Landon Cassill

NASCAR was on Sunday afternoon on FOX, as it has been since the year 2001. The race was held at Texas Motor Speedway, but there was one key difference: nobody was in attendance. Texas Motor Speedway was empty.

In fact, every person participating in the event was at home, apart from veteran NASCAR Cup Series driver Clint Bowyer and FOX commentators Mike Joy and Jeff Gordon. This wasn’t in-person racing — this was iRacing.

As the COVID-19 pandemic takes root in the United States, sporting events have largely come to a screeching halt. NASCAR has suspended all events through May 3, and will likely have to wait longer after Virginia was put under a shelter-in-place order until June 10. In the meantime, NASCAR has worked together with iRacing — a racing simulation used by everyone from people at home to Cup Series regulars — to fill some of the voids the sports world’s suspension has left for viewers.

The Pro Invitational Series was created, giving current and former Cup Series drivers as well as Xfinity and Truck Series drivers a chance to race each other on Sundays through the power of technology.

Bowyer was new to iRacing when the idea to show these races on TV came about.

“Yeah, what a wonderful opportunity for the sport, for racing in general,” Bowyer said Thursday. “iRacing has been around a long time and it’s just something that keeps evolving and they’ve perfected. Man, the timing couldn’t have been any more right for a perfect storm situation. Here we all are, just longing for some sports action, some competitive action that we can broadcast and show a fan and, boom, here it is in our lap.”

The events began March 22 with a race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Denny Hamlin and Brad Keselowski were just a few of the participants — Hamlin taking the checkered flag and Dale Jr. coming home in second. In third place was Sunday’s winner, little-known driver Timmy Hill. Hill wasn’t the only relative unknown to finish in the top-5: Cedar Rapids native Landon Cassill came in fourth place. Cassill is the driver of the No. 89 Chevy in the Xfinity Series and he has finished in the top-12 of each race.

Hill is one of many young drivers who have learned their craft partly through the sim racing engine, and he said after his victory Sunday that it was good to get the best of some of racing’s elite.

“For me personally the iRacing platform, it’s kind of an equalizer in effect that the cars that we’re driving on there, I’m in the same cars as everybody,” Hill said. “Most weekends, like you said, I’m not in that situation. I’m in a situation where I’m racing on 15-lap tires, have a motor that’s 5200 horsepower down, got a car that’s probably five years old. I’m really kind of behind the eight ball as soon as we show up at the racetrack at times.

“To come into the server where everybody has the same cars, in this case even the same setup, everybody is on the same exact playing field, basically the driver conquers all in this situation.

I had more experience coming into it because I’ve been on the service quite a bit longer. I knew that would be to my advantage. At the end of the day, these guys are all competitors, they’re all turning hundreds of laps. They’re all doing the best they can.

“For me to actually beat these guys on a level playing field, it really feels good for my driving talents. I look forward to the competition as it gets better in the coming weeks.”

There is no specific timeline for when NASCAR returns, or for how many Pro Invitational Series races there will be on national television. But the ingenuity of the sport to provide some small respite has also been a benefit for some of the sport’s unknown talents.