eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series Race Preview: Gateway

Round 10 of the 2023 eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series sends drivers back to World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, one of the most popular new additions to the NASCAR Cup Series schedule in recent years. As always, race coverage begins at 9 p.m. ET at eNASCAR.com/live and across iRacing social media channels, while Countdown to Green will kick off at 8:30 p.m. ET to preview the action.

Last Race: For the second time this season—and the first time with a sponsor on the hood, after his surprise victory to start the season in Daytona—Team Dillon eSports’ Tucker Minter took the checkered flag in Charlotte for the Coca-Cola 150. The win came in eNASCAR Overtime, where he held off fgrAccel’s Garrett Manes and 2022 race winner Matt Bussa of William Byron eSports, and climbed into third in the standings halfway through the season.

Eight different drivers led laps on the night, starting with polesitter Garrett Lowe of Jim Beaver eSports and eventually yielding to the top two lap leaders on the night, Pittsburgh Knights’ Corey Vincent (35) and 23XI’s Keegan Leahy (21). Minter took the lead for good after the final caution, which saw him challenging XSET’s Casey Kirwan and Rise eSports’ Jimmy Mullis for the lead, and ended with both Kirwan and Mullis in the wall.

Last Year: In a race that only saw a single caution flag, Charlotte Phoenix’s Graham Bowlin dominated eNASCAR’s inaugural visit to Gateway, leading 97 of 120 laps and benefitting from a perfectly timed caution flag that came just after he’d hit pit road for his only stop of the race. Bowlin won by nearly three seconds over former series champion Zack Novak and punched his playoff ticket for a run that ended with a Championship 4 spot.

Track Facts: Located just east of St. Louis, World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway’s 1.25-mile oval was built in 1996, over the site of the former St. Louis International Raceway. Like Darlington Raceway, the oval is asymmetrical, with Turns 1 and 2 profiled differently than Turns 3 and 4. After a brief dormancy in the early 2010s, the track regained a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series date in 2014, and numerous successful events after its revival led to its first-ever NASCAR Cup Series round in 2022.

Next Up: Following Gateway, the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series will head to the streets of Chicago on Tuesday, June 27 at 9 p.m. ET. Designed and developed by NASCAR and iRacing together in 2021 as an experiment to see what a NASCAR street course event would look like, the dream becomes reality next month in the real world on Independence Day weekend when the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series will run through downtown Chicago.

For more information on the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series, visit www.enascar.com or www.iracing.com/enascar. For more information on iRacing and for special offers, visit www.iracing.com.

Image via Justin Melillo

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