NASCAR witnessed some controversy, even in the virtual world, in the past week’s virtual iRacing race at Bristol Motor Speedway,
NASCAR brought forward the concept of eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series with the objective of providing the drivers something to compete on and at the same time keep fans entertained during the pandemic.
The plan is to organize a virtual race for every postponed event until the regular season resumes. Until now three major races have been organized. However, the latest event at the virtual Bristol Motor Speedway saw some controversy.
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The controversy in the virtual NASCAR race started when Bubba Wallace’s #43 Richard Petty Motorsports Chevrolet and Clint Bowyer’s #14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford made contact multiple times early in the race at 150-lap race virtual speedway.
Wallace quit the race early in the race, leading to criticism from the fans on Twitter. His reply didn’t go well with his sponsors Blue-Emu, who canceled his sponsorship.
According to Action Network, Ben Blessing, the executive vice president of the brand said:
We aren’t sponsoring Bubba anymore. Can you imagine if he did that in real life on a track?
I used to work in NASCAR and you aren’t going to find the dollar-for-dollar return on investment we were getting on this. We thought this was a blessing in disguise for us. But then you find out that you aren’t sponsoring a NASCAR driver, you are sponsoring someone like my 13-year-old son who broke his controller playing some game where he builds houses.