Roush Fenway eNASCAR Heat Pro League Preview |

04/21/2020

Roush Fenway eNASCAR Heat Pro League Preview

New NASCAR Heat Pro League Season Set to Begin Wednesday Night from Homestead

CONCORD, N.C., (April 21, 2020) – With eSports and virtual racing in the national spotlight, the eNASCAR Heat Pro League (eNHPL) will kick off its 2020 season from virtual Homestead-Miami Speedway on Wednesday night.

Differing from various series on the iRacing platform, the Heat Pro League is contested on more traditional gaming systems – both the Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Xbox One – with a 14-race season beginning Wednesday.

It will include 14 events that feature three separate four-race segments and a wild-card round that will set the four-team field for the championship race in the season finale. The team that wins each segment will automatically qualify for the championship race with the wild card round determining the final entry. Teams will compete for a total prize pool of more than $200,000 throughout the season.

Roush Fenway Gaming returns its driver in the No. 6 entry – Nicholas Walker (gamertag wowTHATSgarbage) – an Elwood, Indiana, native on the Xbox platform. He was a winner of two eNHPL events in 2019 (Fontana, Watkins Glen) and tallied six top-fives and seven top-10s. In 10 races, he started on average in 11^th place and maintained a fifth-place average finish. Walker’s strong 2019 helped propel Roush Fenway to the 2019 series playoffs and a fifth-place team finish in the season points standings.

Walker will carry the colors of Oscar Mayer aboard the No. 6 machine throughout the 2020 eNHPL campaign, as the iconic brand and longtime partner of Roush Fenway became the official partner of the eNHPL when they signed their team extension prior to the start of the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season.

The unique Oscar Mayer scheme came from a submission to the #MyNumber6 contest, which allowed one lucky fan to design the paint scheme the No. 6 Ford Mustang carried at Phoenix raceway in March. The runner-up design received such positive reviews on social media that Oscar Mayer made it the primary scheme for the eNHPL season.

New to the RFR stable in 2020 is Brandon Hanna (gamertag Cheezuh), the 10^th overall pick in the 2020 eNHPL draft. A native of Goshen, Indiana, Hanna made his way into the Heat Pro League by finishing third in the nationwide qualifiers. He won the league’s first official qualifying race at Chicagoland, and went on to finish sixth and 12^th in the final two qualifiers.

Also new to this season, the eNHPL will utilize NASCAR Cup Series, NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Truck Series entries across its 14-race schedule. The 2019 schedule used only NCS machines.

Roush Fenway is no stranger to success in the virtual racing realm, after claiming the 2019 Coca-Cola iRacing Series Championship with Zack Novak in the No. 6 machine. The iRacing league has run five of its 20 points races of the 2020 season, with the schedule alternating every other week. It currently broadcasts on eNASCAR’s Twitch channel.

The eNHPL season opener can be viewed on both the eNASCAR Twitch channel and at eNASCAR.com beginning at 8 p.m. Wednesday. As always, Roush Fenway will have coverage of the events primarily on its Twitter feed, @roushfenway.