CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A win in the eNASCAR iRacing World Championship last March at Auto Club Speedway put Eric J. Smith on the sim-racing map, and now he’s looking to build on that cornerstone.
Smith, 21, will return to Jim Beaver eSports for his second full season in NASCAR’s eSports championship after racing his way back in through the recently-completed iRacing Pro Series.
By finishing among the top 20 in Pro Series points, Smith punched his ticket both back to the World Championship and back to Jim Beaver eSports, which retained both of its drivers from 2019.
That consistency is something that Smith said gives him confidence going into his sophomore season.
“Last year, Jim (Beaver) came in and really wanted us to do well for him and believed that we could do it, and I think that that made the free agency process a lot easier for me than what some of these guys were going through … with having different offers from different teams and not really enjoying where they were at,” Smith told SPEED SPORT. “He’s been committed to us and I appreciate that a lot.
“I think the biggest thing that I have to (continue to) understand is that I have to always be learning from the past, and looking back on last year, I saw a lot of things I was doing that maybe weren’t exactly the way they that needed to be done, off the screen and even on the race track,” Smith added. “The first half of the season was rough with wrecks and stuff like that for me, but after Charlotte, the whole second half of the season I barely had any incidents. I was taking care of the stuff and just having fun.
“I was stressed in the first half and treating it not like (something) fun and treating it like it was just something I had to do (well) at or I was screwed, and that was a bad way to do it, so as long as I continue to surround myself with people that can support me then I think I can get it done.”
While Smith has now made his home within Beaver’s stable, it wasn’t always that way for the UNC-Charlotte college student, originally from Joliet, Ill.
It was Smith who shocked the world and put his name on the map as an independent driver early on last year, driving to victory in the third race of the season and outrunning the eventual top two in the final points – Zack Novak and Keegan Leahy – among others.
That led to a mid-season call up by Beaver when his team officially joined the World Championship, giving Smith a platform he hadn’t previously had in the division.
While the remainder of the season didn’t go as planned, with only one top-10 finish following his victory and a 31st-place standing in points that sent him briefly back to the Pro Series, Smith was quick to note the stress he dealt with during the year wasn’t something he attributed to his quick spurt of success.
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