eNASCAR celebrates virtual Throwback Night at Darlington Raceway
The Sunoco 120 at Darlington Raceway will serve as the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series Throwback night once more on Tuesday evening. Nearly half of the field will look a little different this week as the 40 top ranked oval drivers take on the track Too Tough To Tame in paint schemes that harken back to motorsport’s past.
Last year’s race was won by a throwback scheme, as Casey Kirwan, then driving for XSET, donned a Tony Stewart throwback from the early 2010s and put on a Tony Stewart-esque performance to capture the win. This year, nine teams are getting in on the action in their own, creative ways.
KANAAN ESPORTS
Kanaan Esports’ team owner, IndyCar champion and 500 winner Tony Kanaan, ran in his final Indianapolis 500 last year for the Arrow McLaren INDYCAR Team. Both Vicente Salas and Kollin Keister will share the same livery from that race on their Toyotas at Darlington. In Kanaan’s final Indy 500 start, he finished 16th.
JOE GIBBS RACING
Joe Gibbs Racing and their sponsor, Interstate Batteries, have a long-standing history with former NASCAR champion Bobby Labonte. Their long-standing esports driver, Bobby Zalenski, will throw back to Labonte’s paint scheme run from 2002 to 2004, the same scheme that Labonte ran in 2003 for his final career victory at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Daniel Faulkingham will drive Coach Gibbs’ Pro Football Hall of Fame induction scheme from 1996. Joe Gibbs previously coached the team known today as the Washington Commanders in the NFL, and with all of those Super Bowl wins, he was eventually inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1996. Labonte drove the scheme at Talladega that year, and finished in eighth.
OXYGEN ESPORTS
From 2011 to 2014, Denny Hamlin’s FedEx scheme hardly varied, minus the colors to signify which FedEx branch he was supporting in that particular race. The green-ish Oxygen Esports colors are most closely associated with the FedEx Ground colors of the time, and that’s what Femi Olatunbosun will wheel on Tuesday night.
KEVIN HARVICK INC.
As Kevin Harvick Inc. makes a comeback in the real-world alongside their emergence in eNASCAR, both of their virtual Camaros will throwback to a couple of championships that the team had with NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series legend Ron Hornaday. Jimmy Mullis will drive a Tree Top scheme that resembles Hornaday’s fourth and final title, the 2009 championship-winning scheme with Longhorn Steakhouse as the sponsor. Matt Bussa will go back two years prior, to 2007 and Hornaday’s third title. This Tree Top scheme resembles Hornaday’s Camping World colors.
LETARTE ESPORTS
The Sunoco duo at Letarte eSports will have a pair of old-fashioned liveries with different stories surrounding them. For Quami Scott, his #36 scheme resembles Richard Petty’s 1982 NASCAR Cup Series STP scheme. In that season, Petty finished up fifth in the standings with nine top 5’s and 16 top 10’s. Dylan Ault’s scheme doesn’t resemble a NASCAR or motorsports throwback in general, but it does resemble what a fuel pump from the 1960s and 1970s looked like, around the time when Sunoco started dabbling in motorsports.
NITRO CIRCUS SIM RACING
While Travis Pastrana had a stint as a NASCAR driver in his crazy motorsports career, both of the Nitro Circus cars call back to some of his other forms of racing. Dylan Duval’s scheme is Pastrana’s Subaru VT20g Airslayer Gymkhana Car from 2020, the same car that he set the record on Mt. Washington with in 2021. Matthew Zwack, on the other hand, is calling back to the Nitro Circus Monster Jam Truck from 2009 to 2011, driven primarily by Pastrana and Cam McQueen. It was the first Monster Truck to land a backflip in competition, done so by McQueen in 2010 at Jacksonville. It also qualified for all three of the Monster Jam World Finals it competed for.
ERACR
Back to some of NASCAR’s past, both of the eRacr machines are calling back to two recognizable paints from the late 1990s. Tyler Garey will sport the BellSouth colors made famous by Joe Nemechek in 1998 and 1999 on his Money Lap Camaro. This particular scheme was a winning one, claiming the checkers in 1999 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Ray Alfalla, meanwhile, will harken back to the Tabasco Fiasco, Todd Bodine and Darrell Waltrip’s scheme from 1997 and 1998. This car was one of the coolest and most-marketed of its time, but the performance and success didn’t quite match the hype… hence the nickname of the Tabasco Fiasco.
WILLIAMS ESPORTS
Williams Esports will once again throwback to Nigel Mansell’s F1 championship-winning Williams FW14B from 1992. Mansell won nine times in 16 races during that season, and his teammate, Riccardo Patrese, finished second in the standings as well. Both Donovan Strauss and Parker White will wheel similar colorful Camaros around the egg-shaped oval on Tuesday night.
BS+COMPETITION
While both Garrett Lowe and Jordy Lopez aren’t throwing back to any particular scheme on Tuesday night, the zebras cooked up some retro-feeling liveries for their drivers to compete in. Lowe will be looking for his second win in a row after winning the closest finish in eNASCAR history one week ago at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Past winners at Darlington Raceway:
- 2010 – Josh Berry
- 2011 – Brad Wright
- 2012 – Ray Alfalla (1)
- 2013 – Nick Ottinger
- 2014 – Ray Alfalla (2)
- 2015 – Landon Harrison
- 2016 – Tyler D Hudson
- 2017 – Ray Alfalla (3)
- 2018 – Michael Conti
- 2019 – Ashton Crowder
- 2020 – Keegan Leahy
- 2021 – Bobby Zalenski
- 2022 – Steven Wilson
- 2023 – Casey Kirwan
The quest for the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series championship, and the road to $500,000, continues tonight at 8:00 pm ET, live on eNASCAR.com/live. Tune in to the pre-race Countdown to Green starting at 7:30 pm ET.
For more information on the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series, visit eNASCAR.com or iRacing.com/eNASCAR. For more information on iRacing and for special offers, visit iRacing.com.
