feel every bump and every characteristic of that racetrack and it’s very realistic.
Bagley: It’s amazing how realistic it is, and speaking of things being realistic and in real life. How are you and your family doing through this crisis? And how’s the race team and everybody going right now?
Hill: So we’re doing well. Thank you for asking. We’re staying safe and doing the best that we can. My wife, she’s a second grade teacher so it’s been a different challenge for her. She’s been doing a lot of her lessons online and a lot of video lessons and the kids been loving that. She’s actually teaching right now the life cycle of caterpillars transferring to butterflies. So we have caterpillars in her house that are crystallized and waiting to hatch and she’s been do video lessons on those. Kind of becoming interested myself. For our truck team for me I only have one employee. So we’re still social distancing but we’re still working on our on our truck program trying to get as prepared as possible. You know, we are preparing for whatever this does end to have a very busy racing summer or winter doesn’t matter to us, but we want to be prepared for that. And so we’re still working our way. We got a lot of projects that that we haven’t accomplished yet. So this is almost like a little off time that we’re still working almost like another off-season.
Bagley: You’re going to be doing another Pro Invitational Series race this weekend at Bristol. Bristol is chaotic in real life. What is it like in the virtual world?
Hill: It’s just this chaotic. You’ll probably see a lot of beating, a lot of banging. You’ll probably see a lot tempers flaring. You probably see a lot of payback. I’m excited for it. We’ve been doing this mile-and-a-half stuff and for the guys who love short track racing, the fans and the drivers, you know, they have been waiting to get to this racetrack. I’m excited to see the action. It is going to be action-packed, trust me. So definitely looking forward to it.
