iRacing finally gives us the smallest glimpse of NASCAR 25 gameplay — but don't get too excited, yet

One of the games I'm most anticipating is NASCAR 25. I'm a big NASCAR fan, and the fact that iRacing is making the game now fills me with confidence.

What we don't have, though, is much actual information. There's still no release date, and outside of the dev diaries, almost no footage of what it even looks like.

But there's a really small glimpse that just made it into the wild, courtesy of a recent playtest where iRacing had the actual NASCAR drivers test it out.

The first photo shows Hendrick Motorsports driver, William Byron, sat playing NASCAR 25. To my knowledge, that's the clearest image we've had yet of what the gameplay and the UI looks like.

Most of the previous dev diaries have contained in-engine b-roll, slow panning shots of the exterior of vehicles, and such. We have seen some shots from inside one of the Cup Series cars, but really nothing of substance.

That single image isn't much to go on, but equally, I don't see anything alarming. From what we see, it looks pretty good.

Fortunately, the message in the final image at least points to good news coming soon. Throughout the next 6-7 weeks we can expect to start seeing more from the game, including official screenshots, roster, and track list.

A full gameplay reveal is planned for late August, which coincides with Gamescom.

Waiting for this is hard, but I'm still confident it'll be worth it. The last NASCAR game was pretty horrible, and the Heat series before it was fun, to a point, but iRacing has so much more potential to deliver.

In its main sim on PC, it's about the closest you can get to driving a NASCAR, er, car, without doing it for real. iRacing laser scans the tracks, the physics is unmatched, and that some of that expertise could now be coming to consoles, too. I'm excited.

But for now, I, like every other fan, will keep on waiting. Impatiently.