Pro NASCAR Driver Suspended From Popular Racing Game
Is there a correlation between how someone behaves in real life and how they act in a game? Usually there isn’t, but when a professional NASCAR driver gets caught running other gamers off the road, what does it mean?
The guilty party goes by the appropriate name of Scott Speed. In 2006, Speed became the first American driver to compete in Formula One in 13 years. In 2018, he intentionally tried to wreck another driver in iRacing, a popular PC racing simulator that has fans among real drivers. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. plays it, but he’s mostly behaved himself. Speed has not.
Steve Myers, the executive producer of iRacing, took on Speed as a consultant when they were developing the motocross racing DLC that became available last year. “He really poured his heart and soul into helping us develop the rallycross stuff on iRacing,” Myers told Polygon. However, this did not put him above the law, virtual or otherwise.
“I’ve known Scott since he was in NASCAR,” Myers said. “When I saw that, I sent him a message that said, ‘Man, this is unacceptable.’ And I told him that it was 99.9 percent [probability] that he was gonna get suspended for this.”
Speed happens to own an expensive three-monitor iRacing rig with a high-end driving wheel, valued as a set at $7, 500. We know this because he just put it up for sale.
