Jimmie Johnson Is The 8th Worst Driver In The NASCAR Cup Series, According To iRacing Studios

NASCAR 25 was released on Tuesday by iRacing Studios on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. The widely anticipated video game was the first foray into console gaming for the established racing simulation developer. Players immediately got to see how the developers assessed the abilities of the current Cup Series drivers. While several other ratings decisions caught the attention of NASCAR fans, Jimmie Johnson was given a rating of 54 out of 100. The seven-time Cup Series champion was the eighth-worst active driver.

While the flagship iRacing service on PC focuses on competition between real people, NASCAR 25 centers on a robust single-player experience where the competitors are AI representations of real-life drivers. However, each AI driver isn’t as fast as any other AI driver. Racing games based on real championships scale driver ability to produce realistic results. Typically, this is done under the hood, hidden from users. In recent years, racing games have pushed user-facing driver ratings to parallel other sports video games, such as EA’s Madden NFL series.

This is where things get complicated. A driver’s on-track results aren’t solely based on their ability. Jimmie Johnson wasn’t the driver he once was when he retired from full-time competition after the 2020 season. He finished 18th in points in his last two full-time seasons, still a far cry from being the 40th-highest-rated driver in NASCAR 25. Ignoring his third-place finish in this year’s Daytona 500, 40th is roughly where Johnson is today as a part-timer with Legacy Motor Club. The team he co-owns simply isn’t the same operation as Hendrick Motorsports, and that has to be reflected in his driver rating.

iRacing Studios seemingly plotted every active Cup Series driver on a curve from 40 to 100. William Byron received a perfect 100 rating as the 2025 regular season champion and back-to-back Daytona 500 winner, despite not having a Cup Series championship on his resume. Byron is simply the best driver on a week-to-week basis right now. The developer did the same in the other series featured in the game, such as the NASCAR Xfinity Series and the ARCA Menards Series. For example, this year’s ARCA champion Brenden Queen was given a 99 rating. I doubt that Queen would be a 99 when graded against the Cup Series field.