Inside the drama NASCAR and FOX created by forgetting to let Timmy Hill go iRacing
NASCAR fans may know Timmy Hill as the smiling Cup driver who made a trip to Bojangles during the Daytona 500 rain delay last year and conducted an impromptu press conference in his fire suit, fries in full view.
Or maybe Hill is better known as the driver who won an iRacing event last year during NASCAR’s pandemic delay and shouted out a glass of milk.
But many fans probably don’t know Hill at all, or at least hadn’t heard of him before he became the subject of the trending #LetTimmyRace hashtag on NASCAR Twitter this week.
“The attention and the people reaching out through Twitter, through social media, it’s been overwhelming,” Hill told The Observer. “It’s been way more than I thought. And it’s a nice thing to see because we don’t get much attention.”
Hill was not originally invited to participate in this year’s eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series — a 10-race sim racing series that NASCAR and its FOX broadcast partner are introducing to bridge the midweek content gap — despite being a race winner from last year’s Pro Invitational series and a face in a recent promotional graphic for the event.
Hill said that he found out he wouldn’t be in this year’s lineup on Twitter “just like everybody else did” Tuesday morning when entry lists were shared, and that he tried numerous times to contact representatives from across NASCAR, FOX and iRacing in advance to receive a decision on his entry. The first race of the series was Wednesday night at the virtual Bristol dirt track.
Last year’s Pro Invitational Series was a promotional highlight for Hill and his small No. 66 MBM Motorsports team, which doesn’t typically run up front on the real track, but can compete on iRacing behind Hill’s 13-year-old, $300 sim rig.
Hill and MBM team owner Carl Long said the team was packaging this year’s virtual series into sponsorship deals in order to be able to run the full Cup Series season as a non-chartered team, but losing the exposure would be a hard financial hit. Long told The Observer on Wednesday afternoon that he expected to pull out of upcoming Cup races at Martinsville, Richmond and possibly Kansas.
“I’ve got cars sitting here ready to go, but with no exposure and not getting the word out there to get a sponsor to help us, I just can’t afford it,” Long said.
The news that Hill wouldn’t be in the race received strong backlash on social media, where names like Dale Earnhardt Jr., who will be one of two celebrity guests in the series Wednesday, commented on Hill’s absence in the race.
“Timmy is a good dude,” Earnhardt Jr. wrote, retweeting a #LetTimmyRace post issued by Charlotte Motor Speedway’s account. Other drivers jumped in on social media Wednesday morning, which ultimately opened a slot for Hill to race in the first event as a substitute for Penske drivers Brad Keselowski and Austin Cindric in the No. 2 car.
Cindric was originally slated to replace Cup driver Brad Keselowski, but Cindric offered his spot to Hill, tagging Keselowski in the post that generated over 3,000 likes. Both Keselowski and Team Penske quickly supported the change.
“I like where your heads at,” Keselowski responded to Cindric on Twitter. “Are you in @TimmyHillRacer?”
Now Hill is entered, at least for one race, but Long said Wednesday afternoon that it didn’t change the fundamental problem of losing exposure on a major broadcast for his small No. 66 team.
“It left the business side and just went back to being a fun little game when Timmy decided to run the Penske car,” Long said.
NASCAR limited guaranteed entry for the Pro Invitational to the 36 chartered teams and offered four additional spots to the broadcast network — FOX, in this case — to invite celebrity guests. FOX has filled two of those spots for the first race with Earnhardt Jr. and Clint Bowyer, who now works as a Cup Series analyst for the network with Jeff Gordon in the booth on race days.
Long, who has worked with Hill for 11 years, said he reached out to members of NASCAR’s executive team via email Wednesday morning and was hopeful that the situation was an “oversight” instead of an intentional dismissal of his team.
A call later in the day, however, has left Long with a brighter outlook. Long said he expects Timmy will be included in the remaining Pro Invitational events after a conversation with NASCAR president Steve Phelps, senior vice president Tim Clark and executive vice president Steve O’Donnell.
“Basically, they just forgot us,” Long said. “Just like I thought that they could have. They didn’t pay attention. We aren’t a member of the RTA (Race Team Alliance) so we don’t get all of the feedback of what (chartered teams) have.
“They missed us,” Long continued. “And did not expect, just like us, the amount of tweets and followings and trends that occurred (Wednesday) afternoon.”
Long said that he was told that NASCAR leadership will meet again early next week to determine what changes should be made with the event going forward and that FOX still has the final word on filling the open spots. But, he added, he “doesn’t expect that there will be a problem” having Hill in the series going forward.
NASCAR and FOX would not confirm Wednesday night that Hill would be in the field for upcoming Pro Invitational races.
“It doesn’t fix the problem that we could’ve gotten more sale out of it right now with putting a sponsor on Bristol dirt,” Long said, then added a joking solution.
“I just told Timmy that the biggest thing is he just needs to let Brad Keselowski know that after Bristol beats him up on the dirt, that Brad can take the weekend off at Martinsville and Timmy can go run his (real) car up there,” Long said with a laugh. “ ... I don’t know how Brad’s gonna take it.”
The same reason that fans rallied behind Hill is the same reason Keselowski probably won’t hear that joke come from him, however.
“He’s a little bit timid,” Long said. “Timmy’s a good guy … hopefully next week, we’ll be not forgotten anymore.”
This story was originally published March 24, 2021 at 7:53 PM.
