Dale Earnhardt Jr. is helping turn NC speedway into a virtual track for online racing

A North Carolina speedway will soon be a virtual track on an online racing game with the help of Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The star race-car driver and a crew helped clean up the North Wilkesboro Speedway on Monday to get it ready to be scanned and recreated on iRacing, Earnhardt Jr. wrote on Facebook.

The “motorsport racing simulation” allows drivers to take part in online races and includes “replicas of the world’s greatest racing circuits” for them to compete on, the game’s site says.

And now the historic speedway is going to be one of those circuits.

The speedway opened as a dirt track in 1947 and hosted the last race of the first NASCAR Strictly Stock in 1949, according toa Facebook page set up to promote saving the track.

The speedway was “dropped from the schedule” after Jeff Gordon won a race at the track in the 1996 NASCAR Cup Series, according to NASCAR.

Earnhardt said Steve Myers, executive vice president and executive producer at iRacing, came from Boston to oversee the track’s clean-up.

“The end result was a super race ready surface and a giant pile of weeds and muck,” Earnhardt wrote on Facebook. “I am so excited to see this track delivered to the iRacing community.”

The speedway will join other tracks in North Carolina available on iRacing, including Charlotte Motor Speedway and Concord Speedway.

Earnhardt also tweeted about the clean-up, saying the track was getting ready for a date.