Get to Know Malik Ray

Looking at this featured iRacers stats, you would think that he has used other motorsport simulations before he started on iRacing, but the 13 year old from South Carolina has only used ever one racing simulation: iRacing. A member since February 2011, he has accomplished a lot in a short period of time, including a Daytona 500 World Tour win and he was the 2012 NASCAR iRacing Class A Series champion for division 3.

Malik Ray

Like him or hate him, you can’t deny that Malik Ray is one of the top oval drivers on iRacing. The 13 year old from South Carolina has accomplished a lot in the year and a half he has been on iRacing. He has an oval iRating of 4963 and 244 wins in 1109 starts. Better than 50% of his finishes are top 5’s – 588 to be precise. On the road side of iRacing he has only 29 starts, but nine career wins and 10 top five finishes. Most of us know how he is on iRacing, but have you ever wondered how he his outside of iRacing and what his goals are? Read on to find out…

1) How long have you been sim racing?

I’ve only been sim racing for a little over a year now. I didn’t really know about it until I started seeing video’s on YouTube. Once I started seeing how cool the finishes are and stuff like that. I really liked how cool it was and how amazing the graphics were. I’ve never seen anything like that before, and I had just started watching the actual NASCAR races and even on some of their broadcasts, where they had mentioned iRacing as well.

2) How did you get started in iRacing?

I got started by seeing iRacing races on YouTube, and I once had stumbled upon a broadcast for a sim race that was brought to you by iRacing. It looked so realistic and was amazingly accurate to how it was in real life. Then I started looking on YouTube, and started seeing how they worked on their graphics and things like that. I looked around on iRacing’s official page of YouTube called “iRacingTV”.

3) Which race car driver do you look up to the most?

Jeff Gordon. He is by far one of the most talented driver’s to ever drive around in NASCAR.  He also show’s a lot of respect to other driver’s, you never see Jeff Gordon intentionally wreck people or do anything of that kind.

4) What type of hobbies do you do outside of iRacing?

I play football for my High School team. I played Soccer last year, and I am going to try out for Basketball as well this year. I do a lot of sports and will pretty much play ANYTHING that allows me to run. I also practice typing a lot when I am not doing anything else. I hang around with my friends a lot and we tend to just walk around and to go parks. I go to A LOT of College Clemson Football games; those are my favorite thing to do.

5) What is your greatest accomplishment on iRacing?

My greatest accomplishment on iRacing has to be winning my split in the Daytona 500. Because I came from being a lap down and earned my lap back and came back to win the race. I’ve never done that before and that’s the biggest race of the year (in my opinion) on iRacing.

6) What is one long term goal that you hope to still accomplish in iRacing?

That’s a good question, my long term goal is to be remembered as one of the greatest sim racer’s on iRacing at a young age. I would hopefully want to become a PRO driver on iRacing someday. I know it’s everybody’s dream on iRacing, but it’s one of the top tier of iRacing and I hope to one day be able to say that I was one of the best on the service.

7) What type of racing do you like to watch on TV?

I generally only watch NASCAR races, but every now and then I’ll watch F1 Races. Those tend to be exciting every now and then.

8) How do you think your fellow iRacers see you?

I think I have a lot of friends on iRacing, I know a lot of people don’t tend to see my very nicely because I am aggressive. I know I’m aggressive and I try to work on it, I haven’t learned quite yet how to be patient. I’m sure along the way, I’ll be able to learn from the mistakes I’m making now and hopefully will be able to use them to my advantage in the Future.

9) Who is Malik Ray outside of iRacing?

I’m a big brother outside of sim racing, and I am a very shy person out of iRacing. I don’t talk around people I don’t know, but I think that I am a very nice person to get along with. I think once people get to know me, they’ll fine that I’m a very nice and easy person to get along with.

10) If there was one thing you could change about iRacing, what would it be?

The side draft model, I’d love to be able to see that be implemented. I see it come into place a lot a big 1.5 mile tracks. I hopefully would like to be able to pull aside someone and side draft and pull in front of them. Like Clint Bowyer did to Jeff Burton last year at Talladega, they both side drafted each other and I believe the lead changed twice right before the line just from them doing that. It was an amazing finish and hope one day iRacing will be able to add that.

11) What is one thing that you love the most about iRacing?

The fact that the tire model and cars are so realistic, iRacing has come a long way, and even though I may not have been able to see most of it, I’m glad to know that iRacing is trying each and every day to try to add more thing’s to help this become a better simulator!!

12) Overall, how do you rate your success on iRacing?

I think my success is pretty good but yet, I feel like I could accomplish more and I hope to surely progress over the years that I continue to race on iRacing. I would like to thank Rudy Motorsports for helping me along the way, I’ve learned a bunch from them.

Malik’s car

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