Playing NASCAR SimRacing | EA's Attempt To COPY NR2003 

This game was made on the ISI engine, which explains basically every problem it has

Glad you are enjoying the game man! Not sure when this was recorded but I added a second guide on recommended changes to make including adding the default setups and other settings to improve the graphics a bit more.

In 2005 EA did not have licensing to Pocono, that is the only real life track missing from the time

It’s funny how Pocono is missing from this game like in 2005 CFTC but yet Mayfield and Schrader made the cut with the 2004 Roster considering they were both missing from the console counterpart unless you mod them in there by taking their 2004 textures and likenesses from this game and importing them into the NASCAR.DB Files via Dolphin Emulator

You can edit the AI from folder SeasonData/Drivers, there is some .rcd file you can open on notepad and change a bunch of modifiers. Basically this game is similar version from F1 Challenge 99/02 (and many ISI games) Bonus: on pirated version, the sky is always cloudy regardless of weather is clear

This was the first computer game I ever had. So many great memories from playing this!

This title was my first online-competitive entry to Sim Racing. It had issues. But, I fired it up back in the spring to remind Brandon Hastings of our roots. Brandon and I were competitors for a brief while back around 2007-2008. We were teenagers back then. I ran around Charlotte for the first time since 2008, when we went to ARCA SimRacing 08; it felt like home - it really did. EA did okay with the basic physics. But the advanced physics just weren't there. And the online racing physics were very much broken, it took an adjustment to what was called the 'bonespring' setting and one other to make bump drafting possible at superspeedways. It's been almost 14 years, and I remember my roots. Rebels Racing League disbanded shortly after ARCA 08 came around, but NASTRACK is still alive, last I had checked, and they're on iRacing. As for multiplayer, the servers were operated by GameSpy. As we all know, they went under LONG ago. Hamachi was the online tool we used after the official death of NSR's online features. Though, I'm sure there are others. SO yes, we COULD technically run an online race on NSR online, but we would need Hamachi, or a similar tool, to do so.

It’s a hybrid between NR and chase for the cup

As a kid, I had a copy of the Demo version of Nascar Thunder 2004 for PC. The main menu looked very similar to this game's, and many other things were similar too, but without all the NR2003 copycat features. However, the physics engine was completely different, and way better in my opinion.

This was my first computer game as a kid and I loved it, it got me into becoming a Nascar fan, had a lot of fun playing it back then.

I probably spent 2000 hours playing this game back in 2005-07. The game was great but EA could not fix the bugs with the flags, so we had to run with manual cautions. AI racing sucked but Multiplayer was awesome for the times.

it's weird that jeremy mayfield is in this game but not in nascar 2005 chase for the cup

Pocono is missing in this game too like NASCAR 2005 Chase For The Cup

I honestly enjoyed it at the time. Played online a ton and met a ton of cool people which led to do some of the paint work on the ARCA Sim Racing title down the road.

Hey! I'm late to the party but I know a lot about this game. First of all, technically this is not EA's first attempt to copy NR2003, they made a PC version of NT2004 and it is just like this, SimRacing is basically the sequel to that with the Busch and Truck Series added. Career mode is actually interesting, it's a lot like the NT2004 career mode, except you can't handle crew members. There's also a really cool interactive merchandise management in career mode. You can race in the rain at road courses and it is actually really well done. The handling is very fun, the AI occasionally make human-like mistakes rather than drive perfectly all the time, I highly recommend trying it. You can spectate single car qualifying, the only nascar game where you can do that to my knowledge, but of course it is very boring and is actually broken if you let some casr qualify but simulate the rest as the simulated results will be way faster. Still interesting nonetheless. While yes the vanilla game is quite disastrous, you can edit a LOT in the files very easily. You can edit AI ratings, the way they drive at different tracks, and literally every aspect of career mode including the schedule, the points system, the prize purses, the costs of upgrades and the duration it takes for them to come in, the sponsor payouts and requirements to unlock them... anything you can think of, you can change it. From my experience the AI race you really well. They will be aggressive when they try to pass but they don't flat out wreck you. Honestly one of the best AI behaviors I've seen in nascar games. The one thing I don't like is you can't advance through series in career mode, for example if you start in trucks you can't move to Busch or Cup, you have to start a new save with a new series selected. The AI speed is inconsistent from track to track and once you start a career mode save it locks your difficulty but it can be easily changed in the files I mentioned earlier. Oh yeah and you can change the camera with page up and page down? Or it might be home and end, or insert and delete. Adding this because I've just seen your career mode video. The vanilla AI ratings are very condensed but you can spread them in the files. That way you're not always either first or last. It takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what works best. Maybe one day I'll make the effort to make it a good game and share the files.

I wonder what Ultimate Villain mode would look like in this game, because you can use them up but can't really spin them easily

Turn 'invulnerability' on and go backwards. The crash and damage model is pretty cool! And career is actually advanced as well. Like you'll run into some sponsors that offer a lot of money, but they will only accept if you have the primary space available.

This game was not been accessible for almost a decade. Until bencrazy, the same person who made soundpacks for nr2003, finally made a tutorial for the game.

The coolest "It's in the game" besides the one we all know, It's Jimmie's

I’m pretty sure Rusty did run that light blue Miller paint scheme but I’m not entirely sure, the only pictures I can find online are of 1/24 scale diecasts of the car

Since it’s an old rfactor game it makes sense that it’s impossible to spin opponents.. that was always an issue in rfactor..

Can definitely see the Chase for the Cup 2005 influence in the menus, while going for that more sim PC look at the same time

I remember playing this back in the day. My favorite tracks to race were irp and dodge raceway but yeah this game had so many problems. I looked past them and tried to enjoy it as much as i could because it was the only nascar game i had on pc for the longest time

funny how obvious the NR2003-inspired UI design and the whole game aspect was tryna copy off them

8:10 This game sold poorly and clearly the rFactor engine is not suitable for NASCAR (as we found later in Nascar Ignition), them EA would need a new engine for a franchise that sold few copies. EA just found easy to pull the plug, also, this game is from the same time where EA Sports games was stoping to be made for PC, since EA was blaming the easy piracy on computers for the low sales of the PC version of their sports games.

I remember back when I played this game on the old pc when I had the old EA Sports 07 collection, the physics sometimes loves to be loose and in road courses, when you are turning at Infineon, it will sometimes do a barrel roll while you are turning and the gas

T be fair, there's no wave arounds in NR2003, so lapped cars will clutter the order during a caution.

There is some mods mentioned in the comments section of the tutorial if you wanna check it out

Camera change should be similar to rfactor - insert, home keys, etc

12:05 yeah we ain’t making that mistake again

you can use the 05 texture mod or my mod, or the 07 carset mod. we got 3 of them now

You can change the camera by pressing 'INSERT', 'HOME', 'Page Up' and 'Page Down', it works for all of the ISI engine games lol.

Holy shit. my first sim experience

The one thing I do remember about this game that I hated was the tire stickers…

this game is based on the engine they used for rFactor, so there's some aspects that make it feel more like a game for road course racing.

You should consider gran turismo 7 because you can do quite a bit of nascar tracks, although polyphony digital does not get oval racing.

I wasn’t sure if I would find another nascar RU-vidr after n2sc4r turned out how he did but you and window are my fav

I actually spent quite a few hours on this game back in the day before I even knew what NR2003 was. The handling, physics, and setups are actually pretty decent but the caution glitch basically makes it unplayable as a full sim. Honestly a damn shame. I remember the career mode being pretty decent too. Basically fight to the top mode but no modifieds.

My dad hyped this game to me and gave it to me but back then I raced on keyboard. He told me how great it was and he spent hours racing it. It’s a bit strange but I did enjoy the game

it feels like nr2002 a bit but the copy is pretty standard for people who cant get nr2003

this game was the pc version of nascar cttc 06

NASCAR SimRacing is very aero sensitive at Daytona and Talladega. Any damage will result in the car being very slow. Plus you definitely don't have the right setup as you should be able to do 188 by yourself.

Not gonna lie, I'd dig a carrer series with this. It's a pretty niche game, but I find it super interesting

Nice

Weather CLEAR? Bruh, do CHANGING!

Can you please bring back the NFS underground series , for the love of all that is good

Still a better game than Ignition

they missing pocono

This game really isn't all that different from Thunder 03 or Thunder 04 on the PC. Even has the same dumb AI really.

I loved this game

Yay, a game he can’t spam the camera change button 😂

Bro trying to be nr2003 (when should we tell him)

I think NR2003 is better in my opinion 😊 however this game 🎮 looks good.

Its a good game

Heard it’s really bad and yet the game played flawlessly compared to NASCAR 21 ignition

Go find a copy of ARCA sim racing.

One game that really needed to stay dead.

fourth

The false narrative that this game hasn't been playable on PC in a long time is dumb. Now this game isn't that great however if you have a legacy machine which if you're a PC gamer you should with an old operating system and mid-2000 style set up to play some classics from that era then you could always play this game and it actually runs a hell of a lot better than it does on modern machines. A lot of the issues and a lot of the errors are due to the fact that it's being ran on machines that it wasn't made for. I have an old Windows XP gaming rig and this game has been on it for years and I've been playing it just fine whenever I feel like torturing myself.

I still take this over ignition. I loved this game as a kid