NASCAR has rolled out the plans to bring back its Pro Invitational Series esports events with iRacing for ’21, with 10 events that will be aired by Fox Sports and NBC Sports. The series comes on the heels of the success of last year’s initial effort, which happened because of the coronavirus pandemic and saw Fox Sports average around 1 million viewers over six events in the early spring while the sport was shut down from real-life racing. NASCAR and iRacing put together a plan to bring the effort back in part because there will still be less real-life racing content this year with only a handful of major or new races featuring practice and qualifying. There will be 10 Pro Invitational Series races over the course of the season, with the first five being aired on FS1 during its half of airing the NASCAR campaign. The races will be held at virtual tracks that will mirror the venue NASCAR will be visiting in real life the upcoming weekend, with stops include Bristol’s dirt track, Talladega, Darlington and Circuit of the Americas. Bristol dirt will be the first one of the season on Wednesday, March 24 at 8:00pm ET on FS1. NASCAR has been working to grow its gaming involvement in recent years, and it runs multiple leagues with iRacing for sim racers and NASCAR Heat for console video game users. Having the sport’s real drivers compete in events vaulted the Pro Invitational to new levels of success last year for NASCAR in the space.
