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The Daytona 500 is one of the more challenging races on the NASCAR circuit. The speedway is long and narrow, forcing drivers to be more aggressive. And the weather in central Florida doesnt always cooperate. During the 2024 event, a deluge of rain had forced a Monday conclusion. After 41 lead changes and with only eight laps to go, a crash involving half the field prompted a red flag and a 15-minute delay. At the end, another collision between leader Ross Chastain and Austin Cindric opened the door for William Byron to zip by and take the checkered flag. Byrons win wasnt a huge surprisehed notched 10 prior wins on the NASCAR circuitbut his backstory is unusual. Hes part of a new emerging generation of drivers who have learned much of the craft of high-speed racing online through iRacing, the premier esport for virtual, or sim, racing, where anyone can channel their inner Joey Logano and race in the glitziest virtual races in the world. Now 27, Byron became a NASCAR fan at the age of 6 when his father took him to a race in Virginia. A few years later, Byron heard an interview with Dale Earnhardt Jr. gushing about sim racing and thats what got me interested, he says. I felt like I could learn something. William Byron, driver of the #24 Axalta Chevrolet, celebrates in the victory lane after winning the NASCAR Cup Series Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway on February 19, 2024 in Daytona Beach, Florida. [Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR] iRacing at 12 Equipped with the necessary steering wheel, pedal, and a working PC, Byron began sim racing at age 12. He learned how to navigate tight turns, calculate angles, temper speedall without the worry of real-life crashing. Its realistic enough to get started and see if youre good at it, he says. Its really similar to pickup basketball. A chance for people to compete in a way they probably wouldnt have the opportunity to any other way. After a year and a half, Byron began to enter local go-kart races. Eighteen months after that, he was racing legend cars, launching his career. Chelmsford, Massachusettsbased iRacing, cofounded by Boston Red Sox owner John Henry and motorsports simulator (and sometime racecar driver) Dave Kaemmer in 2008, is the biggest name in sim racing, with 150 employees and consistent double-digit annual growth. This past November, iRacing began collaborating with Microsoft to integrate AI technologies into its simulators. In partnership with the Tiffany of racing brands, NASCARa deal that dates to the year of iRacings debutiRacing is changing the face of the sport: how up-and-coming drivers like Byron learn to drive, how cars are designed, how courses themselves are built, modified, and selected. [Photo: iRacing] Simulating excellence Simulators have altered the landscape of athletics, especially in more finely skilled competitions such as baseball and golf. But virtual racing may be having the biggest impact. iRacings brand partnerships, not only with NASCAR but also some of the sports most storied racetracks and automakers, have allowed the company to re-create a real-world race experience down to the hubcaps. NASCAR and iRacing are also using the technology to figure out where (and even if) its feasible to build new tracks, or how to best modify existing ones, an arrangement that has led directly to races on the short track inside the L.A. Coliseum and the streets of downtown Chicago. I think the iRacing partnership was a little bit ahead of its time, says Tim Clark, NASCARs executive vice president and chief brand officer. If you go back to the beginning, we probably didnt really know what to make of it. Was it a game? Entertainment? A training tool? And the answer is it was a little bit of all those things. Its so unique, because you could influence a NASCAR fan of tomorrow, you could influence a NASCAR driver of tomorrow. I make this joke all the time. the Dallas Cowboys arent looking for their next quarterback on Madden, but you can scout the next driver of a NASCAR national series on iRacing. Chicago Street Course [Photo: iRacing] NASCAR 25 Its like the experience of driving that race car in competition at any racetrack in the world, and gets you as close to reality without having to leave your home, adds iRacing executive director Dale Earnhardt Jr., a 2021 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee. The tracks are scanned to perfection. Every bump, crack, crevice in a unique character about that racetrack is included. Bonus: if you crash, no one ends up in a hospital. iRacing currently boasts more than 1.2 million unique accounts and more than 300,000 active members. Now comes its next chapter: the launch this fall of NASCAR 25, an attempt to Madden-ize iRacings offerings and take sim racing from niche obsession to mass market behemoth. Its the companys very first console title. Up until now, iRacers had to pony up for a steering wheel and pedal set (which can run as high as $600), in addition to having to race solely on a PC. Entering the console spacea landscape dominated by competitors like EA, Sony Interactive, and NintendoiRacing is betting that NASCAR 25 can deliver the verisimilitude of its online races via a console on a big screen TV, at a more consumer-friendly price point. While an annual membership in iRacing costs around $100, with additional fees if you want access to fancier cars and tracks, NASCAR 25 will allow drivers to start their engines on their trusty Xbox or PlayStation at a to-be-determined price point that should be similar to existing sports games. (Madden NFL 25 retails for $69.99.) We want to make a NASCAR stock car drive like a real NASCAR stock car, says Steve Myers, the executive vice president of iRacing. Theres a reason only 40 guys in the world get to do itbecause its hard. [Photo: iRacing] From PC to console iRacings biggest asset has been the realism of its racing experience. Diehard fans now wonder if the console version can match the original. Making the jump from the PC ecosystem to consoles is a big step, opening the door for more players to experience iRacings level or realism, says Alberto Segovia, an amateur driver and prolific blogger on sim racing. What intrigues me the most is how theyll manage to balance that authenticity with the accessibility of a console game. But if anyone can pull it off, its iRacing. For NASCAR, Clark says, the game represents an effort to create fans on their terms. I think in years past, we may have taken a more selfish view of fandom, that you have to watch on TV or you have to buy a ticket and come to a racetrack. But if youre fandom is getting on iRacing and participating in some of these races that way, Im totally fine with that. [Photo: iRacing] A league of its own? Therein lies other potential marketing gold to be mined, in the form of a televised TGL Golftype virtual racing league (NASCAR dipped a toe in during the COVID lockdowns), or even a celebrity-laden, Cannonball Runstyle special, with stars sliding into virtual race cars, ready to rev up. A lot will depend on just how much mass appeal NASCAR 25 can muster. I want every fan of motorsport to be able to experience the anxiety of trying to qualify for race, the nerves and the butterflies of sitting on a starting grid before the engines fire, being in that nose-to-nose battle on the final lap, having to make that exact right decision in the right moment to win the race, Earnhardt says. Thats what they get to experience in iRacing. Theres no candy-coating, theres no handholding. Thats the draw. Byron, who still sim races offseason to get the rust knocked off, is excited for the launch, and hell be right there at the starting line. He still sim races under his own name. Does he win all the time? He laughs. Usually.
Category:
E-Commerce
Though only a few weeks old, already the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is radically changing the face of bureaucracy in D.C. The Elon Musk-led agency has slashed government spending, gained full access to the Treasury Departments payments systems, and pushed federal employees to resign. While Democrats and union groups have raised concerns about the effect on the American people, DOGE and Musk appear to have President Trumps full support. Hes a big businessman. Hes a successful guy. Thats why we want him doing this, Trump said in a press conference on Tuesday, emphasizing that DOGE has a lot of work, a lot of smart people involved. So, who are these “smart people,” whos actually behind the organizational shake-up in Washington? Heres everything you need to know so far about the DOGE staffers. Jennifer Balajadia, 36 Balajadia worked as an operations coordinator for the Boring Company, founded in 2016 by Elon Musk, for almost eight years. According to the New York Times, she is an official member of DOGE, traveling with Musk and helping him with scheduling and daily tasks. Alexandra T. Beynon, 36 Beynon was the head of engineering for her husband, Dylan’s, startup, Mindbloom, a guided at-home ketamine-therapy company. She previously worked for Symphony.com as a director in engineering and at Goldman Sachs as a software developer. According to ProPublica, when asked about her role in the new administration and DOGE, she said, I have no idea what you are talking about. Nicole Hollander, 42 Hollander is working at the General Services Administration. She previously worked at X, where she handled the companys real estate. Before that, she worked at JBG Smith, a commercial real estate and real estate investment trust company, as senior vice president of retail asset management. Hollander is married to Steve Davis, a longtime associate of Musk’s. Kendall M. Lindemann, 24 Lindemann is a member of the DOGE team, according to ProPublica. She worked as a venture associate for Russell Street Ventures, a healthcare firm, founded by another DOGE associate, Brad Smith. After graduating from the University of Tennessee, she worked as a business analyst for McKinsey & Company. Adam Ramada, 35 Ramada worked as comanaging partner of Spring Tide Capital, a venture capital company. Spring Tide previously invested in Impulse Space, founded by Tom Mueller, a founding member of SpaceX. According to E&E News, Ramada identified himself as an employee of DOGE in court documents involving a union fight against DOGE’s access to sensitive government information. E&E News, acquired by Politico in 2020, stated that he reportedly appeared in the Energy Department and GSA. Ryan Riedel, 37 Riedel worked as a lead network security engineer at SpaceX before becoming chief information officer at the Department of Energy (DOE). His new position was confirmed in a LinkedIn post by Ann Dunkin, former CIO of DOE, on February 9. Riedel previously served in the U.S Army Cyber Command as a network manager. Kyle Schutt, 37 Schutt is a DOGE software engineer working at the GSA. He was previously chief technology officer at Revv, an online donation platform. Before deleting his LinkedIn profile, Schutt wrote that he led the development and launch of WinRed, the Republican Partys major online fundraising program, which according to its website, raised $1.8 billion for Republicans in the 2024 election. Edward Coristine, 19 Coristine, a first-year student at Northeastern University in Boston, spent three months last summer at Neuralink, Musks brain-computer interface company, according to his résumé, which was obtained by Wired. He is part of the young group of DOGE staffers detailed to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). According to internal records reviewed by Wired, Coristine is listed as an expert at OPM. Akash Bobba, 21 Bobba was listed in Wired magazine as another one of the six young engineers picked for Musks DOGE team. He recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. He was an intern at Meta and at Palantir, the software and data analytics firm that’s a defense contractor. Bobba has reportedly been able to access internal databases as an expert at OPM. Ethan Shaotran, 22 Shaotran is a member of the DOGE team, according to ProPublica. He recently attended Harvard University where he studied computer science. His LinkedIn account has since been deleted. When he was a student, he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI to develop an AI scheduling assistant called Spark. He was a finalist in a hackathon organized by Musks AI company, xAI. According to Wired, Shaotran is one of six guys under age 24, who are now playing a critical role in DOGE, tasked with modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity. Luke Farritor, 23 Farritor works as an executive engineer at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), according to ProPublica. He studied computer science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, dropping out before his final semester, and interned at SpaceX, working on its Starlink Wi-Fi team, according to his LinkedIn profile. In March 2024, he received a Thiel fellowship, a two-year program founded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel that awards a $100,000 startup rant to students who drop out of college. Gautier Cole Killian, 24 Killin has a working email associated with DOGE, where he is listed as a volunteer, according to Wired. ProPublica reported that he works at the EPA as a federal detail, which typically allows government employees to transfer between agencies. He worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, which specializes in algorithmic financial trades, and which was stated on an archived version of his now-deleted personal website. Gavin Kliger, 25 Kliger is a special advisor at OPM, according to ProPublica. He is listed in internal records reviewed by Wired as a special advisor to the director for information technology. Kliger spent around five years as a software engineer at Databricks, an AI company. Jordan M. Wick, 28 Wick is a member of the DOGE team, and a recent graduate from MIT, where he studied computer science, according to ProPublica. He was a software engineer at Waymo, where he worked on self-driving cars. He was listed as a cofounder and CTO of Intercept, which is affiliated with California-based tech incubator Y Combinator. Nate Cavanaugh, 28 Cavanaugh is an entrepreneur who cofounded two companies, Brainbase and FlowFi. Brainbase is an intellectual property management firm that was acquired by Constellation Software in 2022. FlowFi is an accounting and finance platform for small businesses. He has been interviewing staffers at the GSA as part of the DOGE team, according to ProPublica. Jacob Altik, 32 Altik is a 2021 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. He previously clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Judge Joan L. Larsen and United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee. Last year, he was selected to begin a clerkship for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. James Burnham, 41 Burnham is a former litigation partner at Jones Day and a high-ranking Justice Department and White House official from the first Trump administration. According to his former employers website, Burnham was a senior associate counsel to President Trump and played a critical role in the selection and confirmation processes for Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett. ProPublica reported that his title at DOGE is listed internally as general counsel. Keenan D. Kmiec, 45 Kmiec worked in elite law before transitioning to crypto. According to his LinkedIn, he clerked on the Supreme Court for Chief Justice John Roberts in the 2006-2007 term and then worked at a corporate law firm. He was a partner in a small law firm focused on insider-trading litigation. Kmiec then worked for the Tezos Foundation, tasked with legal project management and other tasks across a cryptocurrency ecosystem, according to his LinkedIn. After that, he served as CEO of a now-defunct startup called InterPop. Anthony Armstrong, 57 Armstrong is a technology banker at Morgan Stanley who worked on Musks $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, now X. He now has a role in the OPM, which handles personnel issues across the federal government. Under the Trump administration, OPM recently directed agencies to submit names of every employee who had underperformed in the past three years and note if any have been on “performance plans.” Riccardo Biasini, 39 Biasini is an engineer and former executive who worked at two of Musks companies, the Boring Company and Tesla. He now has taken a high-ranking role in OPM, reported ProPublica. Biasini was listed as the person of contact for the government-wide email system used to send messages directly from OPM to millions of federal employees across the government, according to a recent document. Brian Bjelde, 44 Bjelde has worked for SpaceX for more than 20 years, currently the vice president of people operations. Previously, he was an associate engineer at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was referred to in press reports as a top DOGE Lieutenant, working at OPM to slash head count. Steve Davis, 45 Davis worked at SpaceX, X, and the Boring Company, as a senior executive and close associate of Musk’s for more than two decades. He was one of the first people to be associated with DOGE. The New York Times reported that he was on early calls with Musk as they explored ways to cut federal programs. Marko Elez, 25 Elez works at the Treasury Department, according to ProPublica. He graduated from Rutgers in 2021, where he studied computer science. He has reportedly gained access to highly sensitive payment systems of the Treasury Department, according to Wired. But Elez allegedly resigned February 6 after the Wall Street Journal reported that he has links to a social media account that posted racist comments online. Musk said publicly he planned to rehire the engineer. Stephanie Holmes, 43 Holmes runs human resources at DOGE, according to ProPublica. She is a former lawyer with Jones Day, which frequently represented Trump. Holmes also ran her own HR consulting firm, BrighterSideHR, which advised companies to pursue non-woke approaches to DEI, according to 404 Media. Tom Krause, 47 Krause leads a team who have been granted read-only access to the code for the agencys Fiscal Service payment system, which processes payments for programs such as Social Security and Medicare, according to the Treasury Department. The New York Times reported that Krause is affiliated with Musks DOGE team. He previously worked as CEO of Cloud Software Group, which provides enterprise software. Katie Miller, 33 In December, Trump named Miller, who served in the first administration as a press secretary to Vice President Mike Pence, as one of the first members of DOGE. She is married to White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller. Justin Monroe, 36 Monroe is working as an advisor in the office of the director of the FBI, according to ProPublica. He is a seasoned information security professional who served in the U.S. Navy as an information warfare officer. According to NBC News, an unnamed SpaceX employee had been placed in the FBI directors office, but no name was confirmed. Nikhil Rajpal, 30 Rajpal is listed as an expert” for OPM. He is representing DOGE in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), according to Wired. Rajpal’s online presence has since been deleted, but Wired reported he studied computer science at UC Berkeley and worked at Twitter before Musks acquisition. Rachel Riley, 33 Riley works as senior advisor at HHS, according to ProPublica. She previously was a partner for the consultancy firm, McKinsey & Company. Riley has worked closely with Brad Smith, a former health official in Trumps previous administration who ran DOGE during the transition period, as stated in the New York Times. Michael Russo, 67 Russo is a high-ranking technology official at the Social Security Administration (SSA), as reported by ProPublica. Russo spent more than seven years as an executive and senior advisor with Shift4 Payments, which is an investor in SpaceX, according to his LinkedIn. Russos office will oversee the SSAs more than $2 billion IT budget. Amanda Scales, 34 Scales worked in the human resources department at xAI, Musks artificial intelligence company. She was listed as the point of contact for questions after a memo was sent to federal employees, putting them on notice that DEI and accessibility initiatives in the federal government were now barred through an executive order. Scales is now chief of staff at OPM. Thomas Shedd, 28 Shedd, a mechanical engineer, worked at Tesla, building software that operated vehicle and battery factories. He now is the Federal Acquisition Service deputy commissioner and runs the Technology Transformation Services, according to a GSA press release. Brad Smith, 42 Smith served in a series of health-related policy roles during the first Trump administration, including being part of the board on the COVID-19 vaccine development program, Operation Warp Speed. The New York Times reported that he was helping to lead DOGE. Christopher Stanley, 33 Stanley is an experienced information security professional who has worked at multiple Musk-related companies, including SpaceX and X. He is reportedly an aide to Musk at DOGE, according to the New York Times, and has a role at the White House.
Category:
E-Commerce
Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture. When a brand goes negative, its usually with a claim that a competitor is somehow inferior. In its recent Super Bowl ad, the telehealth provider Hims & Hers went on the attack against something bigger: the system. Promoting a weight-loss drug positioned as a cheaper Ozempic alternative, the spot dings Big Pharma, and the healthcare industry more generally, as motivated by profits not patients. The ad sparked backlash before it even aired, and the buzz has lingered beyond the big game, fueled partly by criticism from the pharmaceutical business and prominent politicians, among others. In other words, the brand channeled some of the most anti-establishment vibes darkening the 2025 zeitgeist as a way to make a splashand it seems to be working. The short-term payoff may seem limited. Hims & Hers is pushing a cheaper, compounded version of semaglutide, the Novo Nordisk drug sold as Wegovy and Ozempic, which have become blockbusters for their weight-loss effects. (Ozempic can cost in excess of $1,000 a month without insurance, while the compounds can cost $200 or less; Hims & Hers doesnt break out revenue from compounds, but has indicated its broader weight-loss category has grown at a rapid clip and is estimated to reach annual revenue of $100 million by the end of this year.) Compounded-drug versions are permitted when regulators deem a marketplace shortage of an original (patented) drug. Wegovy and Ozempic are currently on that listand their creator, Novo Nordisk, has acknowledged that compounding is affecting its businessbut the drugmaker says it has increased its supply, which will eventually curtail Hims & Hers from selling its copycat. But even when that spike of interest (and presumably sales) runs its course, the company best known for erectile dysfunction, hair-loss, and other treatments has raised its profile to more than just a modern alt-wellness brand. Now its positioning itself as a righteous underdog battling a rigged system on behalf of everyday folk. The actual spot is remarkable for its largely grim and confrontational tone. With Childish Gambinos brooding anthem as the soundtrack, it quick-cuts through sometimes jarring images to describe an obesity epidemic that leads to half a million deaths each year. A narrator declares: Something is broken. With nods to fattening foods, social media, and pricey drug treatments, it continues, The system wasnt built to help us. It was built to keep us sick and stuck. The final pivot is to Hims & Hers, with its affordable doctor-trusted treatments, formulated in the USA as part of a custom treatment plan. People smile and brandish med vials as the narration concludes: Join us in the fight for a healthy America. While a rebel pose is a venerable brand trope, its a bit jarring to see it deployed so starkly with healthcare as its target. But maybe it shouldnt be. Years of healthcare consumer frustrations have been a prelude to a year thats already seen a vaccine skeptic confirmed as the head of Health and Human Services, and the alleged killer of a major healthcare executive treated by some as a folk hero. Politically, vows to fight and smash the system (any system) have never been more prominent. Critics of the ad charged that its (very) small-type disclaimer that the compound-drug versions Hims & Hers offers are not FDA approved was misleading and potentially dangerous. (Brand-name drugs and official generics are more stringently regulated.) They also complained that the ad did not mention potential side effects. The Partnership for Safe Medicines, a nonprofit group focused on pharmaceutical safety, wrote Super Bowl broadcaster Fox a detailed letter urging the network not to air the ad. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drug-industry-lobbying firm, said the ad misrepresents the safety and efficacy of knockoff products. Senators Richard Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, and Roger Marshall, a Republican from Kansas, asked the FDA to look into the matter. Numerous media outlets covered the controversy. And Novo Nordisk retaliated with print ads emphasizing the weaker regulationand past problemsaround compounds, asking: Do you really know what youre injecting into your body? Hims & Hers is not the only company in the health space to respond to the semaglutide shortage, and its not wrong about the prohibitive cost of brand-name versions. But its tone has been unusual, waving away all charges and critiques as not just fake news but, in effect, evidence of persecution. Weve called out the system, and now the system is asking that our ad get taken down, a spokesperson commented; its site touts the ad Big Pharma doesnt want you to see. And the companys share price is up about 15% since just before the Super Bowl, giving it a valuation of more than $10 billion. Hims & Hers may be taking risks and pushing the regulatory envelope, but antagonizing authority doesnt seem to be a side effect of its strategy, its the prescription.
Category:
E-Commerce
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