Meet the Driver: Brent Sweet

Congratulations on being the winner of our first race at Charlotte.

Q: It’s been a long time since we all raced together, can you recall what first made you come to TNR back in our Nr2003 days?

I think it was just being friends with people from other leagues that ran at the time. There are a few from the mid to late 2000's that I always group together but TNR, THLRL, NASRA and ASRC were all around the same era and I would run the leagues where I liked the car/schedule combination.

Q: What have you been doing as far as your sim racing career goes since we last raced together?

I raced NR2003 all the way up until about 2011/2012. After having a hard drive failure around that time, I decided to take a step back and stop racing online entirely so I could focus on college.

I got back into racing online with iRacing at the end of 2015, and have been running in a league that has a lot of guys from the NR2003 time period.

Q: Any exciting life events that you’d like to share with us?

I started racing an SK Modified (just like the one in the game) in 2011 and have run part time seasons since then, due to sponsorship. I've had mild success, winning a heat race and getting a dozen top 10 finishes. It's crazy how competitive it can be, I could easily compare it to racing in a fixed setup league. Sometimes you're searching for 1 or 2 tenths of a second and it seems so small, but that's what sets the field apart in the real world.

Q: At Charlotte you and Brandon Ward both ran a very special decal on your hood, would you please share what the decal was and who it represented?

The decal represents one of our great league mates and friends Ryan Breland. I'm not sure when exactly he stopped racing but I do remember still being in contact with him after TNR fizzled out. Myself, Ryan and Brandon joked about pooling our money together to buy an ARCA ride one day and we were all going to be involved in some way. Ryan passed in 2016 and I can still recall Brandon sending me a message and being in total shock.

I made that tribute decal shortly after he passed and I've run it on every iRacing car that I've painted since, along with decals honoring other sim racing friends that passed. I figure even a gesture as small as that shows how much impact those guys had on my life.

It was inspirational to see that car in victory lane Monday Night; I hoping you run the full season with us and I’m looking forward to seeing you on track again Monday Night at Rockingham.

Thanks, I'm planning to run as much as I can and I had a lot of fun getting back together with everybody. It was good hard racing at Charlotte and I hope that continues into the future!