The Food City Showdown can best be described as something similar to ‘retribution’ for William Byron on Sunday at the digital Bristol Motor Speedway.
For the third week in a row, the driver of the Hendrick Motorsports No. 24 led the most laps in the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series, but finally broke through as the field behind him largely were unable to stop crashing throughout the 150-lap main event on FOX Sports and FOX Sports 1.
There were so many incidents, 12 that warranted a caution, that race control was forced to call for single-file restarts partway through the race.
Byron pulled away from John Hunter Nemechek and Matt DiBenedetto during such a restart with four laps remaining to secure the victory. He led all but 34 laps of the main event in a special black and blue version of his usual Axalta firestorm livery.
The 22-year-old admitted that his defeat at the hands of Timmy Hill last week from the digital Texas Motor Speedway strung. Byron, an avid iRacer, led off a late restart before Hill executed a textbook bump-and-run to drive away with his first victory in the invitational series.
“I mean, obviously when the race is going, I think anybody would be dumb to tell you that they don’t take it seriously because it’s a race, but it took me probably an hour after the race to really cool off and realize that I was just racing on the computer and I could get over it,” Byron said.
“For me mentally, I try to treat it as a race when the race is going on. But I think that it was just frustrating because we hadn’t closed one out yet and we had led the most laps, so to finally close the deal this week was really awesome.”
The eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series has occupied the television slot that would have otherwise hosted the NASCAR Cup Series over the past three weeks during the ongoing coronavirus shutdown. The event featured a new look on Sunday as it was open to just a select group of 32 current and former Cup Series drivers.
Unlike the first two events, drivers from every other NASCAR touring division were not permitted. The Xfinity, Trucks and ARCA drivers were instead relegated to a Saturday Night Thunder race the night before. That was won by Logan Seavey.
On Sunday morning, a pair of 50-lap heat races set the field for the main 150-lap feature, which had Byron and Nemechek on the front row after winning their respective heats.
Due to his iRacing background, Byron took extended pride in Sunday’s victory — his 1,499th on the digital simulator.
Byron has always credited the platform for fine-tuning his skills as a real world driver over the past decade.
“I try to use iRacing because it improves my race craft, and I feel like we’ve been doing a good job of promoting it the right way,” Byron said. “The races that you can practice on kind of help improve my race craft, and that’s why I use it to try to help me on the real car.”
The complete results can be found below.
eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series
Race Number 3 Results: Food City Showdown
March 29, 2020
Bristol Motor Speedway
1. William Byron
2. John H. Nemechek
3. Timmy Hill
4. Denny Hamlin
5. Matt DiBenedetto
6. Ryan Preece
7. Parker Kligerman
8. Tyler Reddick
9. Garrett Smithley
10. Michael McDowell
11. Clint Bowyer
12. Christopher Bell
13. Bobby Labonte
14. Alex Bowman
15. Austin Dillon
16. Ross Chastain
17. Joey Logan
18. Kyle Busch
19. Kurt Busch
20. Landon Cassill
21. Jimmie Johnson
22. Dale Earnhardt Jr.
23. Chris Buescher
24. Brad Keselowski
25. Ty Dillon
26. Ryan Blaney
27. Daniel Suarez
28. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
29. Kyle Larson
30. Chase Elliott
31. Erik Jones
32. Bubba Wallace
Average Lap: 28.023 seconds
Caution Flags: 12 for 66 laps
Lead Changes: 3
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