RPW Exclusive: American-Canadian Tour iRacing League Set For Third Season

Column By: STEPHEN DURHAM / RPW – DERRY, NH – Since 2020, iRacing has gained tons of momentum in growing around the world.
iRacing is an online racing simulation that thousands of racers use each and every day to feed the hunger to go fast and compete against others in different classes of motorsports. Just a couple of years ago, Justin Prescott, a Vermont native reached out to ACT owner Chris Michaud about a winter iRacing series for drivers who have raced with ACT.
“It was a concept of an exclusive league for competitors across all divisions under the ACT banner to compete against each other. We reached out to Chris Michaud and he gave the blessing to put something together so iACT was born,” Prescott explained.
Each season, Prescott says they continue to find ways to improve the league, and even provide quality content for those who can’t race, but can still watch it.
“This will be the 3rd season of competition and we’ve continued to keep improving each year,” Prescott says, “We have all the real life announcers behind the scenes and calling the races broadcasting each week to the ACT Tour YouTube channel live for the fans to see.”
When it comes to who is racing on the sim, it’s all familiar faces that you would see on the ACT tour in real life.
“ACT Rookie of the Year Kasey Beattie is our defending Champion, and other real-world drivers like defending kind of the road Kaiden Fisher, defending ACT tour champion Gabe brown, Kyle Goodbout, , Kyler Davis, Taylor Hoar, Trent Goodrow and many others compete with us on a regular basis,” Prescott says.
This series is a way to pass the New England winters, bringing race fans and drivers with the passion to keep racing, despite there being snow on the ground outside.
“The drivers and fans alike get to enjoy that sense of competition during the long New England winters, and that’s the big draw,” Prescott explains “Drivers in lower divisions get to race door to door with Late Model stars. We get to see how some of our best drivers perform on legendary tracks like South Boston and Five Flags, places they might not ever get to run in real life. It’s a good time for all involved, but it’s taken seriously too.”
There are people out there that will say, “Oh it’s just a video game, why should I take this serious,” but in reality, there is are a lot of people who do take it seriously, because it’s meant to be competitive and simulate what racing is like, just minus the thousands of dollars spent on the car, chassis, motor, etc. With this series, Prescott and company add incentives to make it more competitive.
“There’s money and sponsorships involved, and we have a team of people dedicated to making this the best series it can be for both the drivers and fans,” Prescott says.
Prescott says the layout and format is similar to the real-life ACT tour, as they have an 8 race schedule set up for this year’s edition.
“We try to keep things as similar as we can to the real thing, with heat races and the ACT point system integrated into the series. Going into our 3rd year, I-ACT will continue to be reserved for drivers with experience under the ACT banner,” Prescot explains.
Prescott is very appreciative and thankful for the sponsors and supporters for the series.
“A big thank you goes to our 8 time champion, Brian Hoar at Gosscars.com for all of the support. All of our weekly race sponsors who put up the purse each week for the drivers! Also a special shout out to Ryan Kuhn at RKM Setup Shop has been a big partner of I-ACT since it started. They’ve been our setup provider for multiple seasons now and their setups allow us to put on great racing each week,” Prescott says.
The first race of the I-ACT Winter Warm Warm Up series will be in less than 2 weeks on January 20th, where they will race at the virtual Five Flags Speedway. Included in the schedule are even a couple of New England tracks, Oxford Plains Speedway and Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park.