CLINTON, Conn. – If you ask defending eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series champion Zack Novak, he’ll tell you that he never anticipated pulling double duty during the first part of this season.
However, that’s exactly what the Connecticut teenager finds himself doing at the moment, as he takes on the unique challenge of racing in both the Coca-Cola Series and the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink iRacing Sprint Car World Championship.
Novak is one of two drivers (the other being Logan Clampitt) who has planted his feet firmly in the top level of stock-car racing and the top level of sprint-car racing on the iRacing service.
The sprint car side of things was something he dabbled in before 2020, but it wasn’t until a trip to The Dirt Track at Charlotte last May that Novak realized it was a world he wanted to be much more involved in however he could be.
“I actually did a little sprint car racing here and there (before this year), especially when the package changed for the Cup cars, because it was just a little less fun to go official racing with everybody stacked on top of each other,” Novak explained. “So I started doing sprint cars and stuff just for a little bit more driver fun. I never really took it seriously or anything, but I did enjoy it a lot, and eventually realized that I was actually fairly quick … especially considering I didn’t really drive them much. I was contending with a few guys that were on the edge of making pro at that point, and I didn’t have good setups or anything.
“Knowing that, I thought, ‘Hey, you know, I could maybe try and run for this with my own setup and see what it does,’” he added. “And then going to the World of Outlaws race (at Charlotte in May), it made me realize how cool that racing really is. A lot of the kids that I used to race quarter midgets with, a lot of them went sprint car racing in Pennsylvania and I never wanted to go that route. I never was interested in sprint cars; I just never really got into it. But when iRacing brought them out, that gave me the avenue to try them out and see what it was like, and I really enjoyed them after that.”
As he began to wade deeper into the sprint car realm, Novak ended up getting a bit of extra support from Clampitt, his Coca-Cola Series contemporary who was already a bit deeper into the virtual sprints.
“Clampitt actually helped me get on the same team – he’s on Slick Simsport – and they’re really, really supportive and understanding that the sprints aren’t my primary focus,” Novak said. “They’re going to let me pursue my primary focus, which is obviously the Coca-Cola Series, but they’re still willing to help me out and let me run with them. They’re really, really good at what they do and they have really, really fast cars, and that allowed me to qualify for the World Championship even though I made a few rookie mistakes from time to time.”
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