It almost felt like a digital dash you’d find in NASCAR today. That yellow Penske Chevrolet one was probably my favorite of the three to choose from. The game included practice, qualifying, four different race lengths at the one and only Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and three cars to choose from, each with a different color and dashboard display. Other than the setup ability, the game was as bare as it could be. I can’t imagine the chills I‘d have gotten if I played this game 20 years ago.įor a 16-bit MS-DOS creation in the eighties, it’s incredible that this even existed at that time. I mean, before this, what really was there? There was Pole Position by Namco, WEC Le Mans by Konami, and sure, there was Chequered Flag by Sinclair, but they didn’t have any of what Papyrus brought to the table. It was truly the first of its kind in the sphere of racing games. Two years after the founding of the company, everything Kaemmer worked for, together with Khudari and the rest of the Papyrus team, led to the release of Indianapolis 500: The Simulation in 1989. We need to travel back 32 years ago, to 1989, when Papyrus Design Group launched Indianapolis 500: The Simulation. While it’s important to know where Henry sits in iRacing’s origins, we need to go back before his time in the community to when it was Kaemmer and his other half at Papyrus, Omar Khudari. The titles he’s accredited to are some of the most renowned, so it makes sense as to why iRacing is where it’s at now. Kaemmer brought with him the simulation and game-making experience, having co-founded the Papyrus Design Group in 1987. He was already the principal owner of the Fenway Sports Group, co-owner of NASCAR race team Roush Fenway Racing, and shares a passion for motorsports and virtual racing. Henry, a sim racer himself, brought the funding to the project. Neither of these two came out of nowhere, and it’s important to realize that iRacing wouldn’t be a leader in sim racing like it is today without both of their knowledge and support. The company even had sponsorship on a NASCAR Truck in 2006 for Todd Bodine at Daytona, years before the game was released to the public. The hype for Motorsport Simulations was nearly a full four years in the making as Dave Kaemmer and John Henry started the project back in September 2004. Hey, that’s one of the cars I drive on iRacing! This sim has come a long way since 2008. That wasn’t the case and still isn’t today, but it’s intriguing to see what was planned from the start. I dug up part of the iRacing site from back in 2006 that highlighted plans to release karting related venues at launch. During the process of building the sim, the iRacing website continually shared updates of the progress made, the cars and tracks that were laser-scanned, and their dreams to encompass all forms of motorsport one day. The sim was one of the most hyped during its incubation as many of the top racers from NASCAR Racing 2003 Season had hopes of moving their skills over to the new platform.
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