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Video games and sports have a lot of overlap, and we’ve spent a lot of time trying to recreate our favourite stunts and moves in various sports games, but NASCAR racer Ross Chastain has done the opposite — he recreated a move he used to perform in NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup on GameCube to secure the final qualifying spot for the championship.
Shared on Twitter by @barstoolsports and Steve Lin from the Video Game History Foundation, this risky manoeuvre is known as a ‘wall ride’ and involves literally driving right up against the wall to squeeze past the other cards.
Chastain does this in spectacular fashion, leaving it until the very last minute to secure that final qualifying spot for next weekend’s 2022 NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4.
In the post-match interview (above), Chastain was asked “how did you ever dream up a scenario where something like that would be what you needed to do and then it would work?”, where the racer credits the 2004 GameCube racer for the idea:
“Oh, I played a lot of NASCAR 2005 on the GameCube with Chad growing up and you can get away with it, and I never knew if it would actually work. I mean, I did that when I was eight years old and I grabbed fifth gear, I asked Alpha two on the last lap if we needed it and we did. I couldn’t tell who was leading and I just made the choice; I grabbed fifth gear down the back and full committed.
Once I got against the wall I basically go to the wheel and just hope I didn’t catch the turn floor access gate or something crazy, but I was willing to do it.”
So, all of those times you’ve clipped past your friends in racing games by hugging the wall, and all of those times they’ve called you a cheat? Show them this. It’s all skill and guts, and the fact someone has done it in the real sport itself is pretty amazing.
NASCAR 2005 was released on PS2, Xbox, and GameCube back in 2004, and across all three platforms, it received strong reviews for its production values, gameplay, and audio. It was even up for GameSpot’s “Best Driving Game” award, but it lost out to a little game called Burnout 3: Takedown.
So, what’s next? Banana peels on the race track? Have you ever tried to recreate anything from a video game in real life? Let us know below!