Video games can teach you many things. For example, jumping off a very high cliff is fatal, or people will stop looking for you if you just hide in a closet for a bit. But I never thought I’d ever see a video game that teaches someone how to perform a wild racing maneuver that involves a wall, high speed, and some guts… and make it work in a real NASCAR race. But here we are.
As discovered by Eurogamer, yesterday during the final lap of the NASCAR Xfinity 500, driver Ross Chastain pulled off an impressive, wild-looking move that saw him ramp up to full speed and slam his car into the track wall, driving the wall to go from 10th to 10th .Place to jump 5th place in just a few seconds. This move propelled him to the next level of championship that he would otherwise have narrowly missed. Chastain even had the best final lap time by 2.5 seconds.
“I played a lot NASCAR 2005 on the GameCube I grew up with,” Chastain said in a post-race interview shared on Twitter. “You could get away with it [in the game] and I never knew if it would actually work. I mean, I did that when I was eight years old.”
Chastain explained that he wasn’t sure who was in front and spoke to his crew before making the decision to recreate in real life a maneuver he’d previously only attempted in a video game when he was eight years old was. The driver says when he hit the wall he “basically let go of the wheel” and hoped he didn’t hit anything sticking out of the barrier, like an access gate. Chastain said he was “ready to do it” to secure a position in the NASCAR championship. (His sudden thrust came at the expense of competitor Denny Hamlinwho was on his way to make the cut earlier.)
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Shortly after Chastain pulled off the wild wall slide, others online began recreating her in various video games. His fellow NASCAR driver Chase Briscoe shared a clip on Twitterr of him trying and failing to make the same move in a game. Meanwhile, a professional sim racer shared a clip of himself withdraw the dangerous indentation iRacinga hyper-realistic racing simulator.
As someone who has been very bad at driving games for a very long time, it’s nice to know that I’m driving in the wall at every track Grand touring” Strategy isn’t just smart, it’s totally viable in professional racing.
