How NASCAR Racing 2003 Season is still pioneering 19 years later

When I started sim racing back in the mid-nineties, racing video games and technology were both pretty scarce. As a huge NASCAR fan, I had Bill Elliott’s NASCAR Challenge, but it wasn’t great. I graduated up to console gaming with the EA Sports games, but those were perhaps overly accessible.

Eventually, I came across the Papyrus library and got a hold of NASCAR Racing, NASCAR Racing 2, NASCAR Racing 1999 Season and NASCAR Racing 2002 Season.

In the mid-2000s, I finally got my hands on a copy of NASCAR Racing 2003 Season. My parents bought me a used copy from eBay for about $200 in 2005. Having been pulled off the shelves in early 2004 due to licensing challenges, it was the only way at the time to get the game.

I may have missed out on the title’s best years, but even so, it’s incredible to me to still see an active community surrounding it 19 years later in 2022.

I’ve probably spent thousands, if not tens of thousands of hours behind the wheel on NR2003. I’ve administrated leagues, helped run communities and experienced all of the successes one could get out of it. This year on 4th February in North America, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season turns 19 years old.

Looking back on it, those NR2003 years were some of the best of my life.

Truth is that I probably wouldn’t have a career in writing if it wasn’t for that community. I’ve made lifelong friends, progressed through college and even picked up a job in writing about NASCAR through that game. For that, I’ll always appreciate what NR2003 was and still is to this day – to me, it’s an absolute icon in sim racing.

“LEGENDARY AUTHENTICITY. UNPARALLELED RACING.“

That’s what it said on the box, at least. I believed it. I still do. NR2003 is one of those games that will always be remembered in my own metaphorical racing game Hall of Fame.

The base edition of NASCAR Racing 2003 Season was pretty legit on its own. With the majority of the NASCAR Cup Series field included with realistic ratings, players could immerse themselves in racing at all 23 tracks on the current schedule at that time. It was still before the time of laser scanning, but these tracks had a true realistic nature surrounding them.

Having the ability to import your own paint schemes or logos made the experience even grander. The in-game paint booth wasn’t really anything to write home about, but it was serviceable. Competing against the AI drivers was a treat. The way that tires fell off, how the car would drive differently with less fuel or a melted right rear was incredible for the time.

Moving to online, at launch there was the Sierra lobby. A primitive system to detect incidents was maintained with your profile. Some lobbies wouldn’t let you in if your Laps Per Incident (LPI) was over a certain amount.

Administrative controls allowed those in charge of the lobbies to maintain the people, service penalties manually, throw cautions if the game did not catch something, or even give or take away laps from any driver. 

If you just grabbed a copy off the shelf, installed it as is and did nothing more, NR2003 itself was a fantastic game already. Then there were the mods, the creatives and the community that kept this title going longer than anyone expected.

BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE

I don’t really want to get into the specifics of who did what or who was responsible for something specific, but there were a lot of people who played NR2003 that wanted to see it do more, and worked to make that happen.

Many teams and creators worked on content through the years following the game’s removal from store shelves in 2004. Updated cars, tracks, and rules were implemented in the game, and are still being made to this day.

Mods were created to bring pretty much any vehicle to life on the NR2003 code. They were mostly NASCAR and affiliated racing series, but some of my favorite mods included IndyCar and some fictional ones. I always admired how painters could create such beauty on such an old game, especially through 3D renders.

Just on the 19th anniversary, the latest NASCAR NEXT Gen cars were released. Originally launched with the fourth generation of NASCAR race cars, now the seventh generation lives within this old abandonware. The community keeps the game alive. On top of that, I honestly think there are still some real-life NASCAR teams out there that might still be using NR2003 models to produce promotional work.

Track files were found to have multiple grooves of grip, unlike what the original tracks had utilized. The game tracks were all single groove, one lane, one way to race. It was found in programs like sandbox that people could lay down asphalt, concrete or paint lines that would interact differently with the tires on the cars.

From there you could set values based on multipliers to get the right feel of a track down. Multi-groove racing became a thing and goodness was that something special.

Brian Ring’s Talladega might be the most well known to a regular NASCAR fan. Dale Earnhardt Jr referenced it in a Talladega race over the team communications many years ago. Earnhardt Jr got on the radio and said to tell Martin it was like Talladega BR, Martin being his teammate Martin Truex Jr, who also raced on NR2003 in a league Earnhardt Jr ran called DMP.

Dale was basically telling Martin that the high line would have more grip, like the BR edition on NR2003.

I’ve seen so many groups and individuals make mods and tracks. I probably had every Revamped Reloaded track known to man on my hard drive at some point. However, Project Wildfire is the earliest iteration that I can think of. It is likely one of the most well known and recognizable projects to NR2003 fans.

PROJECT WILDFIRE MODS

The PWF team was able to take the underlying code of the game and recreate what should have been in the final release had it not been rushed to the shelves.

In the NR2003 code existed three other physics models, including “GNS” for Grand National Series, “CTS” for Craftsman Truck Series, and “PTA” for Project Trans Am.

GNS physics were like the CUP physics, or the base physics of the game, just lessened. Less horsepower, less speed, all the things that a NASCAR Xfinity Series car was at the time. The models made for these cars were exactly the NASCAR Cup Series bodies.

CTS was probably the most heralded physics setup. A NASCAR truck was 3D modelled to go with it as well. These physics had more power than the GNS but more drag as well, due to the boxy nature of a NASCAR truck and the way it interacted with aerodynamic properties.

As for PTA, it was unclear why this would be in the game, but it was still welcomed. Trans Am racing was an American sports car type of series. These physics had six gears instead of the traditional four found in all NASCAR vehicles at the time.

This PWF PTA mod came with the Chevrolet Corvette, Ford Mustang, Dodge Viper, and Jaguar XKR. The grip levels on these cars were also enhanced, both chassis and aerodynamic-wise.

I remember in guides I would make for prospective NR2003 players, the PWF mods were always the first to get installed after the regular game and the 1.2.0.1 patch. The PWF mods added on, for some reason, tape markers to pit stalls and overwrote older graphical areas to be more modern for the time.

RACING LOBBIES AFTER SIERRA

The Sierra lobby shut down for good on 16th August 2007. Online racing through NR2003 would still continue, however, thanks to a few different methods.

The simplest one was the creation of new lobbies which hosted NR2003 servers on them. Leagues could signup and get a turn-key lobby for a monthly fee. Certain hosts had a Sierra-esque system that they could host private or public races through.

The SMS lobby is probably the most well known, a system tied to server provider NRT Servers. There were other providers like Race LM which also managed to keep things in order.

Some of these lobbies would integrate Anti-Cheat software into their programming to prevent nefarious gaming to occur. The software worked to a degree, but sometimes users would get kicked by any random rogue program lighting up on their task manager that the Anti-Cheat did not recognize. Also, people could circumvent Anti-Cheat if they just went in via IP address.

Other leagues figured out how to either host from their own setup or from a generic virtual server provider. That would give those leagues more freedom to run different mods, tracks, .ini files or even modified NR2003.EXE programs (which were HIGHLY frowned upon).

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t at least give a mention to those who would race via Hamachi, even if I never quite understood it.

NR2003’S LEGACY

After all this time, I can’t believe that there are still active sim racers enjoying NR2003 on a modern level. I personally was a part of a league that ran NR2003 exclusively until 2019, and it wasn’t until 2021 that we gave it up and moved everything to iRacing.

I can look up and down the last few seasons of the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series and pick out a number of drivers that I had seen or even had used to compete against on NR2003. Some of them even came back and ran in some of my leagues because it was that good, that much enjoyable.

On that sentiment, that’s truly NR2003’s legacy, in my opinion. NR2003 was the last great independent NASCAR simulator.

Sure, sims like rFactor, ARCA Sim 08, and even iRacing themselves have come out after that with pretty good stock car racing, but they weren’t specifically made for NASCAR.

When the Papyrus Design Group dissolved and iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations grew out of its grave, NASCAR wasn’t even their first development for the iRacing program. However, that base code, even if it’s all been changed 19 years later, can still be referred to as the basis for iRacing and the start of the program we all have come to love to this day.

Happy 19th anniversary, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season. Thank you for all the fun times you’ve given me during my sim racing “career”.