A subscriber to the popular iRacing.com website has been given the chance to trade the virtual racing environment for a real-life racing experience, as he looks to campaign a full season at the wheel of a Super Truck.
Tyler Hudson was a front-running entry in the NASCAR iRacing.com Series World Championship in 2010, and after a statement he made to fellow online racers, revealing that if they supported him in anyway towards his dream, then he would deliver full commitment in each and every race.
His chance in Super Trucks has come from Lee Faulk Racing & Development, who offered Hudson a test last year, in which he performed well.
Despite the offer of a seat, Hudson was left the challenge of finding the budget, and his decision to appeal to his friends in the online racing community, literally paid off.
“I promised the friends I’d made on iRacing that if they’d help support me, I’d give 100% every lap of every race,” Hudson said in describing his effort to put together a budget to race with the Faulk organization. “My wife, Lisa, and I thought that if we could get 300 people to each contribute $100 we’d have enough to run the whole year. We didn’t reach that goal but we had a tremendous amount of response, and several of those donations were from fellow sim-racers I had never even met before,” said Hudson who has previously invested a lot of money in his own race car, but then had no budget to run it as he would have liked.
Support came in all forms, and Hudson has enough to complete the first half the season.
Hudson’s personal commitment to this chance is staggering. Each race meeting will constitute an 18-hour round-trip drive, which he will do once a week.
The Vice President of Lee Faulk Racing & Development said “This is a great partnership,” adding “Our role is to help young drivers advance their careers. It’s why we have 'development’ in our name. So many drivers in the top NASCAR series, like the Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck, enjoy using iRacing. I saw the video from last year of Michael Waltrip coaching Trevor Bayne around Daytona. Having access to iRacing’s super-accurate simulation right in our shop will be a big help to our drivers. In addition to doing a lot of laps, they can learn a lot about how a car responds to set-up changes.”
