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Earnhardt joins iRacing as an executive director

Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be compensated as an iRacing endorser and will join its management committee.getty images

On July 31, 2008, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was meeting with NASCAR executives and Boston Red Sox owner John Henry at Earnhardt’s race shop in North Carolina when Henry had to step out of the room to take a call.

 

Henry was in town because Earnhardt had brokered a meeting with the sanctioning body and the nascent iRacing simulation racing platform to see if the sides could work together. Earnhardt didn’t know it at the time, but he would later find out that Henry stepped out of the meeting to complete a blockbuster trade involving Red Sox star Manny Ramirez. 

The NASCAR Hall of Famer recounted that story fondly last week as he discussed a new deal being unveiled this week that will finally see his longtime relationship with iRacing formalized. iRacing this week will announce that Earnhardt is now an official employee of the Massachusetts-based company, being named an executive director and part of its management committee. 

The talks were consummated when Earnhardt challenged his management team to formalize a relationship he has been building informally for years. The deal includes Earnhardt receiving a set compensation as an endorser with additional financial incentives that could see the deal become more lucrative for the former driver.

“We’re elated to officially welcome Dale to the iRacing team as an executive director of the company,” Henry, the owner of iRacing, wrote in a statement. “For more than 20 years, Dale has been a passionate advocate of sim racing whose efforts to improve the product have dramatically shaped our direction as a company and relationships throughout the sport for the better. Through all this time, he’s never been paid a penny for his contributions. After discussions earlier this year, we’ve pursued a mutual interest in having him come on board as an official member of the company, and we look forward to continuing our growth with Dale’s guidance for years to come.”

Earnhardt, now also a racing analyst for NBC, envisions his role as one in which he’ll help iRacing executives strike new partnerships. That could include racetracks or car manufacturers that don’t currently have their venue or vehicles scanned into the iRacing software, as well as prospective advertisers and sponsors.

He has already helped strike such partnerships even before his new formal role, with a prime example being how iRacing worked with Speedway Motorsports to scan the defunct North Wilkesboro Speedway and add the track to its service. Earnhardt did the same with the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, a track that is still in use.

The subscription-based iRacing has seen its business grow considerably this year on the heels of the Pro Invitational Series that it pulled off with NASCAR to give fans something to watch in the early stages of the pandemic while real-world competition was halted. The series generated the six most-watched esports telecasts in U.S. TV history, averaging more than 1 million viewers on Fox and FS1.

NASCAR is expanding its work with iRacing, as the sanctioning body is seeing prospective benefits to using the sim racing software to, among other things, help simulate forthcoming changes it may make to cars or tracks to test out how they may work.

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