iRacing – The L.A. Coliseum revealed!

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, better known as the L.A. Coliseum, was heading to iRacing in January 2022. On January 12 the online racing service showed work-in-progress images of the track, a few weeks before NASCAR took its season-opening exhibition race into the stadium for the first time.

A NASCAR track that started in a simulator

This is not a normal track release. The Coliseum is a football stadium, and it had no racetrack until NASCAR decided to stage the Busch Light Clash there in February 2022. The Clash is a non-points exhibition that opens the Cup Series season, and NASCAR needed a temporary quarter-mile oval that would fit inside the stadium floor.

iRacing was part of that work. According to iRacing, the layout was designed on its platform with input from real NASCAR teams and drivers, plus drivers from the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series. Several versions were tried before a final profile was picked, and that profile was then built in the stadium over the winter. So the virtual track and the real one share the same design, rather than the sim copy coming after the fact.

The two posts below were shared on January 12, 2022, by iRacing and by Steve Myers of iRacing as the sim version neared completion.

The @iRacing version is almost complete! pic.twitter.com/AJF3hk453K

— Steve Myers (@iRacingMyers) January 12, 2022

The LA Coliseum is almost ready for it’s real world AND virtual debut! 🏈 pic.twitter.com/EqDMquB6lS

— iRacing (@iRacing) January 12, 2022

Update (October 2026)

iRacing released the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on January 26, 2022, with the 2022 Season 1 Patch 2 update. It went on sale to all members as a quarter-mile oval, raced at launch with the NASCAR Cup Series Next Gen car. iRacing opened a public “Coliseum Clash” series the same day, with more series planned in the following weeks, and the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series opened its 2022 season with an exhibition Clash at the track on February 1.

The real race followed on February 6, 2022. It was also the race debut of the Next Gen car, and Joey Logano won it after holding off Kyle Busch. NASCAR returned to the Coliseum twice more. Martin Truex Jr. won the 2023 Clash, and Denny Hamlin won in 2024 in a race moved forward to Saturday, February 3, because of weather concerns.

After those three years NASCAR moved the Clash to Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, another quarter-mile track around a football field. Chase Elliott won there on February 2, 2025, and NASCAR announced in July 2025 that Bowman Gray would host the Clash again in 2026.

	Detail
Released on iRacing	January 26, 2022 (2022 Season 1 Patch 2)
Configuration	Quarter-mile oval
Launch car	NASCAR Cup Series Next Gen
Real-world Clash at the Coliseum	2022, 2023, 2024

For another NASCAR short track in a sim, see the Bristol Motor Speedway map for BeamNG.drive, or follow our iRacing coverage.