Dale Earnhardt Jr. loves North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina, despite its dilapidated condition and desperate need for a makeover.
The abandoned .625-mile track is about 80 miles north of Charlotte, and the NASCAR Cup Series hasn’t competed at it since 1996. Although some people in NASCAR would like the sport to return to it some day, the condition the track is in makes that highly unlikely. Even a 2019 feature by The Athletic about Earnhardt’s involvement with the track described it as “closer to being condemned than anything else.”
But Earnhardt found a way to preserve it — just virtually thanks to iRacing’s technology — and documented the process of cleaning the track up.
In addition to gathering the necessary data for iRacing, the final product was a 15-minute short documentary from Dale Jr.’s company Dirty Mo Media called Bringing Back Wilkesboro.
Since the global COVID-19 outbreak, iRacing has largely been in NASCAR’s spotlight with racing moving online. And the exhibition eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series is headed to none other than North Wilkesboro to race on the virtual track, which debuts on iRacing on Saturday.
It’s all thanks to this project. But it probably wouldn’t be possible without Earnhardt, who pushed for the track to be scanned and immortalized in the virtual racing world.
“It won’t be here much longer as it continues to decay,” Dale Jr. says in the film. “If we can take a scan of the surface, the walls, we can go back to whenever we want and recreate the race track as it was in any year, and it’ll be there forever for us to enjoy.”
The problem was for iRacing to gather enough data to create a simulated version of the track, the weeds growing out of the surface needed to be removed.
In the film, Earnhardt specifically mentions how this tweet helped ignite the track’s virtual preservation:
Asked @iRacingMyers & @iRacing to scan North Wilksboro for preservation. Even if they don’t create it, they’ll have the data. He said the surface would need to be cleared of weeds to do it. I can get the keys to the gate. Who wants to help me do the landscaping?? #CallingHisBluff
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) September 15, 2019
While Earnhardt and several others cleaned up the track so it could be laser scanned and added to the iRacing world, Dirty Mo Media filmed the work and created the documentary about the process. According to the short film, more than a dozen people, Earnhardt included, used 18 trimmers, 11 blowers and two track sweepers to clear the surface.
The documentary premiered Thursday on Dale Jr.’s Twitch page, and it’s also available to watch on YouTube.
Going live on my Twitch channel at 9 pm ET tonight. Streaming the premiere of a project that is really special. Bringing Back Wilkesboro.https://t.co/rn9GjdMBlf pic.twitter.com/9AavKFyMQ9
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) May 7, 2020
The seventh and presumably final eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series event is the North Wilkesboro 160 on Saturday at 3 p.m. ET on FOX and FS1. Earnhardt is among the expected participants.
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