NASCAR iRacing.com Series
The NASCAR iRacing.com Series are online oval racing series officially sanctioned by NASCAR and hosted by iRacing.com. In 2010 they include seven different series in total, with a World Championship series, a qualifying series for the championship and five amateur series.
History
The partnership between iRacing.com and NASCAR was originally announced on May 19th, 2009, but its roots can be traced back more than 15 years to an idea of Bill France, Jr., then head of NASCAR. A similar but short-lived online series with official NASCAR support, called the NASCAR Racing Online Series (NROS), was organized already in the late 1990s using the infrastructure of Total Entertainment Network (TEN) with the NASCAR Racing 2 PC simulation software by Papyrus Design Group. Papyrus was co-founded by David Kaemmer, also the co-founder and current CEO of iRacing.com.
The details of the series were revealed during the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Media Tour hosted at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Structure
Currently the NASCAR iRacing.com series include seven series in total. Five of them, the "amateur" series, are part of the standard iRacing.com competition program and open to anyone progressing through the standard license levels used in iRacing. A minimum of 250 of the top oval drivers can take part in the NASCAR iRacing Pro Series (NPS), which in turn serves as a qualifying series for the NASCAR iRacing World Championships (NDWC), reserved for The 50 best drivers.
NASCAR iRacing Drivers World Championships
The NDWC is the top oval racing series in iRacing.com.
NASCAR iRacing Pro Series
The NPS is the qualifying series for the NDWC. Currently it is open to the top 250 oval track drivers on iRacing.
Amateur Series
The NASCAR-iRacing.com partnership includes five "amateur" series that have no limits on the number of participants. Currently they include (from top to bottom) online versions of the Sprint Cup, Nationwide Series and Camping World Truck Series, as well as generically named Late Model and Modified series. The five series are organized like other standard series on iRacing.com.