The Man Behind iRacing's Stewardship, 1000 Incidents Per Day?

From crafting homemade racing board games as a child to becoming iRacing's Chief Steward, Nim Cross's journey embodies the evolution of virtual motorsport itself. His passion transformed early digital racing games into the sophisticated platform that professional drivers now use for training.

The conversation reveals the fascinating origins of iRacing's philosophy. When Nim Cross created his own NASCAR league in the early 2000s, he broke new ground by incorporating real-world racing dynamics - team owners managed budgets, drivers needed contracts, and poor performance had genuine consequences. This revolutionary approach caught the attention of John Henry, who would later found iRacing and bring Cross onto the founding team.

Behind the scenes, Cross's stewardship operation processes approximately 1,000 protests daily with his team of eight stewards evaluating racing incidents. Rather than viewing this as merely policing infractions, Cross sees it as maintaining the integrity of a system designed to create meaningful consequences in virtual racing. "In real life when you sit in a car, there are consequences to making bad decisions," he explains, highlighting how this fundamental principle separates iRacing from more casual racing games.

What truly distinguishes iRacing is its unwavering commitment to authenticity. Instead of applying quick fixes to handling issues, the development team (many from real racing teams) builds comprehensive physics models that reflect real-world behavior. Every car in the service is developed with input from professional drivers across all disciplines. This dedication to realism extends to track creation, where scanning teams meticulously capture millions of data points to recreate racing venues with unprecedented accuracy.

Ready to experience racing with real consequences? Join the platform that's constantly evolving with quarterly updates, where your decisions matter just as they would on a real track, and where every car and track is crafted with unmatched attention to detail.

Follow Nim Cross at www.youtube.com/@nimcross

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:00 Announcements
• 7:20 Interview
• 1:24:27 Closing Thoughts and Appreciation

Transcript

Jason: 0:34

This episode is brought to you by Trophyai. We discuss all things in the sim racing world. I'm your host, jason Rivera, and I'm joined here by Mr Eric Kelly, jeff Smart and a very, very special guest, mr Nim Cross, the iRacing Chief Steward for iRacing. How's everyone doing this week?

Nim: 0:55

Good, good to see you guys, dude, we have sim racing royalty in the studio today.

Jason: 1:00

gentlemen, Everybody's on their best behavior. I'm telling you, man, I feel like.

Nim: 1:05

I get into the church by this.

Jason: 1:16

It's coming on the show today. Gentlemen, everybody's on their best. I'm telling you, man, I feel like I get into this big name. Cross what's up. Man, thank you so much for making the time to come on this. You came podcast. I know you found us via the 24-hour nerberg and once you mentioned who you were, I almost crashed. How are you doing this week?

Nim: 1:27

man, I don't think I mentioned who I was, but somebody found me out and called me out. It's good to see you guys. I'm doing great Middle of summer, lots of races we've been going to and we're looking forward to going to some more. But yeah, I saw you guys at the Nurburgrburg ring. I just like to uh, you know, tool around and see what's going on and check everybody out, and I happen to uh, you know, crash upon your screen and you guys look like you were having a lot of fun. So you kind of hooked me in and I got to watch. You guys do the 24 hours maybe a little too much fun.

Jason: 2:00

Well, that's great man. Thanks for allowing the time, eric. Jeff, how was your week? Guys, how was it going? Jeff, welcome back to the show, by the way. Welcome back.

Jeff: 2:09

Good to be back. Missed you guys.

Erick: 2:11

Yeah, man, we missed you too. Man, my week was good. We just passed the 4th of July A lot of sun, a lot of barbecue probably too much barbecue had a great time with the family. Family can't complain. Um. I did want to do a special shout out, though. Um, I came across a stream of some guys that watch our podcast and they were super supportive with sharing our links and stuff um rsr, the real sim racing squad.

Erick: 2:39

When it's out and eric b as well. Man, they I mean as soon as I like just popped into their little stream, you know, and it's not a little at all. But as soon as I pop into the stream, I said something and they were like wait a minute, are you Eric from the Sicanion podcast? We watched that and I'm like oh, that's a good feeling. This is wild. Yeah, we watch every week. I'm like hey, man, I appreciate that. Man, you guys are good people. Yeah, we appreciate that.

Jason: 3:03

Yeah, and now we got an official steward. So you know, we got to be careful what we say about iRacing. Earlier I was talking about the UI.

Erick: 3:10

Yeah, man Got to watch my mouth, man.

Nim: 3:12

But, jeff, I don't see how it's possible to say anything bad about it, Jeff.

Jason: 3:18

welcome back to the show, brother. How was your week? How was your?

Jeff: 3:22

time off, man, it was good. So I went to travel back to the East Coast, saw a buddy retire from the military, which was great, and just a data point. I did see the F1 movie. Go see it. It's awesome. There's F1 scenes, there's GT3 scene, racing scenes. Go see it. That's all I got to say. They do talk about sim racing for about that long, but they do, but they do, but they threw it in there they threw it in there.

Jeff: 3:47

That's all I got today. I'm ready to get back in with you boys. I missed you guys hell yeah.

Jason: 3:51

So today we have a new segment and it's going to be called the sim industry news update, presented by ready set sim, and the first one. I'm going to hand this over to Jeff to make our first news update announcement. That's critical, actually. It's actually blowing up on the internet right now, at the time of this recording. So, jeff, if you may, please, yeah, absolutely.

Jeff: 4:18

Today's SimDistry announcement is here. George, who's running the show at the SimGaming Expo? Posted today and this is if you're looking for any additional information. Uh, it's on their facebook. You know all socials pretty much updated here, but I just want to walk through it here. They're excited to announce the unveiling of the sim gaming expo challenge surprise series presented by simi cube.

Jeff: 4:38

The official sim racing tournament of the sim gaming expo. It's a multi-stage competition kicks off with a time attack on yours truly iRacing from the 14th to the 28th of july. Top 75 drivers will qualify for online qualifiers on august 9th, for there they'll get to the 30 finalists that they will be in a live championship event happening at the convention center during the sim racing expo on the 6th and 7th of september. All racers will be using the porsche gt3 or 911 gt3 with setups provided by the maconi setup shop. Online qualifiers will be broadcasted by race spot, while the in-person tournament will be produced, obviously, by their production team in-house. So, dudes, this is awesome, super cool announcement here from George, who continues to make this event somehow cooler and cooler. Every time I log on, basically to Facebook, he has another update. But if you want more info on this challenge here I am putting, if there's any entry fee, I got jason's, I'm, I'm, I'm riding that horse, uh, he's my favorite, uh, to win the thing.

Jeff: 5:51

So, uh, yeah, go find their social media sim gaming expo um, if you want some more info and again, they got the early um early 10 at checkout or give the chicane uh podcast. Uh, we got our discount code for you guys to get 10 too. So keep going, george, keep crushing it. Don't don't forget to sleep here and there. Chicane uh podcast uh, we got our discount code for you guys to get 10 too. So keep going, george, keep crushing it, don't don't forget to sleep here and there chicane, 10 guys still active and we are less than 60 days from this event.

Jason: 6:14

So I mean, we, we want to get to our guest here. But I tell you now, uh, the time to the time to act is fast and now, and if you're thinking about it, you need to make a decision now, because spaces are going to fill up. It's going to get expensive to find a place to stay over there. I just, if you have thoughts about going, just let us know. Send us an email at thechicanepodcast at gmailcom If you feel like going, if you, you know, if you're kind of undecided, let me know. We might be able to do something for you. So, and with that, we have the chief steward. I like calling him chief, but he he corrected me right before uh, hitting a go button. But the chief steward for iRacing is in our studio, which is unbelievable, unbelievable. So we're gonna go ahead and address him very quickly with. The first question is what's you know? Tell us about your sim racing journey there? Dim Cross?

Nim: 7:22

oh man, I know it's probably, it's a lot I'll give you the short version and you guys can ask anything. But uh, I started off as a young lad and and there were no computers or anything like that. So I started making board games and I just love racing and I love gaming and back in the day, you know there were some few little racing games that came out, like 2D games and stuff like that, and you know I was hooked on that, just dreaming of bigger and better things. You know, I wanted something that I could simulate racing on and I wanted to have a career. I knew I wasn't going to do it in real life so you know I this was the best outlet for it to happen and I got involved in a bunch of racing games. The best one that came along was the Indy 500 by Papyrus and played that, enjoyed that. That was basically the first forte in the computers. You know, I got my first computer back then and this was like 1989 or something like that, when Papyrus put out the first NASCAR game. I was lit. I was just I would go to work, come home and play that game While I was at work.

Nim: 8:42

I would find times on my break to call Papyrus and say, look, we need to fix this, we need to do this.

Nim: 8:48

And they finally put me on the beta team and the beta testing team and back then it was a lot easier to make contacts. You know I would, I would get the phone number of somebody and I would call him up. And there was this guy that worked at Papyrus called Matt Santel. He was a great, great guy guy, he's won the team and I would call him up and just start talking to him about all kinds of things we could fix and work on things like that. And, uh, he, they, eventually, after a couple years, you know me working and testing and doing stuff like that for beta testing. You know they, they allowed me to use some of their tools to actually help improve the game and, uh, I created a whole AI thing called it NIMS AI and uh, put it, put it on the, put it on the internet, um, with their permission, obviously, and people downloaded it and was able to have a better experience racing AI offline.

Nim: 9:40

And about that time, uh, the whole Hawaii thing started and hawaii was the beta platform for the first online racing um type thing, and we would all dial up and uh race each other over the phone at 10 cents a minute, you know, and uh people would have thousand dollar phone bills at the end of the month, 10 cents a minute.

Nim: 10:02

It was crazy. Uh did all that and uh, I helped papyrus do a lot of promotional stuff, did magazine interviews and uh, I have one magazine that has my picture with uh next to bobby labonte, like, uh, you could be a racing star online with and just race just like bobby labonte and uh, you know, and and did all kinds of different things with that. Then uh, you know, just helped along with a bunch of different games. I found myself working for a couple other gaming companies, gaining experience and things like that. And uh, to jump a little bit here, I eventually I made my own role-playing uh game outside of like papyrus's nascar 2002, and I made a role-playing game where you had owners and drivers and a driver couldn't drive a car unless he was hired by an owner. Owners had all budgets, they had all kinds of things. We had magazines, we had a whole environment that was outside of the game and on this website and it made people feel like they were race car drivers and owners.

Nim: 11:07

We had people playing the game as owners who didn't even own the game and who had no racing experience at all.

Nim: 11:14

And we would race inside, we would qualify on Sunday nights, we would line everybody up on pit road and it was just like real life. You know, you had to line up on pit road and you sat there and there were 40 cars and they qualified for 32 spots and if you didn't make the show, your owner was not going to be happy and you were going to get fired. And so you're sitting there. You're sitting there with the cars driving around the track, you hear the motors going by and you're just sitting there. The pressure's building by and you're just something that the pressure is building up. And the pressure is building up and it's your time to go out in the track and you do something. You wreck the car and the owner's now got to pay for all the damages on your car. You know we had guys, we had programs that went through and calculated each part of the car's damage the gene moment the owner had.

Jeff: 11:56

The owner had to pay for all that.

Nim: 11:58

If you didn't make the race, it was, you know bad news. And plus two, every everybody got fired at the end of the season. So all the drivers, so owners got the bid on their drivers. The owners got the bid of salary on their drivers, so you may have gotten hired by an owner for 90k per race and the race only paid 100k to win. You know so you're in big trouble. If you didn't do very well, you know so it was. It was that whole type of environment. Uh, you officiating. Somebody cussed out somebody, they would get fined.

Nim: 12:28

Drivers, drivers got all kinds of fines and you know, it was just and if a driver, if an owner fired a driver through the week and this is back, you know the early 2000s. So we communicated through email. Um, and if a driver got fired, you would get an email. Everybody in the league would get an email saying so-and-so got fired. And then there's an opening, and then that would produce a frenzy for all these drivers that didn't have rides yet to be emailing that owner to try to get a ride.

Nim: 12:58

You know, and it was just yeah, it was just really. It was a really cool environment. It was very intense, very realistic and, luckily for me, john Henry, who is the owner of iRacing, owner of Fenway Sports Group and the Red Sox and things like that, he saw what I was doing and he contacted me and he told me that I was at the pinnacle of sim racing at that time and what we what we were doing and, uh, we talked for a long time and he eventually asked me to come work for the company that he would be starting in a year or so from then, which would be called iRacing.

Jason: 13:34

eventually, wow, dude, that's amazing history dude what a story, okay, that's got to be the best story I've ever heard here on the show most of us started in cove. You need to make.

Jeff: 13:49

You need to. You need to redo this, but like live stream it all so we can, like I would watch it on like a tuesday night. You can write a book about this, bro, and just watch the it all unfold in front of you with a cocktail I just tried to give you the.

Nim: 14:05

It was so much more.

Jason: 14:08

It was so. It was a lot you know, oh yeah.

Nim: 14:10

And you know, I was just I'm very blessed very lucky. I just happened to be doing something I love to do. I wanted to have a real racing experience, and everything that I did was incredibly selfishly for me. Luckily, other people got to play it.

Erick: 14:26

Other people got to do it.

Nim: 14:27

I did everything because this is what I wanted in sim racing. I wanted to experience racing and the only way that I could do it was to create this thing. I talked about this. We're sitting around the campfire at Summit Point at night after watching the races and stuff like that. We were drinking beers or whatever, and there were some sim racing buddies sitting around the fire and I'd be like, hey, I have this idea. What do you guys think about lining up on pit road and qualifying? And they were like you're nuts man, nobody's going to want to do that. And I'm like I don't know what about people being owners.

Nim: 15:02

They were like no, who's going to want to be an owner and not drive? And I actually thought on it and had everything in my mind. I would not sleep at night thinking about it, but I had everything going in my mind for a year before I actually started. And it came together really well.

Jason: 15:18

That's insane, bro. I'm speechless right now. I don't even know how to move on from that.

Nim: 15:25

Like I said, very, very blessed, very lucky, got to start with iRacing. When I started with iRacing I ran QA and we did a lot of testing, a lot of conceptual ideas with John and the rating stuff and how things would work. You know, for the longest period of time, you know, they started building that iRacing and then when we went live um, that is when I took over the chief steward role wow bro yeah, the chief steward for a minute now, then 2008, I think we went live and that's when, when I uh, I started doing that.

Jason: 16:05

So he's been the chief steward since inception.

Jeff: 16:08

Single-digit employee at iRacing he is number one.

Nim: 16:13

He is 001. I would say number four. Let's say number four, number four.

Jeff: 16:17

Being modest? Yeah, we don't want. He's got a good parking spot. I do have a good parking spot. Yeah, he does.

Erick: 16:27

Yeah, that's awesome man.

Jason: 16:29

All right, yeah, go ahead, eric.

Erick: 16:32

Yeah, so, man, I can only imagine the stories because just thinking about that time frame. But I'm going to try to stay focused on the question, I'll give you one.

Nim: 16:43

Here's a story for you.

Jeff: 16:44

Yeah, let's hear it.

Nim: 16:46

Our first offices. Right, Very small office, maybe six or seven offices, and you all know who Dave Kemmerer is. Obviously we're sitting in the office and they're thinking of the name for the company. What are we going to be called? We're battling around a few different names.

Nim: 17:04

Dave's talking about iRacing and I'm like maybe we should call it the virtual racing world or something like that. You know, just to be in that meeting with the discussion of what the name of the company was going to be, and iRacing is clearly the best name it could have been. It is just the divine name it could have been. It is just the divine name of this company. I just remember and I'll never forget just being in that room talking to him about discussing what the name of the company was going to be.

Erick: 17:39

Was he dead set on iRacing out the gate?

Nim: 17:43

I think Dave was. I think Dave was. It was going to be on iRacing out the gate, or did you guys kind of pass him back and forth? I think Dave was. I think Dave was. It was going to be called iRacing Wow.

Erick: 17:49

Okay. So he just came in the room with greatness already.

Nim: 17:53

Well, dave is greatness, whatever room he walks into. But, yeah, I always thought it came from.

Jason: 18:00

I always thought the name came from, like you know, Apple devices devices, because at the time you had iPods and you had an iPhone.

Nim: 18:08

I don't know where he came up with the name from, but just in that meeting that's what we were going to call the company, because 2008 is kind. Of this was back in 2003 when we were talking Way before iPhone and all that stuff Interesting.

Jason: 18:29

Maybe we got to yeah, we got to email this guy, but all right, Well yeah, I'll go ahead with my my actual question, which was about your setup.

Erick: 18:42

I know you mentioned you did a new setup, but yeah, what's your setup? I know you mentioned, you did a new setup, but um, yeah, uh, what's your current setup and you know how much driving do you actually get to do? I know we interview a lot of not a lot of people, but we assume everybody gets to drive a lot. But we also know if you're actually working on the product, you might be doing more testing than actual driving right, right, right.

Nim: 19:04

So this is my old setup right here. It's just a wheel stand with a Fanatec setup right on it and that's what I used for so many years and that was my setup. And the one you see over my left shoulder now is something we built over the winter, probably in March. My nephew helped me build it and he actually did most of it. He was incredible with it, um, but it's a track racer t160.

Nim: 19:32

It's awesome nice got a 90 uh inch widescreen on it and uh, it's got a semi-cube 2 pro. Yes, sir, I knew you yes, sir, it's awesome.

Erick: 19:44

Absolutely.

Nim: 19:45

It'll rip your arms right out of your body.

Jeff: 19:46

Yes it will.

Nim: 19:47

Yeah, I got a Rexing Carbon Fiber Formula Molaris 2 wheel.

Jason: 19:54

That's a nice one. Yeah, I got DNR supported by the way Plug DNR supported.

Nim: 19:59

Rexing, yeah, I got the VNM three pedals set. Okay, okay, yeah, a good pedal set and a Heisenfeld shifter, sequential shifter.

Erick: 20:09

Nice, those are nice.

Nim: 20:11

Yeah, I got a monitor on top for I do. I do stream, I don't. I record all my races that I do for and I like to put them on YouTube and I'm not really into, you know, making my YouTube channel huge or anything like that, but I just like to put them on YouTube and I'm not really into making my YouTube channel huge or anything like that, but I just like to have a library of my races to watch yeah.

Nim: 20:32

So if I want to watch them, I think it's great to watch your own races, to go back and evaluate what you're doing in just different situations and things like that, and I enjoy watching me race. Who else can not watch me race? So, anyway, that makes sense. I have my own YouTube, totally that, and I enjoy watching me race, you know who else can not watch me race, so anyway that makes sense I

Nim: 20:46

have my own youtube youtube channel that upload all my races too. So that's why I got a little bit of the streaming stuff set up and um, as far as uh races that I do, uh, I don't do a lot of testing. Um, we're very busy with protests, yeah, we're, and I do some a little bit, but not a whole lot. Um, when I have time, I like to drive. Um, I, I did all the QA stuff and testing stuff the longest time now. Um, but I like to be surprised, as you guys, when release date comes. So, to tell you the truth, when there's a new car coming and things like that, I usually don't touch it until it gets released and then I go enjoy it. When everybody else enjoys it, I just like doing that. I'll go out and I'm right now. I'm driving weekly. I drive two formula races the formula four and the super formula.

Jeff: 21:38

There you go. I knew he was a good dude. I knew he was a good dude.

Nim: 21:42

I drive a GT three. I drive the Porsche. I drive nothing but the Porsche because I'm hoping Porsche notices and they send me a car one day.

Jason: 21:52

I might drop it off one day. I drive IMSA.

Nim: 21:59

IMSA GT3. I drive some Ovo. I drive the Gen 4 series. I drive the 87 series for NAS nascar. I drive in a league. Sarah um late model league. Uh, super late models and the regular late models. I drive in that league and uh, uh, probably something I miss here and there. You can go to my youtube page and check it out. You can see what I drive.

Jason: 22:21

We'll definitely put links below for all your youtube and your you know, all your socials and everything you want some? Bad driving. There you go I do have a question and this is a really quick one before we you know before the actual next question. But yeah it's a long shot, but by being so connected to the iRacing team, do you get this content for free?

Jeff: 22:47

Yeah, absolutely I get it for free.

Nim: 22:52

Let's say I don't pay for the content. Okay, Cash-wise but I live, iracing every second that these eyes are open.

Erick: 23:01

And so.

Nim: 23:03

I just love my job. I love the environment that I work in. I love the environment that I work in. I love my life that I get to you know I tell you what.

Jason: 23:11

I tell you what, nim, if you love what you're doing and you call that work, you're not working, that's right, it's not working.

Nim: 23:18

It feels very strange to me to call it a job, because I I'm very blessed to have what I have and be able to to do this and you know not not not have a problem like this. You know there's, you know, with my job there's different experiences that, uh, you go through with uh, uh, different situations, but in the end it's, you know, you're working to make this product, iracing, a better environment and, uh, the one of the greatest things for me, you know you guys think about iRacing as a product, I think about iRacing as the community and, uh, you know all you guys, we have 330,000 people racing on iRacing right now.

Nim: 23:54

And iRacing to me is the community, and the software is obviously important. Um, but it it is is obviously important um, but it is.

Jason: 24:07

It is just the place where the community resides. Yeah, a hundred percent we. We praise it a lot on the show, and it's not just to praise it. We actually, you know, we have a lot of fun on that it's wonderful. Yeah, you know as you saw in our stream we just have a blast. That was the best.

Jeff: 24:22

I love that stuff you know, jay said if I could just say a quick something before I go into my question here is like our industry is in the best of hands. Like the passion that the people like nim, daniel newman you know anybody that we've talked to on the podcast and george, like the passion that people have for sim racing and the community that's really is what everybody talks about the people that are using, you know, the software, hardware and the products here or there. Uh, our industry is in good hands. Yeah, there is. There is no doubt in my mind where this industry is going because of the people that are building it, you know, from the ground up. Oh yeah, so 100.

Nim: 25:06

There's a lot of good people up at diaries. When I get to go up and visit the offices it's it's a real wonderful time up there well, nym take me with you please, I will you know, I'd love to take you. Take you with us. I'll carry the bags, bro, just let me know what I need to do.

Jason: 25:20

oh yeah, we'll be there, that would be, awesome man.

Jeff: 25:25

Speaking of that being the chief steward, what are your current roles and duties with iRacing being the chief steward, if you could talk to us about kind of what your day-to-day week-long activities is for you?

Nim: 25:40

Yeah, no problem. My job is to facilitate the needs of the stewards of the department. So we get probably 1,000 protests a day into the service. So my eight stewards that work for me, it's their job to go through all these protests and to try to figure out which protests are valid and which are not. And I'll give you a basic ballpark. Usually it's about 40% of the protests are valid, 40% of them are not and 20% are something else that aren't really protest related. So they go through protests and a steward can process up to 25 to 30 protests an hour. You know you're basically loading replays. You're saying you, and once you get to doing this job, you can load a replay up and know what's going on within just a few seconds and they all have the best computers, the best hard drives.

Nim: 26:37

They load replays like you wouldn't believe, like when I go when I go into a race, I'm in a race 25 seconds, 30 seconds before anybody else is on the track, you know, and it's just the. We have them set up to where they can load replays very quickly. My job is to facilitate the needs of all these guys to take care of any issues support may have with a customer or anything like that, take care of a lot of the unusual things, the challenging customers, and then I do and a couple other people do appeals. So if somebody gets suspended and they want to appeal, I take care of that and there's a couple other people involved that take care of that kind of thing. And doing appeals in itself is mainly a full-time job. If there's any questions or any issues that the stewards have, they come to me. We all hang out in a Discord setting through the day. We all work together all day long, that's awesome man A thousand protests a day I can believe it.

Nim: 27:48

We were looking at it today when we were working and like man, that number is not coming down and we were getting one or two protests a minute, you know, through the afternoon, yeah.

Erick: 27:59

I might need to expand the team man.

Nim: 28:01

You know we've been growing a lot lately. We put a, we put in a couple thousand customers just in the last week or so.

Jeff: 28:08

Um, the growth is crazy.

Nim: 28:10

Um, you know, obviously that's great. Um, yeah, and we're working on different ways to help educate people on sending frivolous protests, or you know things like that. Or you know, because that's that's, uh, you know, cause that's that's one of the uh main areas that we can work on, where people are sending protests for just bumps, and normal issues.

Jason: 28:31

You know I'm a little embarrassed man.

Nim: 28:33

I may have gotten written up you know in the past, you know there's, there's people that work for me, that have gotten written up in the past, so it's not, it's not, it's not a big deal. Yeah, mean we, you know people learn from their mistakes or whatever. People learn from different situations. Um, and it's, it's all good, we don't, we don't carry grudges okay, just don't don't.

Jason: 28:57

Don't, don't do a control f jason rivera, because I might be on that list and you know I promise it was.

Nim: 29:04

It was jeff testing my rig, or something if you get kicked off the service, if you get kicked off of iRacing? You've worked hard to get that.

Jason: 29:11

Get to that point, no, no, no, no, no, all right, so all right, and then the next question, so I guess a follow-up right to uh jeff's question uh, why did I racing decide on the current safety rating criteria? And what would you say, uh, to those that are critical of it?

Nim: 29:38

yeah. So just like uh, real racing you, you need to have consequences. When you get in the car. In real life, when you sit in the car, there are consequences to making bad decisions. With sim racing or with racing as it was before iRacing, there were no consequences to getting on the track and going out and being involved in wrecks, making bad decisions or anything like that.

Nim: 30:08

With the I rating system and the safety rating system, there become some consequences with making bad decisions and some may say that it's not enough consequences. You know it should be more, but we believe over time that it does sort out the drivers who are better and safer from the drivers who are not, who choose not to be, and it is a choice. Basically, how you race and, uh, you know there are people that get frustrated sometimes and we all have those uh times where where you know we get involved in a lot of things that we didn't cause and there's streaks that happen, um, but overall, your safety rating and your eye rating are yours, whether you believe it or not. That is a good rating for how you drive, not based on everybody else I think that's a little bit of humble pie.

Jeff: 31:06

I think everybody could take that statement.

Jason: 31:09

Yeah.

Nim: 31:09

I mean, like I said, that's over time.

Jason: 31:12

The biggest complaint about the safety rating in Jason's humble opinion and a few other guys that I race with, is getting a 4X for something that you did not do is getting a 4X for something that you did not do Even if you're driving the perfect line. Somebody comes off the track, on back onto the track and then hits you on the door and then it's like 4X.

Nim: 31:41

It's like. Those are some of the things that I. My reply to you is that who is driving your car? Is it you or is it somebody else? Now, I'm not saying that you're responsible for every 4X that you get, but we all race in the same environment. And if you are having issues where you're getting a lot of 4Xs from other drivers and I always tell people this and I've told people this even before I race, and I always tell people this and I've told people this even before I race when you're ever involved in an accident, you should go back and look at every accident that you're involved in in a way where you look at it as how could I have avoided this? Ok, because you can't control what the other guy does. And when you guys were racing in the Nürburgring 24, I even talked to you about this I noticed in that first wreck that you guys were involved in. I could see the cars ahead of you and I knew there was. They were going to wreck there is absolutely no way.

Nim: 32:32

Yeah, they were going to wreck and I saw it and I was like you guys got to back off.

Nim: 32:36

You know these guys are going to take each other out and and you have to you have to realize, you know, when they actually wrecked, sure, the accident was their fault and they caused you to wreck, but was there an opportunity for you or the driver of the car at that time to see what was going on and to understand what was going on and to avoid that situation? Because there clearly was in that instance, was in that instance, and this is what separates the drivers who have the certain safety ratings from those drivers who don't have the certain safety ratings and those drivers who are constantly saying I'm getting wrecked by everybody all the time, it's not everybody else's fault. All the time you have to evaluate your own decisions and you have to evaluate the situations on the track and if you do that, the iRacing systems are very lenient, in my opinion, and if you learn to evaluate the environment that you're in and the situations that you're in a little bit better, you'll be a 499 and no problem at all. No, no issues, okay.

Erick: 33:53

Well said Well said we were just speaking in general terms.

Jeff: 33:56

We might need it. We might need it from time to time.

Erick: 34:00

Yes.

Jason: 34:01

I'll say this yeah, for sure Go ahead.

Erick: 34:03

I want to say this as somebody who I'm not sure if you're familiar with Gran Turismo or anything like that, but coming from a more arcade kind of style racing game to iRacing, the safety rating and the iRating, you know we have the same thing in Gran Turismo but the weight of it feels significant in iRating Like it feels like. I was terrified in my first couple of races because of just the cost of wrecking or going off track or hitting somebody else.

Nim: 34:38

How do you think you'd feel if you got in a real car? If, you had a car man, you'd have that feeling. You'd have that feeling of fear a little bit, that feeling of concern, that feeling of that bad things could happen, and that's what's great. That's what's great about these systems, and everything you say here makes me feel like we did it. It's working as intended, it is working.

Jason: 35:03

It is working because you think twice before.

Jeff: 35:06

The first sentence was like you hit it out of the park. If you were in a car you'd be nervous. You should be a little nervous sitting in your car.

Nim: 35:15

And you know what your car could be wadded in turn. One in real life. In there Like nothing that you did. You didn't do anything wrong and you could be, wadded up.

Jeff: 35:26

Max Verstappen two weeks ago.

Nim: 35:28

That's right.

Jeff: 35:29

Yeah.

Jason: 35:31

All right, that's true man, this is getting spicy. I love that.

Jeff: 35:36

I needed to hear what he had to say, because more than 50% of the time was like hey, it wasn't me, I didn't hit somebody, somebody hit me, but I have no comment back to what you just said there, nim, it's a little bit of humble pie.

Nim: 35:52

It's a little bit of humble pie. It's not a bad thing to realize the situation and what you're going through.

Jason: 35:56

Sometimes people need to be told directly and, you know, if it opens opens your mind and opens your heart to what's actually going on, you know you're going to be a better driver because of it a hundred percent, a hundred percent, and eventually your safety rating and I rating will go up, and then your strength of field goes up, and then you're placed with another group of drivers that are more serious, and then your strength of field goes up, and then you're placed with another group of drivers that are more serious and then your license. So it's a system that I'll tell you here on the show that it does work. It does work really well because people think twice. That's why a lot of us go to league racing to improve and then come over to officials, to, you know, to actual perform on the official side, at least in my case. But yeah, that's awesome man. So next question we got Mr Kelly.

Erick: 36:51

Yeah. So I'm just curious have you had any sort of like formal, like business or programming education, Because I know that passion kind of led you down this road, but have you kind of coupled that with any formal education?

Nim: 37:08

In 1987, I got a degree in electronics only because that was the key word at that time and I needed to make my parents happy and so I got a degree in electronics.

Nim: 37:22

Yeah, I got a degree in electronics. It has done nothing to help me where I am today. My, you know the only thing, that not the only thing, but that did get me a job where I met my wife and you know where you know, recreated, raised a family and you know. But that's what my electronics degree did for me. We went through before how I got the job at iRacing and it really you know I've been turned down at other gaming companies before iRacing because I didn't have certain degrees or whatever. But luckily John saw passion as the biggest priority and that's lucky for me. I got that in iRacing.

Jeff: 38:09

Turns out that guy's pretty good at judging talent.

Jason: 38:11

Yes he is oh yeah, oh yeah, many, many things.

Erick: 38:15

He's wisdom right there. He's two for two. Oh yeah, yep, oh yeah, many, many things. He's two for two.

Jeff: 38:19

Oh yeah, yep, all right, I'm going to. I got another question here about, uh. You know, iracing is the business side and I'm not sure if it's in your wheelhouse but hopefully you can kind of speak to it a little bit. But uh, what goes into deciding what track to add or what car to add uh, so obviously it's a little bit of um.

Nim: 38:41

You know what people are asking for. Uh, you know customer um requests things like that but uh yeah, it's. You know I I am not direct. I have actually signed a few tracks, uh, uh, one of the um I was a big uh and getting dirt onto I racing, dirt racing. I go to like 80 dirt races a year um. Next week I'm going to be 80, six, yeah, eight zero next.

Nim: 39:09

Next week I'll be at six races and we'll be traveling about 1500 miles, but I, yeah, I go to sprint car races all day long, every, you know, all the time. So I was a big proponent in getting dirt racing on iRacing and selling dirt racing and I was luckily enough to be involved in signing some tracks drivers for you know our console games that we have now. I signed a lot of the drivers in that and as far as in that situation it was getting tracks that were popular in different parts of the country and what tracks had big social media exposure. Ok, things like that Social media exposure is a big deal. Tracks that are popular not only fan-wise but, like I said, social media-wise, and there's tracks that get you that type of exposure. Um, that's pretty much it.

Nim: 40:03

We, we're all race fans, uh, uh, who are involved in these decisions and, um, you know, so, you know, when we sign a track like portemont or whatever we're looking at, you know, is the track popular? Is the track you know, is the track popular? Is the track you know, is it Formula One track? Does it hit, you know, ring certain types of bells and then it comes down to well, we want that track and you know, and can we make a deal with them? And hopefully we can. Sometimes we can't, but you know we definitely try to make a try to get the tracks that everybody else wants in the service. And you know, I guess sometimes too it's it's tracks that come to us and offer, offer good things to get into the game or something like that.

Jeff: 40:44

I was going to say, like, make a deal, these tracks should be coming to you guys.

Jason: 40:49

That's what I was saying. This is free advertisement.

Jeff: 40:51

Why would you not Some of them?

Nim: 40:52

do, but not all of them, not all of them.

Jason: 40:54

That's interesting.

Nim: 40:55

There are some tracks that have turned us down. That's wild. We wanted in tracks that just said no, what are they not like money? That's crazy.

Jeff: 41:03

And popularity.

Jason: 41:05

I'm telling you and you said the key words here. This is completely unscripted, but you said that you guys consider what the players want or what the drivers want.

Nim: 41:16

Yeah.

Jason: 41:17

So you know we're hurting on the F1 side.

Jeff: 41:20

I was going to add one thing, yeah.

Nim: 41:24

Well, I can assure you, I can assure you that iRacing would love every F1 track. There's no doubt about it. You know, making those deals happen is something that you know is sometimes out of our control. Sometimes the deals aren't there to be made. But, without going into specifics, there are just certain things that we may or may not be willing to do to get a track. I see, we try to, you know we. You know there's a limit, you're saying. I guess you know there is. Like I said, I'm not involved in signing in, in doing these kinds of things. But, um, I can assure you that everybody at iRacing and everybody in upper management, upper management and iRacing would love to have every F1 track and we might get there one day, you know we're working working deals with fia and stuff like that and you know, maybe one day we'll be there because their license is on the table.

Nim: 42:25

I'm just saying yeah, I tell you. I tell you what if there is a license on the table, we don't? It's not that we don't know about it, that's for sure. Oh.

Jason: 42:35

Okay, all right, well said. Okay, yeah, well said. Very, very well said. Now let's move on here. So, speaking of tracks, right, want to have a live coach available on demand. With Trophy AI, you'll be able to practice with Mansell AI at your convenience A real-time coach in your headphones to navigate and guide you through the track, helping you achieve race pace. This tool is awesome as it provides full brake, throttle and steering telemetry on screen, with a live review getting you ready for your next big race. Check links to Trophy AI in the description and also use CHICAIN12 in all caps for a 12% discount. What does scanning a track look like? If yeah, yeah, so like, can you walk us through the process of you know being on the ground at the track while you know, while it happens?

Nim: 43:29

sure. So uh, what happens is, you know, you have this uh scanning device that sits on this huge tripod and it goes around and it takes millions of data points per second, or something like that, you know, and it just spins around. So you do that where you, you set it up, you let it go, you run out of the way real quick and you, you let it, you let it scan and do a 360 scan and, uh, after it's done 45 minutes or something like that 30 minutes 45 okay yeah, you move it 100 yards down the road and you do the same thing over and over.

Nim: 44:01

Oh my god, and you just do that over and over.

Jeff: 44:06

Yeah, the nerve ring took forever and I was going to say like forever are we talking a week, oh, weeks.

Nim: 44:16

Multiple, yeah, we can do a short track in a few hours, like a short oval track or something like that.

Jason: 44:22

Again Nymcross if you need help at any of these events.

Nim: 44:27

I don't do the scanning. We have some guys that do the scanning stuff and they are troopers. They're out there in the middle of the night at some of these racetracks that are very sketchy, in the middle of the night you know, at these, some of these race tracks that are very sketchy in the middle of the night, you know, and, uh, you know, they, they, they do a good job so so okay, so so you.

Jason: 44:46

So when you update tracks because we've been updating them right um is there like um. Has it always been this way that you scan them like that? Because I know you guys started using drones now in addition to.

Nim: 45:02

Yeah, I don't know a lot of the new technology that they've been doing. I haven't talked to somebody that's been scanning probably for a couple of years now. Back in the older days, a good friend of mine used to do all the scanning and I would talk to him on the phone while he was in the middle of you know two, two o'clock in the morning, in the middle of doing a scan, and I was just kind of keeping company while he was doing that kind of stuff, um, but, and that's the way it worked back then.

Nim: 45:26

So so much as far as drone technology. I'm sure they have a lot more uh things that they're doing now than I I I know about and uh, but in that's the way scanning works.

Jason: 45:38

That's the way, okay, yeah, all right Well said All right, that's awesome. That is. That is, I don't think there's a sim slash video game doing this, man. I mean that the attention on this you know for years, you know just being being on the same platform doing it, just being being on the same platform doing it because there wasn't an iRacing 2 or an iRacing 3 or an iRacing 4, we would probably be on iRacing 10, right?

Nim: 46:04

now I think, well, the fun part about iRacing is that we update every three months and we're always adding something, and we're always improving and and it's, it's a constant you know it's a constant build. It's, it's. It's a constant build, it's a constant growth. And we were just today, me and the guys were, hey, I wonder what's going to get released this September and we have ways to look. So we went and looked.

Nim: 46:31

And oh that's cool, that's coming, that's coming. So it's fun to First off. A 12-week season is just enough. You go through the 12-week season and you get down to the end and you're like okay, I'm about tired of this season, or whatever Week 13 happens, and halfway through you get the new build in week 13. Halfway through week 13, you're like come on, the next season's got to start. We need to do something about week 13,.

Jason: 46:58

man, we need to figure something out for week 13. It's miserable.

Nim: 47:02

It is genius the way it works Because as much as it makes you want to start to race and you hate this period, it gets you so excited for the upcoming season. And that in itself is absolutely. It does it to me too you know I'm, oh, you should see jeff.

Jason: 47:25

Yeah, it's like I can't. I'm sitting there sunday night sunday night.

Nim: 47:28

You gotta wait another 24 hours. I can't take it, let's go, let's go. That's what makes it. That's what makes it so much fun when you get in that first week and even I, you know what. We're in week four and I still have the newness of this season that's going on. In fact, when we're done here, I'm getting off, I'm getting on the rig and I'm going to do a couple races.

Jason: 47:46

There you go, man. All this talk, right? Yeah, that's how it is All this talk about the race.

Jeff: 47:52

The man uses his product. Isn't that the golden rule?

Erick: 47:58

All right, oh man, I love it, but yeah, so I don't know. You got us laughing already, man. So I'm just curious if you have any funny stories about your time at iRacing or you know any interactions with. John Henry, that kind of come to mind, that kind of made you laugh, that kind of leaves you laughing.

Nim: 48:18

So right away. 2004, the Red Sox won the World Series. I was there yeah, 2004 the Red.

Jason: 48:30

Sox won the World.

Nim: 48:30

Series and during that season we're doing a lot of testing with John. He's a big racer, he loves the season. You know we're doing a lot of testing with John and he's he's a big racer, he loves the race and you know I'm I'm running his league, I'm admitting his league that he's doing and I'm giving him baseball stats and scores and plays while he's driving.

Nim: 48:53

You know, and doing that, that kind of thing. You know, up there, you know, pejoria just got thrown out at second and he did this really thing, and you know, and plus two, he also took us down to Boca Raton and we flew on his private jet over to the spring training ballpark and we got to meet the 2004 Red Sox at that time. And you know, and, and you know and you know.

Nim: 49:20

oh so, one of these deals, one of the first things I had to do, uh, with iRacing and was we had a big meeting and this was the same weekend. We had a big meeting and I'm just a guy who is a sim racing league guy who did you, guy who built the league I'm used to sitting in my basement and having my own thing. I did this presentation with some help from some other people. We were in this room that John Henry in his offices was this big horseshoe shape. John Henry was at the head of the table up there. It's this big horseshoe shape.

Nim: 49:58

Where John Henry was at the head of the table up there and in back of me was the big screen of the PowerPoint that I was presentation presentating and all you know all the big wigs and I'm just selling, you know ideas and different things that we have. And luckily, I had no idea what I was getting myself into until I showed up in the, until I showed up in this room and here we are and like oh my God, look at this you know type thing you know, but it the whole there's.

Nim: 50:26

There's a million different experiences, uh, a million different things. Uh, uh, one of the one of the fun things I get to do is I, I go around all the Twitch channels, twitch channels and I, you know, look at the different streams and, like I, how I met you guys and it's just. All those things are fun and, you know, there's there's new, new things every day oh yeah, it was funny as hell.

Jason: 50:47

When you came in there, he was he was saying why are you?

Nim: 50:49

going to sleep yeah oh, you're, you're just. I was like dude, I'm about to be 40 and he's like I'm 50 I'm 50, man, I didn, and he's like I'm 50.

Jason: 50:57

I'm 50, man. I didn't know where to put my face. I had nowhere to put my face after he said that.

Nim: 51:04

I wasn't thinking so much about our ages or anything like that. I'm just thinking, if I'm just starting a 24-hour race, I'm pumped up. Yeah, I know, I could not sleep, bro. You were 100%. There's no way I'm 100, I'm going to bed.

Jason: 51:14

so I went to bed, right and I pulled out my phone and I'm watching my own stream that's happening outside the bedroom. Yeah, my wife is like what are you doing? Yeah, I was like I don't know, I can't. The guys are there, I'm worried they're gonna. I don't know if they crashed the car, I don't know what's going on?

Nim: 51:32

yeah, I told you, go down, get a five-hour energy. You're gonna be up. All you told me to get many.

Erick: 51:41

That's great advice right there.

Jason: 51:41

Yeah, you were awesome, dan. I love that, and you jumped in many times, so I really appreciate that, man again.

Nim: 51:48

Like I said, you guys looked like you were having a blast. I was actually a little jealous that I wasn't in the race.

Jason: 51:53

Yeah, you did, you mentioned.

Nim: 52:02

You was like, dude, I want to race man, yeah, I want to be, but I was traveling the sprint car races like uh, like I told, you about.

Erick: 52:04

I go to all the time and I was going to a bunch there a couple of those that weekend and I wouldn't be in that race.

Jeff: 52:07

That was awesome, man all right so all right, yeah, here we go. I got the next one. It's kind of, you know, piggyback that one, but, um, is there any meetings or interactions where you had a moment where you were like, how did I get myself here? Moment? You talked a little bit about them, but, um, maybe you could pull out the when you because you've been with them from the start where you had the oh we got something here moment and that, yeah, well, when I racing was going to be I racing. So there are many moments that I ask myself how did I get here?

Nim: 52:36

because I don't deserve to be iRacing. So there are many moments that I ask myself how did I get here? Because I don't deserve to be here, you know, uh to me it's.

Nim: 52:44

It's amazing that, uh, I'm able to uh work for iRacing and and you know I often am grateful for that uh, moments to where, moments to where. Well, I tell you what our biggest moments were during COVID. We were about 80, 90,000 people and then COVID hit and we exploded. And at the same time that we're exploding, customer wise, we're adding a thousand people a day at least during COVID. And then we're doing live television A thousand people a day, at least during COVID. And then we're doing live television A thousand people a day, yeah. And then we're doing live television on major networks, you know, for every different race series, for IndyCar, for NASCAR, for World of Outlaws, we're doing live broadcasts and live TV shows on Fox and different networks.

Nim: 53:35

Wow, and that time you know everybody's every. I hear people talking about how they were bored at home sitting doing nothing. That time, for me, was, and for everybody that I racing was unbelievable. We were all pulling 24 hour days and everybody was just on the broadcast team and everybody and everybody. It was just crazy and it was like that for about three months, but it was a wonderful, it was a great three months. It was incredible, absolutely amazing, and we made a lot of relationships during that time and, uh, we grew a lot during that time too. It was awesome.

Erick: 54:11

Yeah, I can only imagine because, um, I know a lot of the guys that we interview the thing they say, the time frame when they got in that and the sim racing was around covet yeah I remember watching like travis pastrana, like the nascar guys doing because they couldn't race, they would just race from home.

Jeff: 54:28

And they'd tell them you know, that's why I remember first seeing it it was, I think, the f1 even did like a, you know, a mini event and stuff like that.

Nim: 54:37

Yep, it was Indy cars, it was, it was, it was. It's such a blur right now, you know. You try to look back on it. I know right, it's such a blur, I'll tell you what, though?

Jason: 54:46

I'm ready for a COVID.

Nim: 54:47

I'm ready for it. I'm saying I don't know, If we have another COVID, we are ready. If it happens, we're ready, but hopefully we don't have to go through another COVID.

Jason: 55:03

I know, I know I say that, but you know there was it's on the?

Jeff: 55:06

cheap, that's all.

Jason: 55:08

Yeah, you know we got to look at the bright side though. We had our fun with the situation and how it went down. I mean that's kind of awesome, though I really. How the numbers skyrocketed is insane. I didn't think it was that much.

Nim: 55:26

A thousand people a day. Yeah, it was nuts.

Jason: 55:29

That's insane. How do you manage that You're not ready for something like that?

Nim: 55:33

We were hiring people and this I think I had two people working for me at that time, something like that. We were hiring people and this I think I had two people working for me at that time and uh, yeah, we had just gone through the process of interviewing a bunch of people and we hired one person, and then kovat happened and we were calling everybody pretty much what we interviewed you want a job? We were only a job.

Jason: 55:57

We were only kidding. We actually called you back. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nim: 56:03

It was a very unique time.

Jason: 56:05

Yeah and again, guys, I don't want to promote COVID as being a good thing and shout out to the people. There's a lot of people that suffered during that time that we went through and it was painful. So I mean, I'm just. I'm just hopefully we don't have to go through that again, but if we do, it's right back here.

Nim: 56:29

So moving on. Oh, if you're stuck in your house, you need something to do. We'll always be here for you.

Erick: 56:35

There we go and look, we appreciate it, we got, we got stewards watching your back too.

Jason: 56:39

They'll send you the email. The email will come right away because I've got and it's super detailed too those emails when you get them. So yeah, so all right for the next question. What's one thing you wish racers knew about iRacing? Because you know, on the show we talk about iRacing a lot. We also include every other sim because we're not an iRacing show, even though it's dear to our hearts. But we do race all sims.

Nim: 57:11

But if you had to think of one thing to tell someone that you wish, you wish you know irish is new about about the sin so I guess the way I look at it is that sometimes I'll see, I'll watch people stream or I'll see comments and, uh, if something's wrong, people will make a snarky comment or think that we don't care. You know, when it's the farthest thing from the truth, that's possible. And people might say well, what about the situation where guys are running through the grass calling their tires or something like that? And uh, you know one thing that I've or what, what about a certain tire model? Why is this not perfect? Why does it do this?

Nim: 57:59

Well, one thing that I've learned with the engineers at iRacing there's a lot of ways that you can go through and put a Band-Aid on something and fix it. One thing that is happening in iRacing is that a real physics model, a real-world physics model, is being created. So the tire and the millions of points in the tire that take data, that make things happen. And I'm trying to explain it to you when I don't know what I'm talking about. But I've seen other people that do know what they're talking about and I've heard them talk.

Nim: 58:36

So, instead of having a problem and putting a bandaid on something and fix it, they are trying to figure out why in our world this is happening and why? What do we have to do? Or what? Where are we wrong and what do we need to fix and correct to make it react properly as it would in the real world?

Nim: 59:01

So when you, when you see something going on, that, uh, that is an issue. It's not that the people at iracing don't care about fixing it, it's that they want to, they want to fix it the right way and they want to fix it in a way that is a real world type fix. You know, and, believe me, everybody at iRacing will admit, that we mess up sometimes and things get screwed up sometimes, but it's not through lack of caring, it's through, you know absolutely billions and billions of lines of code where one, one little character can be off somewhere and and totally screw things up. But when, when these guys are making a fix like with the new tire model that came out for the GT3 cars and the prototype cars that just came out, which I love.

Nim: 59:46

It's about going through and making that tire react in a physical world. That it's not a physical world. It's on, it's on a pc chip, but it is a physical world in our minds and it is reacting correctly as it would in in the real world. And and those calculations and those, those feelings are happening real life and they're not something that is saying, well, it needs to be a little bit, it needs to be a little bit forgiving here. So let's just adjust these numbers over here. That's not the way it works at iRacing. At iRacing, they say, okay, this is a problem, how are we going to fix it? Or what's wrong in our world that is making this react like that? And people are going through and fixing it the right way instead of doctoring it up. Man, wow.

Erick: 1:00:36

That's so crazy, that's dedication, bro, I mean.

Nim: 1:00:39

Yeah, it's a lot of people way smarter than me working on this. You guys are lucky for that.

Erick: 1:00:47

Yeah. I was going to say it makes so much sense that you guys aren't just adjusting a property of attire to try to get a certain outcome. You're you're actually fixing the world. You're like okay, like this world, everything in this world isn't responding the way it should. What about this world should we fix? That's crazy exactly, yeah that's awesome.

Jason: 1:01:13

So this is textbook, right, guys? If you're not convinced by now, yeah.

Nim: 1:01:22

One thing you guys talk about too is you talk about the other games and Sims and things like that. It's great, all of those products that that that people get into maybe, maybe what is what is introduced by somebody. That's just starting out and that's where they go and that's where they get to. We believe that if we keep doing our job and we keep having our product and the passion for our product the way we do, people are going to wind up at iRacing because this is where this is where the pinnacle is. This is where the best competition is. You'll get no other online events like we have Just today and this afternoon GT3, we had 1,000 people at the 2 o'clock GT3 race sign up for that event. That's 30-some splits that went on.

Nim: 1:02:18

Yeah, nothing against anybody else. Like I said, they, they make great products and they do good, good products and we we root for them to do well because we we feel that they, um, are a stepping stone to us and we can be a stepping stone to them too. You know, people might leave, you know might have, uh, our product and they might want to try something else. It's, it's, the sim racing world has a lot of different options and we, as long as we're a part of you know what people do, you know we're happy, correct, yeah yeah, yeah, nothing doesn't put it.

Jason: 1:02:50

That's a great way to put it, and I mean also just to add just a little bit to that, is you have the, the many real life drivers that are using your sim to train and get better. You know, in real life, yeah, which is the one thing that has always convinced me about the physics model, right, you know, and 100 yeah the fact that those real life drivers, um through all the different disciplines, race on iRacing.

Nim: 1:03:19

And what is very cool is that because they value iRacing in such a way you can be confident that when you're driving our cars that you're getting a sense that they have when they're driving their cars on Sunday or Saturday or whatever they're doing 100%, and it's not just in one tier too.

Jason: 1:03:36

You have formula drivers, you have nascar drivers. You got a nascar guy that became pro um, dax per stappen, daniel morad, which is a huge um yep, uh. I racing guy too, yeah daniel's a great guy.

Nim: 1:03:52

I just uh watched him race at watkins glen. I was up at Watkins Glen a couple weeks ago and Daniel was there. He's a wonderful, wonderful example of drivers on iRacing that gets value out of iRacing and actually includes what he learns on iRacing in the real world. I'm sure obviously there's differences and nobody's here to say that there's no differences, but uh, there are things that that train you for real life stuff too.

Erick: 1:04:22

So okay and and that's awesome, man. I'm just thinking about all the time and effort and passion, and you know, I've worked places where you kind of go through a cycle where you get a group of guys that are passionate, making a great product, and then at some point the business side comes in and says, ok, we have to, you know, restrict this time frame, or we have to restrict the money, or something like that. But it makes me, I can't help but think about the fact that you guys, out the gate, chose a subscription model when subscription services weren't really a thing. But there's no other way to do what you guys do unless it is a perpetual service, because every other, every other sim they're thinking about a version one and at certain, at a certain point, you can't put everything in version one.

Erick: 1:05:23

You have to start kind of putting stuff to the side for version two or you know, shelving things or shelving certain ideas, or looking at budgets, and so I guess my question would be like what made you guys, what gave you confidence that the subscription model was the way to go?

Nim: 1:05:42

Uh well, so the actual input of it was John and Dave, um and Steve talking uh about those things and and coming up with the model about those things and coming up with the model. One thing that people you hear people talk about how expensive iRacing is. It's a hobby. It's not the game that you go out, buy one time and you play for a few hours and you're done with it. It is a hobby. One thing that iRacing has, that a lot of other games or whatever products don't have, is we have servers all around the world.

Jason: 1:06:24

Oh, yes, you do, we're in Hawaii. Yeah, we find races all the time.

Nim: 1:06:29

Those servers and everything you see going on have a constant cost to them. It's not just a one-time fee and it's not only that. We have servers around the world. We have the best servers around the world and we have at the best data farms, and that's just one aspect of the cost of doing this type of business. There are many other aspects to it also. We have a staff of over 200 now I believe it is which is crazy to me because I remember when we were 30, 40 people. Wow, yeah, and there's cost involved in everything. There are actually other games out there. It's fine too. There are other games that cost $100 for a plane or $60 for a train. It's that kind of thing too $15 for a car.

Jason: 1:07:29

I paid $90 for a truck.

Nim: 1:07:32

A truck's in.

Jason: 1:07:35

It's just part of the hobby.

Nim: 1:07:38

If you enjoy it, if you enjoy your hobby, you know you'll invest some time. And one thing too is when we create a track and what's a track cost? Like 12 bucks. Um, like I told you guys before, I get it for free, so I'm not sure what it costs I know, but soft flex yeah, it's just a little, just a hint of a flex here.

Nim: 1:07:54

But whatever it costs, it's the scanning and it does take a lot of cost to build that track and the artist and everybody that goes through where it gets to where it goes and the cost is, I think obviously I would think it but it's reasonable.

Jeff: 1:08:12

To me, it's fair, it's updated. It's not just hey, you get this and it's reasonable to me. It's fair to me it's updated. It's not just, hey, you get this and it's gone. You know you don't never get it. You know there's updates, all every. You know new season, there's new updates.

Jason: 1:08:23

You got every three months tracks, yeah and then how do you pay these 200 plus employees, right? How do they get money? How do they make money? Because the sim itself doesn't cost anything. You just pay for the subscription. So to me, to me jason's opinion and I might get some some hate for this, but my 10 12 a month is always justified with that racing. There's never been a time where even though I pay it by a year, but there's never been a time where I thought that I was paying for a product and not seeing it evolve or constantly have things for me to use, because to me, iracing is the sim of all sims, with the exception of truck driving. It's racing, it's a racing sim. So to me it's justified. You have 200 people, how do you? A giant corporation, you cannot just release a DLC pack and expect all these things happening together all these things happening together.

Jeff: 1:09:38

You know, as we mentioned Nothing. You know if it's free it's probably not worth it. You know you get what you pay for.

Nim: 1:09:48

Well, if you, if you also, you know, if you take advantage of the sales that we have and you take advantage of getting your ten dollars of credits every season, you know it's really not that expensive when you're, when you're looking at everything and the discounts that you get for buying balk and you know the black friday man, that's when I top off.

Jason: 1:10:06

Yeah, there you go. Please talk to the guys over there. I racing, tell them not to change the.

Jeff: 1:10:10

Thing okay, yeah I yeah, I don't think they will hey so Nim kind of dovetailing into what you were talking about, the employees do most of your, or how much a percentage of your employees actually race themselves.

Nim: 1:10:25

So I Nim Cross and I am in charge of the company racing league.

Nim: 1:10:38

Oh, what a group that would be, but we don't really.

Nim: 1:10:42

We used to do a league like every Friday and stuff like that, but it's too hard to do it.

Nim: 1:10:46

So we have a thing now where we call it the weekly challenge and everybody signs up and they put what races that they're going to do every week, what series they're going to run, and we input all of everybody inputs their results into the spreadsheet and so if a bunch of us are running the Gen 4 car, we all put our results in there every week and we have our own little point standings and we have at least two dozen different series that everybody's running in and not everybody at iRacing races on iRacing, but a fair amount do and the whole idea about us doing this kind of thing where we compare results and we encourage each other and I do a little write-up every week.

Nim: 1:11:32

I use ChatGPT to do a write-up on each series and I'll give it some kind of snarky review, you know, about who's doing good and who's not, and yeah, and, and you know. So it's just a way to keep it fun a little bit and keep everybody excited. And you know, one of our challenges this this season we've got a bunch of guys that don't know anything about dirt. So we're running 305 sprint cars and you know, some guy from England right now who has never seen a dirt track in his life is actually leading the series which is oh wow, that's hilarious.

Erick: 1:12:04

Yeah, but, like I said, we have we have fun with it.

Nim: 1:12:07

It's a. It's a good way to escape a little bit from your, from your work, and what I people to do is they look. You know you work hard on this game, you got to take some time to enjoy it and that keeps you know, keeps your passion, going there you go yeah 100.

Jason: 1:12:21

It keeps everything you know fresh. Yeah, in my opinion, all right. So the next question um, does iRacing collaborate with any real drive, any real race car driver to help with the I? I guess, the driving model, the experience, all the time you know, all the time there is nothing there.

Nim: 1:12:44

I don't think there's any car that we work on where we don't collaborate with real world drivers. Wow, okay, that's cool. Yeah, there, there are always, uh, collaborations going on. I talked to you about Dirt. I was involved in getting Dirt going, things like that. Christopher Bell, larson, a whole bunch of different guys were involved in helping us sort that out. Max Verstappen helps us out with different things.

Jeff: 1:13:12

I heard of that guy Name once or twice. Excuse me.

Nim: 1:13:14

There's just no big deal. Every series that guy Name once or twice Excuse me, there's just no big deal. Every series every series, every single series, in every car that we make has a real world driver to help us dial it in.

Jason: 1:13:28

You can't beat that. How do you compete against that?

Jeff: 1:13:31

You can't Come on the next person that I hear complaining about the subscription. Wise, I'm just gonna slap them and be like listen to this, listen to this podcast yeah, you know.

Nim: 1:13:40

Yeah, you talk about the subscription. A lot of these guys do it because they're passionate about it also, so you know, I don't know if there's somebody out there that's getting paid or whatever, I don't ever ask about that kind of thing, but I know uh bell and those guys they but even if they did, sponsor their cars and we we have sponsored their cars before and things like that but I they were. They helped us out because they were passionate about what we're doing also right, yeah, yeah, I'm.

Jason: 1:14:08

All I want to say is even if they did got paid, get paid. Excuse me, I'm the end user. I'm getting all the benefits of a car that was, you know, has data from a real life driver. That's all I need to know. Justifiable yeah, a hundred percent, they can get paid all day it would be.

Nim: 1:14:26

You're right, it would be justifiable. I didn't mean it in that sense. I was just trying to trying to not put the the outlook of the driver was getting paid for this. That's why they did it, you know. I just want to let you know that these guys usually do it because they love what we're doing and they want to be involved.

Jason: 1:14:43

Okay, that's even better. Yeah, that makes sense.

Erick: 1:14:48

And I guess, speaking of real life drivers, I know one of the big, the big comparisons. You know watching guys like Daniel Mor morad. They everybody's obsessed with the braking model and you know how close is it to real life and you know what active pedals coming out and things like that, um, what I guess what was kind of the what's the main like, I guess, idea or like, I guess, ideal or approach to the braking model in our racing?

Nim: 1:15:21

Well, I don't know. As far as the physics thing, when you're going that deep, I'm really not involved. But I haven't gotten a chance to test out the active stuff yet. I thought about when I was building my rig back there whether I could get the active pedal or not, but I didn't yet.

Nim: 1:15:38

Um, but, uh, when we're talking about you know, like daniel, you know helping out with the gt3 or gt4 cars, um, I'm sure the people and a lot of the engineers that work on our physics models are real life were or were real life engineers on real racing teams. So those, those guys that are working on the physics, are people that worked on real life. Uh, you know race teams and doing this kind of stuff. So, you know, the people that are working on the braking model are people that are familiar with the braking models in these cars.

Erick: 1:16:20

Wow, man, that makes sense.

Jason: 1:16:21

Yeah, okay.

Jeff: 1:16:24

All right, so I got, I'm going to roll the next one. Here is where do you see iRacing in the next two years and then in the next five years? What does that outlook?

Nim: 1:16:36

look like for iRacing. So you know, I don't know that I'm the best guy to talk to you about this kind of stuff. I don't make that kind of decisions.

Jason: 1:16:44

You are the best guy to talk to In your opinion, in my opinion, in Nimcross's opinion.

Nim: 1:16:52

You know we're going to continue to grow. You know, customer-wise and driver-wise we are going to. We'll be releasing some new console games and we'll be looking at the console market. The NASCAR game is coming out this fall and it's going to be spectacular.

Nim: 1:17:12

It's absolutely going to be amazing, you know we've already done the dirt games and we're just going to bring a casual racing user, um, in with those games. That that is going to become a more dedicated user and hobbyist and become a part of iRacing and it's just going to continue to grow as it is. We're going to add new series. The bigger series that you guys think of and love hopefully will be there F1. I didn't say any words, but I tell you what when we talk about every series in the world, it is our goal to have them one day. Whatever you can think of, when we talk about every series in the world, it is our goal to have them one day you know, so you know fair.

Jason: 1:17:58

Whatever you can think of whatever whatever you can think of.

Nim: 1:18:03

Whatever you can think of, we want it on iRacing.

Erick: 1:18:07

There you go.

Jason: 1:18:08

Okay, well said, well said them. Cross I, I I'm telling you so here for the um I I, I'm telling you so here for the excuse me final question Before we close this one down. We absolutely love having you on the show. This is awesome. The time is flying. Right now it's completely going nuts. For the final question uh, what is a feature you still haven't seen in iRacing that you wish it existed today? Uh, come on, reveal it.

Nim: 1:18:46

Yeah, I don't think about, I don't know, Um the. I guess like when you hit a wall, a fist comes out and punches you in the head, or something like that we could do. Oh my God, I don't know. We talk about different things. One of the great things about iRacing and when this whole thing was conceptualized back in the early 2000s, we knew that there would be third-party aspects that come aboard. I don't know that any of us could have dreamt of what is actually going on.

Jason: 1:19:28

The.

Nim: 1:19:28

Sim Racing Expo is happening in September.

Jason: 1:19:30

Yes, it is.

Nim: 1:19:33

Who would have thought of that? And it's not just the fact that this is happening. All the vendors that are going to be there are absolutely amazing, you know, and you'll walk from one space to another and you're like I want that and I want that.

Jason: 1:19:49

Oh, yeah, it's going to be a problem.

Nim: 1:19:52

You're going to meet incredible people, people that are going to be there. And so when you ask me what I want to see, the sim racing has already overstepped what I ever thought it could be, by so much that, when you ask me that, I honestly don't know about whatever else. It is because it is far exceeded what, what I I have ever dreamed of, and it's absolutely amazing. Uh, if you get into a race right now, especially if you, you know, monitors are great and things like that but if you put yourself in a vr situation and you're running, uh, if you're running down the straightaway at lamaze and it's raining, you know you could be scared to death, just like you would be in a real car.

Nim: 1:20:38

And the fact that we have achieved that sense of realism is absolutely astounding to me, and so I don't mean to disappoint you with an answer that I don't have an answer of what else there is that I want, because it's so far exceeded what I thought it would ever be and what the whole third party realm of it has become that I just don't have an answer for that question.

Jason: 1:21:05

No, you're not disappointing.

Jeff: 1:21:08

No, not the least of it. The least, that's a perfect answer yeah.

Nim: 1:21:13

All right, yeah.

Jason: 1:21:15

That's what's up, man. I mean, mean, I do like the punch in the face, man, especially. What else?

Nim: 1:21:21

could we have? You know, I I tell you what that new, uh, that new simicube 2 pro that I have now has about broken my wrist about three or four times already there you go.

Jason: 1:21:33

I know, I. You know what it is. It's a sense of immersion. When I crash the car, I usually let go of the wheel, I do too.

Nim: 1:21:38

Yeah, I have let go, but not far enough away and just got whacked by that thing. You got to make sure you pull your hands all the way.

Jason: 1:21:47

One time I left the engine running and something got loose on the bottom side of the rig and the car rolled into a wall and the wheel jerked like that and straight up slapped me in the face.

Erick: 1:21:59

yeah, I was mad as hell yeah, I want.

Jason: 1:22:00

This is the first time I ever I didn't get marked up. You know I was you know, because if I got marked up, I would have made up the biggest excuse, you know this guy was huge.

Erick: 1:22:12

Yeah, this guy was big. It was 10 of them, no way.

Nim: 1:22:17

I would have said my sim racing wheel did it. I would have said my sim racing wheel did it and that's what happened. But I've been there, I've leaned forward and I've been like the car's just sitting there and all of a sudden something happens and the wheel goes spinning. And it's right, by my face it is smack and this is no warning. Scary, yeah, yeah and this is no warning, yeah.

Jason: 1:22:34

Yeah, you got to be careful with that. All right. So we're reaching the end here of the episode. We're going to go through the roundtable Guys. Is there anything that we want to ask Mr Dimcross before we release him from the Chicane podcast?

Jeff: 1:22:51

No man, I said it earlier the industry is in the best of hands. There's an army of people behind you I'm sure from iRacing that are just as passionate as you are. Iracing is in great hands. The future is in good hands.

Nim: 1:23:07

I'm riding on their coattails. They're not behind me.

Jeff: 1:23:10

Give yourself a little bit more credit there. Buddy, it's been an absolute honor and privilege to talk to you here.

Erick: 1:23:15

Thank you very much pleasure is mine, thank you yeah all right, eric what you got yep, I mean, I've said it before and I said again whenever I see people that have aligned their lives with their passion, it's inspirational to me. You can feel it, you can see it, smell it and you know, I just see that coming off of you. When it comes to just the work you guys do with our racing, um, I appreciate it. Um, it's inspiring and you know, just kind of piggybacking off of what jeff said, you know it's in great hands and this is really kind of just the beginning, especially, especially in the US, like we're just getting going. It's crazy.

Jason: 1:23:57

In this market? Yeah, 100%. So, nim Cross, I don't know man, you joined my stream and I just I'm so thankful that you know I had the privilege of having you know iRacing Chief steward in the stream, let alone send you an impromptu invite to the show, and you gladly accepted. You even typed up your email like in full view, in the full public.

Jason: 1:24:26

I almost went dude you don't have to do that you can just dm me, man, just a private message me like nah, man, here's my email. Hit me up like no fear, and in the same time you were actually stewarding uh team red line, which was, uh, great news. Um, because, yeah, you guys care and that's, yeah, that's where I want to get into. You know, it's it's people, it's professionals like yourself that take the hobby and you still have fun with it, yes, but you elevate it to a professional level and you're like, hey, man, we're trying to simulate something as close to real life as possible and something that has repercussions consequences.

Jason: 1:25:08

How is it that a sim can make you think twice about your actions, which is insane, right? It's a crazy thing to think about. So I just want to say you are highly regarded, thank you so much. You're a legend. You got the holy grail music. I have to find a way to put this in the show. I'll find a way. But I just want to say, hey, man, thank you so much for coming on, giving you know, coming on the show, giving us the time of day. It's been a while and we pushed it out because you're so busy with having the time of your life going to races.

Nim: 1:25:43

He's like, yeah, man I got a bunch of races to go to, so yeah, well, I tell you, I appreciate you guys too and, uh, thank you for your kindness. Uh, you guys, um, when I, when I, you know, being involved in everything I've been involved with which I'm, like I said, I'm very blessed, can't say it enough Uh, I'm very lucky. But when I look out and see what you guys are doing, you guys are the pad, the same passion that I have, and that's what's so exciting. You guys are doing the fun. You're doing that team, your team racing.

Nim: 1:26:12

Look at the setups you guys got, look at the podcast you're doing. You guys are stepping out and you're doing your thing and it's awesome. It's awesome to see. It's awesome to see the fun you guys are having. You're informing everybody else and you're doing it in a fun, positive way, and I appreciate that. Your streams are fun to watch, your videos are fun to watch and I am very happy to have done this show with you guys and done this interview with you guys and, uh, there's anything I can do going forward.

Jason: 1:26:42

I'm always here for you guys, man nim cross is wow, man, that touched me man a little bit. Thank you so much, man, I appreciate it. Um f1 is the only thing that I would ask for.

Nim: 1:26:58

I'll get on it and I'll talk to the people and we'll see what we can do. Appreciate it, get them online too.

Jason: 1:27:04

You know what I mean. Yeah, all right. So thank you so much, guys. Jeff, welcome back from your trip. Thank you so much for helping so much with the show. And in the background, background, you know what I'm saying, you, you already know what I'm saying. And, um, there's one more thing that, uh, that you usually say uh, generally yeah, come on, drive fast and break late there it is man

Jason: 1:27:29

but, not in front of the chief steward man, because, yeah, yeah a little drive for that car in front of you, yeah. Visualize the car in front of you? Oh, I got set up for that one Set up for that one, all right, guys, and with that, have a great start of your week. Thank you.