Bubba Wallace has decided not to participate in this weekend’s eNASCAR Pro Invitational event as long stints of sim racing leave him feeling “burnt out”.
Wallace, who lost a real-world sponsor after abruptly quitting the Bristol eNASCAR race earlier this month, a posted a series of messages on his Twitter account in which he said he decided not to take part in Sunday’s event at the virtual Talladega Superspeedway.
He wrote: “Seen some peeps ask why I’m not on the list for Sundays race. iRacing is the best in the biz no doubt about it… I just simply get burnt out after a day. Not the games fault, just been like that for years.”
Wallace went on to state that by the time he had completed the first event at virtual Homestead-Miami Speedway he “was burnt out”.
He added: “I can’t sit at the rig all day and burn laps, I’d go crazy. Before this pandemic, I hadn’t turned on my racing rig in at least 6-8 months. So I decided to opt out of this one and watch the madness.”
After using up his two allowed fast-repair ‘resets’ in the first 10 laps of the eNASCAR race at virtual Bristol Motor Speedway, Wallace got involved in a third incident with Clint Bowyer that caused his car extensive damage.
Rather than drive the remainder of the 150-lap event with a damaged vehicle and being out of contention for the win, Wallace elected to quit.
A sponsor that his Richard Petty Motorsports team had secured for the event, Blue-Emu, posted a message afterwards stating: “We’re interested in drivers, not quitters.”
While Wallace will not participate in Sunday’s sim racing event, NASCAR legend Jeff Gordon announced earlier this week that he would enter for the first time.