The open secret has been revealed: iRacing confirms NASCAR 26

It was basi­cal­ly only a mat­ter of time. When iRac­ing secured the rights to the offi­cial NASCAR con­sole games in 2023 and unmis­tak­ably named the first title NASCAR 25, you could work out the strat­e­gy on a nap­kin. A game with a year in the title prac­ti­cal­ly screams for an annu­al release cycle. But until today, there had been no con­crete state­ments from head­quar­ters. That has now changed. Kevin Bob­bitt, Vice Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing at iRac­ing, let the cat out of the bag in the company’s own Down­shift Pod­cast and con­firmed that NASCAR 26 is already deep in devel­op­ment. They promise us “cool things” and news in the very near future.

For us at SimUl­ti­mate, this announce­ment trig­gers mixed feel­ings. On the one hand, we are incred­i­bly relieved that the NASCAR licence, after the absolute dis­as­ter under the pre­vi­ous devel­op­er Motor­sport Games, is now under the umbrel­la of the new­ly found­ed iRac­ing Stu­dios. The first attempt last Octo­ber and Novem­ber was a rock-sol­id foun­da­tion. The game looked good, drove rea­son­ably well and proved that iRac­ing can also put togeth­er main­stream sim­cades for PlaySta­tion and Xbox. On the oth­er hand, as expe­ri­enced sim­rac­ers, we know exact­ly what mas­sive risk a twelve-month rhythm car­ries.

We know the phe­nom­e­non of annu­al updates from series such as EA’s F1 games. When a devel­op­ment stu­dio is forced to put a new full-price title on the shelves every year in time for the sea­son, deep inno­va­tion often falls by the way­side. You get an update to the liv­er­ies, maybe a reworked menu and a few new dri­vers, but the fun­da­men­tal dri­ving physics and force feed­back stag­nate for years. This is exact­ly where iRac­ing now has to prove that they are cut from a dif­fer­ent cloth. NASCAR 25 was a good start, but we expect notice­able progress from NASCAR 26 in tyre mod­el­ling, AI and strate­gic rac­ing depth. The community’s expec­ta­tions of the iRac­ing name are sim­ply too high for them to serve us last year’s game with new spon­sor stick­ers.

The fact that work is being done at full speed in the back­ground is also shown by the involve­ment of NASCAR leg­end and iRac­ing exec­u­tive Dale Earn­hardt Jr., who already hint­ed in April that he is work­ing on a sound­track with nine­teen songs for the new game. It is also planned that play­ers will be able to con­trol exact­ly which tracks they want to hear and which ones they do not. That shows a nice love of detail, but quite hon­est­ly: for us at the rigs, the music in the menu is absolute­ly sec­ondary. We want to hear the V8 engine roar­ing at the lim­it and the chas­sis work­ing over the curbs. If the devel­op­ers put this same love of detail into revis­ing the force feed­back, then we could have a real­ly strong title com­ing our way this autumn.

We will be keep­ing an extreme­ly close eye on the devel­op­ments around NASCAR 26 and will put the promis­es to the test on the asphalt as soon as the game is avail­able. Any­one cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing whether to turn into the con­sole ovals can’t go wrong with its pre­de­ces­sor NASCAR 25, but any­one hop­ing for the big new fea­tures should per­haps hold on to their bud­get until the first real game­play trail­ers for NASCAR 26.