What’s Happening?

NASCAR 26 can absolutely make me feel like a NASCAR driver. Get me on the track, put somebody half a second ahead of me, and suddenly I’m leaning into turns in my chair and getting personally offended by a jpeg because he won’t let me pass.

Then the race ends.

And somehow this enormous sport, full of incredible cars and people we’ve spent years loving and hating, gets very small again.

In my review of NASCAR 26, I was not especially kind to the presentation. The soundtrack got compared to a can of Axe body spray fighting for joint custody. I stand by my work.

But that’s the point of these articles. We already talked about giving Career Mode something interesting to do and giving multiplayer somewhere to go. I can keep complaining that I hate something, or I can explain what I actually wanted from it.

And yes, I care about this stuff. A lot.

The music matters. The menu matters. The way Kyle Larson looks when his stupidly talented face appears on my television matters.

That’s part of the game, too.

What Does Being a NASCAR Driver Sound Like?

I think NASCAR 26’s soundtrack was built around a very simple question: What music makes you think of NASCAR? And I understand how you get there. Southern rock. Country. Songs about driving. Lynyrd Skynyrd. A song literally called “Dale Earnhardt.”

The problem is, I do not need the NASCAR video game to remind me about NASCAR. NASCAR is already on the box. I’m good, bro, I get it. I want to know what music makes me feel like I am the driver.

Now we have something to talk about!

What does it feel like to walk into a place where nobody thinks you belong, and then make them watch you win? What does it feel like when everybody already knows your name? What does it feel like to be the guy they all came to beat? Or the guy hanging onto his career by a thread? Or the guy who had the biggest win of his life sitting right in front of him, screwed it up in Turn 4, and now has to stand there five minutes later and explain his feelings into Kim Coon’s microphone?

That guy probably has a soundtrack, and it probably isn’t the same one as the defending champion.

And before this somehow becomes “Josh wants to ban country music,” look at the playlist. There’s T.I. There’s DMX. Chevelle, Stone Sour, Finch, Soul Coughing, the genres aren’t the problem.

There are songs on here I like, I promise!

The problem is that the whole thing keeps pulling me out of the driver’s head and back into some kind of NASCAR hospitality event. I can hear this playlist while somebody hands me a lanyard.

Take “Sweet Home Alabama.” Good song! We did it, everybody. I acknowledged one of the most famous songs in human history is good. But what is it doing for me here?

It just keeps elbowing me a little too hard in the ribs, like hey, hey, you see? NASCAR. Yeah, NASCAR. You see?

I GET IT! I want the music to tell me something dangerous!

Be Hungry!

Be Cocky!

Be Desperate!

Be Unbeatable!

Be Furious!

Be a little terrified, even, but absolutely don’t let anybody know it…

These are rich, famous, hypercompetitive professional athletes who slam into one another at nearly 200 mph and occasionally continue the discussion on pit road afterward with a five-finger prepared media statement. We have emotional material to work with here, you guys!

NASCAR 25 Had Some Teeth

This is why I liked the soundtrack to NASCAR 25 so much more.

It wasn’t perfect. It certainly wasn’t ashamed of Southern music. Molly Hatchet and Eddie Rabbitt were right there. But it had teeth, dammit!

Hanumankind’s “Big Dawgs” stomps around like it just swept the weekend. Royal Blood’s “Out of the Black” sounds dangerous. Chevelle’s “The Clincher” sounds like pressure to perform.

The important part is those songs do not all make me feel the same way. Sometimes I want to be the underdog, and sometimes I want to be an arrogant asshole who has decided this entire series is my personal property.

Then I absolutely beef a turn, and now I’m the joke of the whole industry. Now what? That’s interesting!

Winning when you’ve been struggling for three seasons should feel different from winning because you have become an unstoppable monster. Blowing a championship should feel different from finally getting your first Cup ride. Getting dumped should feel different from being the guy who did the dumping.

I don’t need the soundtrack dynamically reacting to all of this. Please do not invent another menu.

I just want enough emotional range in the music that those feelings belong somewhere in the world of this game.

Fine, Here’s My Stupid Playlist

I eventually got tired of trying to describe this and made a playlist.

This started as a private creative exercise just for myself. It was never supposed to see daylight. But honestly, just listen to it.

Before anybody at iRacing forwards this to accounting, I have not priced The Roots. This is not my proposed licensing budget for NASCAR 27, it’s just a vibe check.

Nas and Keri Hilson’s “Hero.” Hole’s “Rock Star (Olympia).” Damian Marley’s “The Master Has Come Back.” Kid Rock’s “I Am the Bullgod.” Pennywise’s “Fuck Authority.”

These songs barely sound like they came from the same species of radio station. Good! They aren’t connected by genre. They’re connected by the person I get to pretend I am.

“Hero” knows who the main character is. “The Master Has Come Back” knows the expectations of a GOAT. “I Am the Bullgod” has reached a level of self-confidence that is definitely medically unsafe, and just sounds so perfect for a millionaire professional athlete cruising on Talladega Boulevard.

And then there’s “Fuck Authority.” I’ve spent 30 laps behind some dude blocking every move I make. I finally dump him. Now he wants to come find me on pit road and discuss the sporting implications. At that exact moment? Pennywise wrote this song for me, personally.

That doesn’t mean NASCAR 26 needs a special “I just wrecked this guy” musical trigger. I do not need the game monitoring my emotional state. I need somebody picking songs who understands that this emotional state belongs here.

And so does triumph. So does humiliation. So does doubt. So does being an unknown kid from nowhere trying to get out. So does becoming so successful at this that you start manhandling that right trigger with the unshaken confidence of a Roman emperor who slept through history class.

We are playing at being professional race car drivers. There is a whole human being available to us in that fantasy. Give him some music.

Your Flight to Talladega Is Now Boarding

Then there’s the menu.

In the review, I said NASCAR 26’s main menu feels like reading the five-day forecast on a television in an airport lounge.

And I want to be fair here. Airport information displays are very functional!

I can find Career Mode. I can find Quick Race. Nothing has fallen behind a potted plant. Great!

But why is that where a NASCAR game is taking me emotionally? I’m trying to work up the confidence to go fight God at Talladega over here, and the menu is telling me breakfast service ends at 10:30!

NASCAR 25 had that lone car sitting beneath the enormous silver screen, drivers and pit crews flashing across it, cars ripping through quick cuts.

Was it the greatest menu interface in video-game history? No, I complained about that game’s menus constantly.

But it had presence! It seemed actually excited that we showed up to play NASCAR!

NASCAR 26 has NASCAR imagery too. Larson is right there. But most of the screen feels like the paperwork I need to complete before they let you in the room with him.

And then we get to the greatest technological regression of our time.

Look at Connor Zilisch. Arms crossed, whole upper body on the screen, towering over the car. Dude is taking up SPACE! And just look at that No. 87 sprawled across the bottom of the screen like the Pharaoh Ramesses eating grapes from a servant.

Now look at the narrow card poor Connor has been filed into in NASCAR 26. Why is he crammed into that little tube, did bro try to drink from the chocolate river and fall in or something? We went from introducing a professional race car driver to checking whether his student ID is still valid.

They took away his shoulders! Yes, this is an incredibly stupid thing to get worked up about, I know.

But look at it!

The game has literally reduced the amount of space occupied by the person I am choosing to be.

Why, though? Whyyyyyy?

What was so important that Connor Zilisch had to be compressed into this little personnel file?

Christopher Bell Should Be a God

This is the part where I need everyone to understand that I am talking about a feeling. Christopher Bell is probably a perfectly normal person in many areas of his life. Maybe he forgets passwords. Maybe he gets annoyed when his DoorDash order is wrong.

I do not care.

In my NASCAR video game, Christopher Bell should be ten feet tall and shooting laser beams out of his eyes. This man should enter the screen with the emotional force of the hero in a Bollywood action movie.

Wind blowing, dust blasting away from his feet, eagle overhead, F-35s screaming across the sky, pit crew rolling behind him like tanks across the Rhine, the whole damn earth trembling beneath them like the Golden Horde just showed up for Qualifying.

I cannot tell you how much I want to feel spectacularly underqualified to race this man!

That’s it. That’s the feeling. I don’t literally need an eagle. Nobody hire an eagle, please. I just want aura.

Kyle Larson should have aura, Denny Hamlin should look like he’s convinced this is his Cup Series and we are all wasting his time, and Ross Chastain should give me the creeping impression that something very expensive is about to be broken.

These are some of the best race car drivers on Planet Earth. The audience already brings years of history with them. Heroes, villains, champions, heartbreakers, guys we cannot stand until somebody else says something bad about them.

Use that!

And I trust the people who actually design video games to know how. Composition. Scale. Movement. Photography. Whatever fits their tools, their budget, and the game they’re making. I am not assigning 14 animators to build Christopher Bell: Ascension Into Heaven.

I’m the dude holding the controller. I’m telling you what I want it to feel like from over here.

The same goes for all that white space. Clean navigation is good. Readable information is good. But NASCAR already gives you rubber, sparks, steel, floodlights, sweat, smoke, speed, violence, and pit road chaos. There has to be a way to build a readable menu without making all of that feel like it has been safely stored somewhere offscreen.

And while we’re here, dark mode. Please.

iRacing Already Knows Better

Now let’s talk about something considerably more important than Connor Zilisch’s missing anatomy.

Go read iRacing’s official Hardware and Software for iRacers with Physical Challenges and Other Disabilities page. Seriously, it rules.

There are alternatives for people who cannot use a conventional wheel and pedals. Mouse and touchscreen controls. Wheels with hand controls. A mouth-operated QuadStick. The Xbox Adaptive Controller. Even bass shakers that can turn things like wheel slip, gear changes, and engine RPM into physical sensations for players who have trouble hearing the audio. And that’s before we even get into the software.

Players can change the color and width of the racing line. There’s a high-contrast cursor. Spotter text can stay onscreen longer. The UI can scale up to 200%. People who need different driving cameras can contact support about relaxed camera restrictions.

Then we get to my favorite part. In iRacing, as you might expect, some driving assists are normally banned once you reach higher-license official series. Well, if you have a physical impairment and need them? Contact iRacing. They can put an override on your account.

And you do not have to send them medical records or prove your disability. They ask people not to abuse it and operate the system basically on the honor system. That is incredible.

Somebody wants to race. Something is standing between them and racing. iRacing says, “OK, let’s figure this out”

WOW! I love that! Every gamer should love that!

Then I Turn On Their Console Game

And I can’t turn on subtitles. Can we all just sit with that for a second?

The same company has a support document explaining how to convert engine RPM into something you can physically feel through your skin. NASCAR 26 has people speaking to me, and I cannot put their words on the screen.

I went looking for HUD scaling.

No.

Colorblind options.

No.

High-contrast options.

No.

And this is where the comparison becomes so frustrating, because I do not have to convince iRacing that accessibility matters. iRacing could teach me about accessibility! They could teach other game studios something about it!

They already have disabled racers in their community telling them what they need, they already have support staff working through individual problems, and they already have developers building and exposing settings specifically to get more people onto the track.

Can us console scrubs get a little bit of that over here, please?

Steal From Yourselves

Look, I’m not an accessibility consultant. I can tell you which things I went looking for. I can tell you I’m sitting across the room from a television and would like to make some of this text bigger. I can tell you people are speaking in the game, and subtitles should exist.

I cannot tell you every accommodation somebody else needs. Luckily, iRacing does not need me to. They have those players. Ask them.

What keeps getting in the way when they play NASCAR 26? What options would help? What has iRacing already learned from years of working through these problems on PC?

Steal from yourselves. That’s really what I want from this entire How to Fix NASCAR 26 series.

Not 400 new features. Not a giant cinematic budget. Not Christopher Bell actually descending from the heavens on the back of an eagle.

I want the game surrounding these incredible cars to care as much about making me feel something as the racing already does.

Put a bad idea in my head with the music. Make the drivers look like people I should be afraid to race. Make this enormous sport feel enormous. And make sure more people can actually come along for the ride.

When the actual gameplay starts, NASCAR 26 can already get me leaning in my chair, bracing for the corner, and getting angry at a digital representation of a man who has done absolutely nothing to me in real life.

I just want to start feeling it sooner.

And come on, bro, give Connor his shoulders back.