The eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series is set to take on the mammoth 2.66-mile virtual Talladega Superspeedway in Sunday’s GEICO 70.
The 70-lap event, which will air Sunday at 1 p.m. ET (FOX, FS1, FOX Sports app), will be the fifth race of the season. Close to 40 drivers are on the entry list, including Jeff Gordon, who will make his iRacing Pro debut.
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Gordon is one of the 14 drivers entered that have won at Talladega Superspeedway in the NASCAR Cup Series. He joins Earnhardt Jr. as a six-time winner followed Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski (5) and Joey Logano (3).
Aric Almirola, who won at Talladega in October 2018, will be making his first start in the Pro Invitational Series.
“I’ve seen these veteran drivers and champions of the sport practice for hours and still struggle to finish the race, so the expectation for myself is low,” Almirola said. “It’ll be interesting to make my Pro Invitational debut at Talladega where we’ll just have to survive. Who knows, maybe I’ll be one of the last guys standing and have a shot at it.”
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William Byron heads into the GEICO 70 as the first repeat winner in the Pro Invitational Series with his victory last weekend at virtual Richmond Raceway.
“I think it’ll be a much different pace of a race and you know, you’re going to see some action, some carnage probably, but it’s going to be fun,” Byron said this week on MRN’s “NASCAR Live.” “I think it’s going to be a really fun event for everyone to watch with it being Talladega. I’m just looking forward to that honestly and kind of mixing it up and not having as much to do on the practice side of things.”
Byron and Timmy Hill have dominated the iRacing events so far. Byron has the lead in wins and laps led (318) and Hill has finished no worse than third with an average finish of 2.3 that includes a win at Texas.
Following Hill, Garrett Smithley (8.5), Ryan Preece (8.8), virtual Homestead-Miami winner Denny Hamlin (8.8), Parker Kligerman (8.8), Landon Cassill (10.0), Alex Bowman (11.8) and John Hunter Nemechek each rank in the top 10 in average finish.
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Keselowski and 2008 Talladega winner Kyle Busch have made progress in each iRacing start they have made with both scoring their first top 10 last weekend.
“I’ve just been working hard at getting a little bit more and more out of our M&M’s Camry and trying to figure out some more iRacing tricks,” Busch said.
Busch was one of eight in Sunday’s field that participated in the LeafFilter Gutter Protection Replacements iRacing Series Talladega race earlier this week.
“I got a chance to run in the Replacements race on Tuesday night, so that was my first taste of Talladega in iRacing,” Busch said. “It had a lot of the same factors that you deal with running the real thing. You just have to try and stay out of trouble and put yourself in a position to have a shot toward the end of the race.”
