FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, April 6th, 2020
TRANSCRIPT – NBC eSPORTS SHORT TRACK iRACING CHALLENGE
Monday, April 6, 2020
Sam Flood
Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Jeff Burton
Steve Letarte
Parker Kligerman
THE MODERATOR: We are joined by NBC Sports motorsports commentators Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Burton, Steve Letarte, Parker Kligerman and NBC Sports executive producer Sam Flood. As I mentioned, Racing Week in America on NBCSN, it began this week at 1:00 p.m. with a great look back at the battle between Denny Hamlin and Matt DiBenedetto at Bristol last season.
Racing Week is going to showcase NASCAR, INDYCAR, IMSA, Supercross and more, and each night is going to follow a theme, so today is Mayhem Monday, and it’s punctuated by a pair of great races at Martinsville tonight in primetime.
In addition, tonight marks the debut of the NBC Esports Short Track iRacing Challenge. Each night this week at 7:00 p.m. we’ll have six NASCAR drivers compete at a virtual version of an iconic track, including the likes of Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, and our own Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Parker Kligerman.
Tonight’s premier event will take place at “the Rock,” Rockingham Speedway. We will get to questions from the press. We’re going to start with our opening remarks from our speakers and we will start that off with NBC Sports executive producer Sam Flood.
SAM FLOOD: Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Obviously a strange time in our country as everyone is separated with no live sporting events. We wanted to figure out ways to fill some of the void to keep people distracted and occupied.
Week one we went to Hockey Week in America. We played hockey games back-to-back-to-back, and each night having a theme. Last week it was Football Week in America, and now we’re on to Racing Week in America with just some great showdowns, great races, including the drama of the Short Track iRacing Challenge with some of the folks on the call here that were participating and others who are calling it.
What’s unique about this time is we’re trying things. We’re looking at new ways to engage audiences. Last week on Tuesday we had a call about some show ideas, and today we launched a new show with Mike Tirico, Lunch Talk Live with Mike Tirico, and this show was literally a conversation point on Tuesday. By Thursday we said we should try it, and it went on the air today. It’s kind of a new world we’re in, where in the old world you would launch and plan and study, and now we’re just going for it, and just like race car drivers do on the racetrack every time they race, they go for it.
Jeff Burton, why don’t you go for it with the rest of this phone call.
JEFF BURTON: Yeah, so thanks everybody for joining. Like Sam said, we’re trying a lot of new things, and some of that is just providing some entertainment and people having a good time. I know this is a stressful time for people, and hopefully some of these races that we’re replaying, they just showed the Martinsville race from last year with Denny Hamlin and Matt DiBenedetto going at it. Later tonight we’ve got two I think of the best races at Martinsville of all time. I think going back in time and watching those races reminded everybody how good the racing is but also gives everybody something to look forward to and the future and all of us getting back to a little bit of normalcy and one day being able to go back to the racetrack.
And then tonight kicking off with the Short Track iRacing Challenge, that’s going to be fascinating — the first night we go to Rockingham, a racetrack that fans have been talking about for years. We saw so many great races in NASCAR’s history at that racetrack, and now taking six drivers in really a shootout in iRacing, a shootout with those guys with the winners going to Martinsville with a chance to win a championship.
Just a lot of fun stuff. Really proud of what NBC Sports has done. Everybody has just been working really hard to bring material to TV, give people something to do, entertain them. Last week was a lot of fun watching football, and we’re excited to join in that with Racing Week in America this week.
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yeah, it’s been an interesting several weeks, but we’ve found creative ways to bring great content to people that are all stuck at their house, you know, and we’re all sitting at home with not a lot to do. So with iRacing and NASCAR America with the Dale Jr. download podcast, all these things, we’re finding creative ways to continue to create content and bring interesting and innovative stuff to the fans at home and try to sort of bridge this gap to when we can go back to real racing again.
It’s been a lot of fun. You know, I’ve learned quite a lot over the last couple of weeks and been involved in a lot of great conversations internally with our industry and with iRacing, as well, and what that can do to help keep fans entertained.
STEVE LETARTE: I think as those guys had said, the world today is anything but normal, and I’m excited that this Racing Week in America hopefully will — I’m not going to say normalcy, but maybe an escape. I was captivated by the Bristol race that was just on. I’m captivated by the current INDYCAR race at Fontana. It’s a great opportunity to go back and relive races.
There’s very few good things that are coming out of this crazy time, but I think one thing that’s good for me personally is the chance to kind of step back and remember some of these great races. We move so quickly in sports that it’s hard to go back sometimes, it’s either the end of someone’s career or the end of a season that we go back and relive those greatest memories, and I think this is a great opportunity for all of us to relive some great races, and I’m happy that NBC Sports has done this, 20 years of racing on NBC Sports, and now we’re going to get to relive some great not just NASCAR and INDYCAR, but IMSA and even some two-wheel action with supercross, so it’s going to be a fun week, and then Dale mentioned the iRacing challenge, that’s going to be a blast. Some great short tracks with some great competitors.
I’d like to take a minute to applaud all the competitors on the INDYCAR side, the NASCAR side, everyone that’s taking part in these iRacing races in whatever format they’re under. You have guys that are already super, super competitive that perhaps don’t have the most experience in sim racing, yet they’re putting the right foot forward and going out there and competing and putting on content for the fans, which I think says a lot about the sport of motorsports.
PARKER KLIGERMAN: Yeah, I just want to echo what Steve was saying. This Short Track Challenge and all the sim races you’re seeing have been huge undertakings in a short amount of time, so we’d be remiss not to thank all the competitors that agreed to do it, give us their time, and hop on the sim and put in the extra effort to try and be competitive and put on good races, and I think you’ll see that all week in the Short Track Challenge in a unique format that I think is something that fans haven’t really been able to see with this caliber of drivers before and at these types of iconic tracks.
It should be a very exciting thing in that sense, and as Sam said, something to kind of distract people and get some entertainment in a tough time that we’re all going through, but I think it also is just a continuation of what we’ve been doing at NBCSN and NBC Sports in terms of being kind of leaders of putting sim racing and esport motorsports on TV. We’ve had the simulator on NASCAR America for years. We had the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series on broadcast television for the first time last year, the championship finale, and I think it’s just — there’s a great correlation between what sim racing has and motorsports in the real world, and seeing the real drivers experiencing it and some getting better and some that are very experienced at it in real time and being able to provide that show to the fans is kind of making that connection for the fans. I hope they enjoy what they’re going to see this week, and from what I know about these tracks, it’ll definitely be a great show.
Q. Got a question on this idea of theme night. I’m noticing a lot of TV networks, sports TV networks doing theme nights. Why do you think that’s an effective tool?
SAM FLOOD: The theory is get people in the tent and get them engaged with a consecutive sport, and it helps keep people in the tent. When you change sports, you empty out the tent, no different than a theater. If you change the movie, it might be a different genre and the audience might decide to wander someplace else. This gives them a night, and we’re doing full weeks, dedicated to specific sports, starting with the Hockey Week, last week the Football Week in America, and now Racing Week in America. It’s a great way to get people tied in, to promote to one concept, and let people know that destination is locked and loaded for a full week.
Q. Dale, I was wondering if you think Martinsville is a track that will lend itself to good virtual simulator racing on Thursday, and also I know you’ve been doing some of this iRacing on Sundays; are you liking it?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: I’ve been a sim racer for two decades and love it. I can’t get enough. I just needed an excuse to do it more. So, this has been fitting right into my plans of being at home and racing on the simulator.
You know, NBC has got a nice creative format of kind of short track match racing that I think will be a really entertaining experience. We picked up a handful of guys to be a part of it.
One of the things that the NBC element will have — it’ll have more conversation among the drivers where we’re communicating as we’re racing, and I’m looking forward to that. There’s some good characters and great personalities. Timmy Hill is having a blast with this right now because he’s pretty good at it, and it’s letting guys like him and a few others sort of have a moment at the microphone, you know, and we all communicate and chat.
We’ll do that, as well, during the races so that it’s more than just us going around the track. You’re going to hear us communicating and talking to each other and we’re doing that and having a little fun with it, a lot of fun with it.
But I enjoy that part of it, and Parker, whose equally as talented as a sim racer, and so we find ourselves kind of running around each other quite often in some of these races. That’s been a lot of fun, too, even though we’re not working in the same manner that we typically would be as everybody is sort of housed up in their own places. We are still communicating and seeing a lot of each other, maybe even more over the last couple of weeks. So that’s been really nice to have that interaction with your coworkers and friends.
Q. Do you think the Martinsville track will make for a good virtual race on Thursday?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yes. I’m looking forward to Myrtle Beach. I ran there a lot when I was really young, and the virtual track is just identical to it, and it feels very comfortable and fun.
Everybody knows Martinsville, how to get around there, and Denny Hamlin has got to feel pretty good and excited about it because he loves Martinsville a lot so he’s got to be looking forward to having a bit of an advantage on everybody. But William Byron is going to be extremely hard to beat. He’s just very, very good. He’s a step ahead of every one of us on iRacing. He just has a little bit more speed, and you have to catch him in some precarious unusual situations to have a chance at beating him, and I think he’ll be tough to beat at Martinsville.
Q. Sam, I assume sports are going to start — real sports are going to start at some time, and you’re going to have to figure out how to schedule all that in. How are you approaching this? What kind of daunting task do you have ahead of you?
SAM FLOOD: I will be blessed when it all comes back, and obviously it’s going to be a complicated process. But we are ready for whatever eventuality comes our way. We’re going to have overlap of sports that have never overlapped before if things come back this fall, but we have teams ready to go.
We obviously love covering the live events and can’t wait for them to start, and all we can do now is put on events like we’re doing this week, and when it’s ready, we have various plans, various systems in place to get things rolling, and obviously we know certain events aren’t happening now, which opens up more flexibility for us. We know all our resources that were going to the Olympics hold over into the summer of ’21, so if we make it, if we’re lucky enough to get things going again by this summer, we’ll have more resources available just because of what’s not happening.
So it’s a very unique situation, and obviously it’s changing on a day-to-day basis, but when it does happen, we’ll be ready, and hopefully it’s sooner than later. But we have no control over that part of it.
Q. As a follow-up, you have no control over anything that’s happening and things change daily and nobody has any idea how long this is going to go on. I’m not sure if networks planned for what happens if there’s no sports, but what are you actively doing? Are you looking to create more new content like this iRacing series? How do you fill all this time going forward not sure how long it’s going to last?
SAM FLOOD: Well, on the NBCSN side, we’ve created these theme weeks, and we’ve got more to come as we’ll announce as we go along, and these theme weeks give us a way to lean into our partners and the sports we love so much. Obviously we’ve got other things in our saddlebag like Olympics and championship season that we’ll lean into coming up. We don’t know how long, so in the interim we’re thinking of new ideas, new ways to engage people.
On NBC on the weekends, our golf re-airs have done very well. This weekend will be the first weekend of the NHL playoffs, and we’re going to go back and take what usually are three-hour windows for a single hockey game and split it into two playoff games, so we’re just looking at everything that we do a little bit differently to try and engage.
As I said at the top of the call, last Tuesday we were talking about possible ways to have a live show, and by Monday, which was today, we launched this Lunchtime Live with Tirico, and that never happens in the normal course of events. But when you’re looking at the world differently and what the heck, let’s try, that’s kind of the mode we’re in. We’re going to try things, and we’re going to see what sticks, and then all the content that Tirico did today with the various guests, including Cris Collinsworth and Dale Jr. talking about Junior’s love affair with the Redskins and what Cris thinks they should do with the draft and what the Redskins should do for the upcoming season, that material all gets a second life online on the digital side.
I think it’s just an opportunity to create content and then push it out on all the new platforms that are part of the new normal.
Q. Sam, Dale kind of touched on it a little bit; how are you guys going to differentiate your iRacing coverage and maybe experiment a little bit that we haven’t seen at other times?
SAM FLOOD: Well, I think this series is short track shootouts, so it’s a different concept. They’re very short races, and the cars are racing on tracks like Rockingham that you haven’t seen in a while. So it’s a different technique, a different style, and they’re appetizers and not full meals, and that’s kind of the concept here, is to get people engaged, have a little bit of fun and launch the night of racing week in America. Junior, do you want to add on?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yeah, the great thing about the iRacing service is that you can match any track with any car, so that really opens the book for us to get as creative as we want going forward, and we can put on any show with any format, heat races, last-chance races, A main, B main, C main. Anything you want to do, we can do it, and that really gives us an opportunity to have some fun.
With respect to manufacturers, not every — like the Xfinity truck or late models and so forth might not have — be able to deliver the manufacturers’ wishes, but we can take that Cup car and go to Iowa, for example, where fans have been asking for us to take the Cup car to Iowa, back to Rockingham. Eventually North Wilkesboro is going to be part of the service here in the summer, early summer. We can go to North Wilkesboro and have a race. There’s a lot there to sort of fill this gap.
Q. Sam, NBC Sports is supposed to pick up its NASCAR portion of the schedule at Chicagoland in late June. Obviously things are kind of fluid right now. Is NBC still planning on picking up its coverage at Chicagoland or is that shifting to a later date?
SAM FLOOD: I think everything is fluid right now. Whenever NASCAR gets a schedule set, whenever we’re allowed to go back racing and people on the track will be ready to cover, however the planning comes to. Obviously there are a lot of things for NASCAR to figure out, a lot of things schedule-wise for the country to figure out, and when it is available and when it’s ready to go, we’ll certainly step in and cover it.
But putting a date on anything right now is, I think, a bit of a risk.
Q. I wanted to get a couple of the guys in on this, Steve and Parker and Burton. I know we jumped away from the first question on the follow-up, but what to expect from these racetracks and what’s different. I know some of the guys are racing in it and also calling it. The three of you can weigh in on that. What can we expect and what are we going to see that’s different than these other formats?
STEVE LETARTE: The one advantage of a smaller field with only six drivers, Dale touched on the racetracks and pairing the cars with the racetracks. The other opportunity that virtual provides is this opportunity for communication. Dale mentioned that we can listen in to the drivers talk to one another. As one of the analysts who’s covering the races, I also have the opportunity to converse and talk with the drivers, under green, in the action, and that’s something that is not really reasonably possible in real life. We talk to drivers under red and under yellow and they give us their time and we’re very appreciative, but under green, between competition and safety, we’ve always gone away from that, but in the virtual world we don’t have to go away with that. If anything else, we go full into that. We can communicate and contact the drivers and listen to them talk to one another. I think that’s an area that we have yet to see uncovered, and that’s going to make these races very exciting.
PARKER KLIGERMAN: Agree with that. Just to add on to kind of the format and stuff that makes it so unique is that with a small amount of drivers and it being short tracks, one of the things we really aim to do is try and keep it green flag running. I think you’ve seen in the Sunday races there’s been a bit of frustration the amount of yellows and cautions and that sort of thing. In the virtual world we can kind of decide what we want to do there. I think a lot of emphasis has been put on allowing the drivers to kind of maximize a strategy in terms of saving their tires at the beginning of the race and hopefully being fast at the end or vice versa, and so I’m sure you’re going to see a bunch of that in these races, the way they’re set up, the way the formats are, and it’s a little bit more pure in that sense.
And then you add in the talk amongst the drivers and it’s always funny, no matter if it’s late at night when you’re racing a bunch of buddies like Dale and I do sometimes, or in these races. We’re a chatty bunch if you give us the option, so I think that’s going to be very entertaining.
JEFF BURTON: Yeah, the length of the races, shorter races mean the intensity starts right off the bat. If you get a bad restart, if you have a problem early, do you have time to recover from them? So much, much shorter races, two races at one track, it’s a completely different format, and I think the format just puts the drivers in a situation rather than 150-lap race, they’re just in a completely different situation. That in and of itself makes the racing completely different than what we have been doing in the past, which you’ve seen.
So it’s just another way to do something different and give the drivers something different to do, as well, because I want to say that it’s amazing to me how much the drivers have bought into this and have committed time and effort and energy, not only to doing them but doing them well and putting effort in and practicing for the races. I mean, our sport is just blessed to have the drivers’ willingness to do things like this, kind of out of the box. We’re blessed to have it, and just the format, I think, puts them in the situation that they’re normally not in, and any time we can put drivers in unique situations, the fans always come out the winners in that situation.
Q. For Dale, I was wondering if you can give us an update on whether you may be appearing in an INDYCAR iRacing event in the future, and also your thoughts and if everybody else wants to chime in on the possibility of Talladega being in the INDYCAR iRacing Challenge.
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Well, I certainly — I reached out on social media if they ran an oval that I’d love to compete. I know Jimmie has been having fun with that, and he’s got an agenda to possibly test and eventually race in their series, so his purpose and reason behind being a part of that is clear. But I wouldn’t want to step on anybody’s toes. I’ll just wait for an invite from Jay or somebody, a more official opportunity to join them. But I’d love to. I’d love to get to know those guys. Had such a great time at the Indy 500 last year and the reception that I received from the other drivers there really meant a lot to me. I know they’re all a lot of great dudes in that series that I already know, but I’d love to get to know some of them even better.
I think that they should go to Michigan, man. The history that the series has there is pretty awesome, and I know that that was a track that was almost beat out Watkins Glen for the first race that they were going to go to, so I know a lot of people want to see them race at Michigan. But Daytona or Talladega would be awesome to see the INDYCAR guys try to tackle and have fun with.
Q. Sam, you’re used to producing a lot of obviously live racing, but because of the current situation, you guys are obviously forced to do virtual racing. What kind of ideas are you guys cooking up for this production? What ideas are kind of coming over from the live NASCAR production and you’re kind of balancing the two, and what kind of lessons have you learned doing this esports type of thing?
SAM FLOOD: Well, I think the one thing you learn is the drivers are the star, and the more we can get the driver engagement, the driver as part of the story, it makes for a better race. The INDYCAR race we did this past Saturday had a lot of driver audio, and that’s always good. It engages the audience in a different way.
The beauty of iRacing is the actual drivers are behind the wheel manipulating the cars, and there’s a realism to it that has engaged an audience on a different level, and we’re happy to have that ability to play there and keep the audience connected to their star drivers. So, this short track series is going to have a lot of that. We allow the drivers to go back and forth and talk to each other and at each other, which is an important element that could not happen on a race Sunday because I imagine the language would be a little bit too coarse to get on the air. But in this case people are in a somewhat controlled environment, so Parker can take shots at Kyle Busch and others in the races with him, and that’s a fun element that doesn’t normally happen.
You think about most sports, hockey players trash talk on the ice, and NASCAR you can shake your fist out the window, throw up a middle finger or do something to salute one of your competitors, but you really can’t talk to them while the race is going on. Football players can stand over a quarterback and say something. So it’s fun now that in these races the drivers are able to get at it a little bit verbally, which is something we’d love to see more of.
Q. Jr., kind of in your role as an Xfinity owner, have you had any talks with sponsors — you saw what happened with Bubba last night. Have you had any talks with sponsors, just kind of expectations and what to expect, and where does kind of the balance of it being fun but also being part of your business, where is that line?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Well, all of the race teams are trying everything they can to keep their sponsors and keep their employees, and keeping their sponsors allows them to keep their employees. I think as a racer, I think as someone who’s participated in competing in these events online, it’s an opportunity for you to get engagement for the fans, obviously, they’re going to enjoy the content and the race, but it’s also an opportunity for you to get your sponsors and partners, who are getting nothing right now, on TV, which lends to social engagement, either promoting the race or after the race talking about it.
So it’s not as good as the real thing. There’s not the at-track engagement or activation, but it’s really the only thing we’ve got going.
When I go and get on there, for example, for Texas we ran the Hellman’s car, and when we run the Sunday race at Richmond, I’m going to run another JRM initiative, it’s basically to kind of appease and make those partners feel some value, which in turn helps our employees, helps us keep our employees.
I told Kelley that when we don’t have an initiative that we can do or use at JRM, I’m just going to run that Filter Time car, but if we can or if there’s any opportunity for us to run anything else to help Hellman’s or help any of our other partners, I want to be doing that. I want to do anything I can to help us maintain our employees.
I think as a driver that’s how you have to approach it. You’re going to be on there. You’re going to be doing it. Your team wants you to be there, your partners want you to be there. Have fun with it, enjoy it. Obviously don’t let it get under your skin if you get wrecked. Video games have a real good way of doing that. I’ve seen a lot of friendships get lost due to playing Madden or racing online. But if you’re going to be there, if you’re going to be doing that, have fun with it, enjoy it, but also remember that you have to maintain some professionalism because there are some other things bigger than what’s happening in that room with you on that sim rig. There’s implications beyond just what you’re doing on sim racing.
Q. Sam, a question for you. What about when this is all over? Eventually this is going to end, and the iRacing kind of platform has kind of shined, brought you ratings. Is there a possibility now where before this happened, we would have never considered doing anything with iRacing on network TV, to where now you may consider doing something like this, and have you been approached by any other pro sports about having some kind of live events because it really seems like only motorsports has had an opportunity to do this.
SAM FLOOD: Well, we were doing iRacing before this new coronavirus reality, so we were doing this for the last couple of years, have been putting iRacing on NBCSN and creating series of it. Parker was a big proponent of it and a key player in making that all happen. We certainly were first adopters of this and leaned in hard and early and believe in it and have continued to believe in it and will continue to play in this space after the fact.
As to other sports, there are all kinds of ideas of concepts. The one difference as I said earlier is the drivers are actually manipulating the machines in iRacing, and someone manipulating a player on a court is very different and a different skill set than driving the car. So I think it’s tougher with other sports, but if you can engage the personalities, which is the most important part, if you can have Sidney Crosby playing against Alexander Ovechkin, there’s at least those two personalities that can come to the surface and have some fun. While it’s not the same as driving the iRacing rig, it is the personalities, and again, the players and the athletes are the stars that people want to engage with more than just the event.
Q. Junior, you’re a blast to watch because I know your passion for iRacing. Are we ever going to see you on — maybe we’ve missed it, but do you have a Twitch channel, and will you ever have something like that like the other drivers are having?
DALE EARNHARDT JR: I do have a Twitch channel. It’s DaleEarnhardtJr88, and I’ve been playing with the hardware and software to get going, but I haven’t decided when I’m going to start streaming yet, but I plan on doing that at some point.
Q. Dale, one thing I thought about seeing Bobby Labonte in the lineup the last few weeks, what do you think about having some of the drivers that have been recently retired out of the driver’s seat jumping in with some of the drivers currently in the sport?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yeah, I mean, I think that that’s an opportunity for Bobby because Martin Truex Jr. is down in Florida at his fishing vacation home and not interested at all in coming back to North Carolina where his sim rig is at. And so that presents an opportunity an opening for a guy like Bobby to come in there who has been a part of sim racing even before I started sim racing. His story goes even further back than mine.
But you know, I think Jeff Gordon, to be honest with you, I’m kind of surprised that he’s not competing. I know that he’s a bit of a gamer, so I think I would love to see him jump in there with us. Maybe he could take Clint Bowyer’s spot for a weekend or something. Clint is having such a hard time with it.
But you know, I think the fans would love to see that, but it would take away from another driver’s opportunity, a current Cup driver’s opportunity to compete because we filled the series up for Sunday. But there’s definitely that opportunity from NBC’s point of view. With this being a small sample group of guys, we can sort of change who that is on the fly, and we can have Greg Biffle and Bobby or anybody that we want if they want to compete and participate. We don’t have to adhere to any set of rules or circumstances. So I think we can get pretty creative on our side.
Q. Sam, these short track iRaces, were they taped last week or are they taped the morning that they’re set to air?
SAM FLOOD: They are taped Wednesday, and the law firm of Earnhardt, Burton & Letarte have in their possession the results of those races. If they are leaked in any way, a lawsuit ensues and people will be heavily fined and imprisoned for the failure to apply the law of the land, these are top-secret races, locked away in the vault, and just like an awards show, the envelope will come out and you’ll see the race live.
Q. Is the idea — obviously you’re doing four this week. Is the idea to every few weeks do some more of these with iRacing?
SAM FLOOD: We’re playing this week to week. We want to make sure we don’t flood the market with stuff, pun intended. We want to make sure we play to the right level, and we’ll see how the audience responds and what the audience wants because we’re really doing this for them and want to make sure we’re giving them the content that they enjoy and an escape from what is an uncomfortable reality in our country right now and around the world.
Q. Obviously with this reality, what’s everybody been doing the last few weeks to pass the time?
PARKER KLIGERMAN: Lots of iRacing. I think you’ve seen that throughout all the motorsports, and Dale probably knows this and probably me and probably Steve, there’s so many out there that are reaching out that maybe one is involved in sim racing or weren’t as interested in it, now they’re just super into it, they’re buying rigs, they want to know how to get better, they want advice, they want to spend time at night working together to be faster. In the motorsports world, it’s been incredible to see the whole different series come together on this platform and try to find ways to entertain the fans out there and try to find ways to keep up their skills and enjoy racing. That’s what it’s been a great opportunity in that sense of why we have iRacing.
