NASCAR can’t avoid controversy, even virtually

Even in a virtual world, NASCAR can’t avoid controversy, as demonstrated this past Sunday during the iRacing race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, NASCAR introduced the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series so that the drivers could still compete against each other in live broadcasted races on Sundays.

For each track on the schedule that had its race postponed, a race at the virtual version of the track was scheduled in its place, minus the race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, which was the first postponed race. The virtual series had not yet been created when this race was scheduled to take place.

The introduction of this series on iRacing, the virtual racing platform which has been described by drivers as being about as close to the real thing as possible, was intended to create something fun and get the focus of fans and drivers off of the current global crisis and the threat of COVID-19.

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With that being said, everybody knows that when you get a bunch of NASCAR drivers together, it is going to be not only fun but very competitive. Or at least they should know that by now.

But controversial?

In just the third round of the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series at virtual Bristol Motor Speedway, NASCAR couldn’t avoid the controversy. Early on in the 150-lap race around the four-turn, 0.533-mile (0.858-kilometer) oval in Bristol, Tennessee, Bubba Wallace’s #43 Richard Petty Motorsports Chevrolet and Clint Bowyer’s #14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford made contact multiple times.

Here is the incident.

Here is how Wallace reacted to the incident (Warning: Video contains NSFW language.).

The fact that Wallace quit this race so early in frustration over this incident led to fans criticizing him on Twitter. Wallace responded, effectively blowing them off.

https://twitter.com/BubbaWallace/status/1246870113896316929

https://twitter.com/BubbaWallace/status/1246871123192668161

He did not ultimately get the last laugh, however.

Wallace’s reaction to this incident led to joint/muscle cream Blue-Emu, which sponsored his #43 Chevrolet in this race and has sponsored him in real life as well, pulling their sponsorship from the 26-year-old Mobile, Alabama native.

Blue-Emu, which recently became an official partner of NASCAR, showed that they were clearly not happy with how Wallace acted, and while it may be a “video game”, they still paid to sponsor his #43 Chevrolet and justifiably felt slighted with what went down, specifically how he responded to it.

Ben Blessing, the executive vice president of the brand, stated the following, according to Action Network.

"“We aren’t sponsoring Bubba anymore. Can you imagine if he did that in real life on a track?”"

During the race, Blessing was reportedly running around his living room screaming, “I ain’t paying him a cent.”

But that’s not all; Blessing continued.

"“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.”"

According to Action Network, a Richard Petty Motorsports official told Blessing that they would not be invoiced for their sponsorship of Wallace’s #43 Chevrolet this past Sunday.

Blue-Emu have also been sponsoring Landon Cassill, with whom Blessing has been far more pleased.

"“Landon has been a real pro. He’s practicing six to eight hours a day with our brand in the background.”"

Real-life, iRacing, you name it. NASCAR is still NASCAR, and there will always be an element of intense competition, and with that comes the risk of controversy. Three races into the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series, Bubba Wallace and Richard Petty Motorsports found that out the hard way.