Cup Series star slams NASCAR 25 driver ratings as video game released

One NASCAR Cup Series star has spoken out against the driver rating system in the much-hyped new NASCAR 25 game.

As in many sports games, drivers are rated on a 1-100 scale (functionally a 40-100 scale, with no driver ranked lower than that) in the new release by iRacing Studios.

Many of those ratings were revealed just before the game's launch, and one driver joked about his at the time – a joke which, he's now revealed, hid a genuine complaint he has with the system.

Popular driver Noah Gragson joked when shown his ratings card that he'd been hard done by – claiming the Chicago street race this year drove his road course rating down – but admitted later that he believes the game's developers did a 'bad job' of accurately assessing drivers.

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Gragson: NASCAR 25 ratings did a bad job

Gragson was asked in a press conference whether his historic performances at Talladega made him confident going into this race, being told he'd been 'touted over the years as a solid superspeedway racer', and cut into the question to gripe about his rankings again.

"Not by the NASCAR game," he said. "I was a 58 overall at superspeedways. Who is that guy, does anyone know who did the rankings for that s***?"

Insisting that he wasn't bothered by the issue that he had raised, he added later: “I don’t really care about that. It’s just you look at who is the best driver in our sport right now? Then why isn’t he 100 overall? 

"It doesn’t really matter at the end of the day, but whoever the guy or girl was that did it, they did a bad job, in my opinion, but I personally don’t care if I’m a 71. I made a joke about it saying, ‘Oh, dang. I’m kind of trash. Is that me?’ 

"I just don’t think the facts were really real on anybody’s stats, not even saying mine were low or high or anybody else’s was low or high, it just didn’t really make sense when we were doing it, but the rest of the game is really, really good.”

NASCAR 25 Cup Series driver ratings

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