Photo Provided Wheeling native Travis Braden has been competing in the Rowdy Energy Super Select Series. People can watch the stream on Speed51.com.

WHEELING — Wheeling native Travis Braden has been making a name of himself as a pro race car driver for a handful of years now. Already a two-time ARCA/CRA Super Series champion, Braden and the whole pro racing community have taken their talents form the tracks to the screen.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, racing at the tracks, along with other sports, have been put on hiatus.

Braden and the racing community have been keeping busy while quarantined by racing on iRacing, an online-base simulation game.

“iRacing is something that has been around 10 years, maybe more,” Braden said. “It was originally designed for public use, but it was very technically geared. It’s not real graphically pleasing like regular video games and there’s no arcade features.”

“They scan the cars and tracks down to very, very fine detail. You can feel any little crack or bump in a real track in iRacing and it feels exactly the same.”

Braden has been competing in the Rowdy Energy Super Select Series. People can watch the stream on Speed51.com.

“It’s (iRacing) gotten more and more popular over the last decade, but when racing got shut down like everything else during the pandemic, a lot of the racers naturally started spending more time on iRacing because it was keeping their skills sharp, give them something to do and practice. But a couple of networks and livestreaming services started picking up these races and they have these high-profile drivers. It’s got to be something currently when there’s no other sports going on in the world, this is something that is very realistic. Fortunately for racing, a simulator can almost replicate the real thing whereas most sports you couldn’t do that.”

Braden has also partnered with PropMe LLC, a gambling platform for esports. Their app can be downloaded in the App store or Google Play. PropMe LLC is based out of West Virginia.

“It’s great to have a West Virginia company be a part of it and have such close ties to it,” Braden said. “We’ve had quite a few people jumping on the contests.”

The contests and the app are free and there is a $100 prize gifted to the winner each week. There have other small sponsors that have given prizes to the winners as well.

“It’s kind of exciting to get into a new lane,” PropMe LLC co-founder Jake Padlow said. “Travis has really made a big difference in getting a lot of support. Several big racers are getting involved. It’s pretty neat. It’s getting off the ground and you can see what we’ve been fighting for for a couple of years. It’s amazing how this is taking off.”

There are two sections of the app, a peer-to-peer bet and prop contest. According to Padlow and other co-founder Dave Ealy Jr., they generate 25 custom prop contests for each race. During the race, they track their scores dynamically on the leaderboard.

Ealy also stated they are looking to have over 100 users for this Saturday’s race.

Some of those contests includes choosing which driver is going to finish better than a certain other driver. Another example that can be bet is if the winning driver comes from a Top 10 starting spot or who will lead after the 10th lap.

“As you’re watching the race, the leaderboard will constantly be updating,” Braden said. “Different props will be completed.

You might be doing really well early on and at the end your props may not pay off as well. It’s fun to follow along.”

When it comes to the actual driving aspect of racing in front of a computer screen, there were two main differences Braden pointed out compared to actually driving on a track.

“The two things that are different are, you are not in a real car with the actual forces on your body, so you don’t have that extra sense of feel when you go to a corner and your body is slinging to the right and you have all this pressure on you from the centripetal force. That’s something you lose the feel of.

“And being you are driving off a screen, you don’t have your peripheral vision as well. That’s another challenging part. But, it’s been cool. It’s been a transition.”

There have also been a few NASCAR drivers that have competed in the racing series as well, including Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin.

Busch was the Cup Series Championship last year, while Hamlin won the Daytona 500 right before the pandemic shut everything down.

“Two huge names have been racing with us, that’s really cool because, for most of us, we don’t get to race against people like that very often. Of course, you can learn a lot from them. This is something that everyone is loving and everyone wants to be a part of it because it can take your mind off the other stuff. It’s fun.”

The Rowdy Energy Super Select Series started March 21 and will run through May 23 with 10 races.

Braden has finished in the Top 10 twice. On April 11, he finished seventh on the simulated Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. On March 28, on the USA International Speedway, he claimed sixth.

“I’m just hoping we can continue to have a lot of fun with it and getting more people tuning in” Braden said. “I know in the first couple of weeks we were getting 40,000 viewers on our livestream of these races which is kind of unprecedented because it’s never been done before. Hopefully, I can keep progressing myself. I haven’t had much experience as some. I’m still learning, but it’d be cool to come away maybe a top five in the championship. Right now, I think I’m seventh. And it’d be cool to win a race, of course.”