William Byron earned the victory on Sunday’s NASCAR Pro Invitational iRacing event at Bristol and took off right where he left off from there on Monday.
The iRacing veteran helped debut NBCSN’s new short track series scheduled for this week by dominating the six-car field at Rockingham Speedway.
William Byron dominates NBCSN iRacing Debut
In the first of two, twin 35-lap races at the track, Byron made himself a big gap apart from the rest of the six-car field, along with Parker Kligerman who stuck to his back bumper, early on.
Kligerman looked like he might give Byron a fight, but he was ultimately outdueled after burning out his right-front tire.
“I thought I figured out what he was doing in the first 10 laps there, but he just decided to go and drive away,” Kligerman said on the NBCSN broadcast.
Byron went on to win the race by over three seconds, and the gap between Kligerman was actually the same size.
Race 1 Results
1. William Byron
2. Parker Kligerman
3. Kyle Busch
4. Tyler Reddick
5. Austin Dillon
6. Bubba Wallace
The field was inverted for the second race, so Wallace and Dillon would start on the front row.
It would very quickly change in the favor of the two that were fastest in race one, though.
Wallace jumped to the front and watched Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick get tangled up on the first lap of the race. Dillon had bumped the wall and took Reddick directly off the track.
From then on, it was a four-car battle.
Wallace led for a handful of laps, but eventually ran out of tread on his right front tire and dropped back. The same happened for Kyle Busch.
With 16 laps to go, it was Byron on the bumper of Kligerman, but the driver of the 24 would wait until the final turn to make his move.
Byron hit the bumper of Kligerman and whipped past him for first place, sweeping the pair of races and advancing to Thursday’s championship at Martinsville.
Race 2 Results
1. William Byron
2. Parker Kligerman
3. Kyle Busch
4. Bubba Wallace
5. Austin Dillon
6. Tyler Reddick
The network said during the broadcast that 10 drivers will fill the field of Thursday’s championship, and any spots not filled by automatic qualifiers – the winners from the races this week – will be picked by Steve Letarte and the other NBCSN analysts.
Letarte chose Busch to join Byron on Thursday, and the NBCSN guys will choose four more, at least, after Wednesday’s racing to fill out the field.
The series will return to the virtual track on Tuesday with a new set of six drivers set to try and punch their tickets to the championship event at Martinsville on Thursday. It will again start at 7:00 p.m. ET on NBCSN.
For more updates on the series, please visit our department’s Twitter account at @RacingVault.
