‘The Alien’ who has ‘Been Everywhere’ | iRacing Community Spotlight: Karl Samson
August 25th, 2026 by Justin Melillo
As of iRacing’s 2026 Season 3 build, there are so many different pieces of content available to license, with more than 150 tracks across the world and over 180 different vehicles to jump into and race with.
Last month, on July 27th, 2026, iRacing member Karl Samson managed to complete something that almost the entire member base hasn’t done, or many have tried and failed to do—win a race at every track and win a race in every car under Official Series racing.
These two different iRacing Awards—”The Alien” award and the “I’ve Been Everywhere” award— are two of the hardest achievements to complete on iRacing, taking not only time to do, but the skill to do as well. Not many have been able to achieve one or the other. Karl did them both, and recently, he sat down with me for a chat about what it took to earn that accomplishment.
Karl, thank you so much for joining me today. Firstly, tell me a little bit about yourself!
I’m from Christchurch, New Zealand. I work in insurance and I’ve been sim racing for about eight years now.
Eight years… so about when you started your iRacing journey?
That is the entirety of my online sim racing.
Were you doing any offline racing? Did you play any other racing games before?
Well, so as a kid, yes, Because I’m old, I played the original Microprose Grand Prix, and in the late teens, I played the first four versions of Forza Motorsport, but that was all offline, no online stuff. When I got a rig, I dabbled in some Assetto Corsa and Automobilista for a couple of months before starting iRacing, but everything was always on offline.
Is that rig the same as what you’ve got today, or have you made some upgrades to it?
No. I had my initial rig, which was just a G29, and that was for two years and then I decided I quite like this and then I upgraded. I have a YouTube channel where I’ve just recently put up a video of my rig for you to look at but it’s a Simucube 2 Pro wheelbase, Simucube wheel, Heusinkveld sprints and a 49-inch widescreen monitor.
Do you watch any real-world motorsports, and if so, what series do you enjoy following?
I am a longtime motorsport fan. The ones that are the most easy to access and watch where I live are the V8 Supercars, IndyCar, and Formula One. Those would be the ones I follow the most, but I do keep an eye on other stuff as well.
Are there any other non-motorsport sports that you follow?
Yes. I’m a big sports fan in general. I guess the ones I follow most would be Cricket, which I played as a kid, and surprisingly, table tennis, which I was kind of competitive at as a youngster. I do keep an eye on what’s going on there, but most sports I will watch.
I don’t know anything about cricket.
It’s not very American.
Are there any other hobbies outside iRacing that you might dabble in?
Watching sports would be the main one, along with just doing activities with family. I’ve got a wife and two kids, they are 12 and 15. So yeah just spending time with them and when possible travel. We like to get somewhere new each year.
Anywhere in particular that you’ve been to that you really enjoy?
Just anywhere really like in terms of we like a lot of the nature type stuff or you know, not necessarily the places where there’s lots of people. I like exploring new things. I’m a big fan of Singapore. That was very nice. But there’s a lot of places around the world that we’ve been to, and enjoyed.
Karl qualified for a iRX All-Star a few years ago, but had to withdraw due to work. This was the livery he was scheduled to drive on that day.
All right, let’s get into your iRacing journey here. Is there a series that you initially got hooked on when you first started iRacing?
How I actually got onto iRacing was going down a rabbit hole on YouTube. I watched a lot of Jimmy Broadbent, Matt Malone and my favorite, Empty Box. After about 18 months of that, there was an offer via Matt Malone that was something like $5 for 3 months, and you got the FR500 Mustang thrown in for free. I used that to get started, and once I started, I was hooked. So Matt Malone is the root cause of all of this.
When I started, I was terrible. I think I had the same thing that everyone has where you come in, and you assume that, because you’ve watched a lot of motorsport, you know everything there is to know, and that you’re just going to be awesome. I was proven wrong badly with that. I think my first season, I did about 170 races, only won six, and was nowhere near 2000 iRating in any license. I was just looking for anywhere to find some shred of competency, and I found that in Dirt Road—which at the time was just Rallycross—because it had the by far the lowest participation.
If you just put a tiny bit of effort in, all of a sudden, you become a lot better than most people who would turn up, do one race and then not do it again, and get that feeling of improving, starting to move up the ladder a little bit. Because it was a very, very small community, even though I was still pretty bad, I just reached out to a few of the people who were going to be in the World Championship, and they were very helpful. I put an enormous amount of time into that license because the guys were really helpful. It was a good community and I finally started to find some shred of competency.
Would you say that Rallycross would be your favorite discipline on iRacing, or from there did you branch out even further and find something else that you particularly enjoyed even more?
It’s sort of a vicious cycle. I was terrible, and then I went to Rallycross and I got good at Rallycross. Then I went and tried the other licenses again and realized, ‘oh, hang on, all of a sudden I’ve got more control of the car and I’m doing better, I’ve got more awareness’ and what have you. Then I’d go back to Rallycross and then I’d get a little bit better there. I sort of bounced around everything. There’d be little bits I’d learn in one license that would help me out in another. It’s just sort of been a revolving door of just hopping around everything and getting a little bit better across the board in terms of series and or cars.
Do you have a favorite car or track, or combination?
My two favorite cars would probably be the Radical SR8, which is sadly no longer in use. I did a lot of races in that. Amazing car, amazing series with the regulars in that series were so good to race around. Then, obviously the Subaru WRX, because I have done so many laps in that car, and that’s what sort of was the launchpad to me being able to be good in everything else. If I had to pick a track for each car, it would be Bathurst for the Radical, partly because of where I live and partly because it’s just an incredible track, and I think Sonoma for the Rallycross. That’s a track I can hop on and just do laps to just unwind. It’s a great challenge, and really well thought out for an imaginary track. It’s really well thought out on its design.
Karl’s TCR livery in the Kiwi Sim Racing league.
In August of 2023, you became a member of the 100% club. Then in May of 2025, you earned the Alien Award. Just last month, you earned the I’ve Been Everywhere award. You’re just one of three people in the entire iRacing service to have both ‘The Alien’ and the ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’ award. You’re the first person to do it in nearly a decade. There’s a lot more content on iRacing now than there was 10 years ago. When did you initially decide that those were the awards that you wanted to pursue, or did you even have an idea that you were pursuing them?
So, slight tangent and backstory. On the 1st of April, 2023, I ended up in the hospital for a week. I had Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) and it was quite a bad case and they didn’t necessarily know what caused it because I hadn’t done anything that should trigger it. Turned out I had a genetic birth defect where my main vein doesn’t actually get all the way to my heart. So there’s a ton of tiny little veins trying to do the job of the one big vein. Essentially my abdomen is just riddled with lots of little blood clots, so once I came out of hospital, it was a struggle to do much, so I had to build up and just do five or ten minutes per day of driving on the rig just to try and get some level of normal life back.
To this day, I still have reasonably limited energy, but sim racing was sort of the one thing I could still do in limited bursts, and I’d been reasonably competitive up until that point. I thought, well, what can I do that’s going to give me, you know, a goal to chase or something to do that possibly has a limitless horizon or, you know, something to just aim at and not necessarily hit? And so on July 1, 2023, I thought, right, I’ll have a go at winning in every car and at every track. I didn’t think that was realistic at all. I just thought, well, I’ll aim for it. Like, as you can see from the timeline, I didn’t even own all the content at that time. I thought, I’ll just have a go and just see what this ends up looking like. Then I bought all the content purely because that was a 40th birthday present, getting the last 20 or 25 pieces or whatever it was to get all the content. I did that, and yeah, I didn’t realistically think I would be able to do either of the awards, let alone both. I just started taking small steps in that general direction, and then next thing you know, it started to become a bit more real, and then I actually had to focus up on a few things, mainly oval.
You won with all the cars before you won with all the tracks. Would you consider then that winning on all the tracks was more difficult, or would you still say that winning with all the cars was more difficult, or were they about the same?
For me, the cars were easier, but I think it really depends on what your skill set is. I know of a couple that are close to finishing the tracks but are nowhere near close to finishing the cars. The reason why I found the cars easier is because, for want of a better word, I could bulls**t a lot of the oval cars. Like, as in the NASCAR Next Gen, I won over at Long Beach, COTA, and Chicago. The NASCAR Trucks, I did all in one week at Willow Springs. The 87s, I did all at Willow Springs. Then, the Xfinity car, I did all at COTA. Even the Silver Crown, I did at Watkins Glen. A huge portion of the oval cars, I could actually do on road courses. The Road licenses are my strongest. A lot of the left turners aren’t as good on road, so putting one of those cars on road, it gives me more of an advantage. For me, that made the cars award slightly easier than tracks.
One other thing that I noticed, you’re 4.99 across the board, 4.99 Safety Rating in every single license, all five of the iRacing license levels. With all that winning, how important is it to you to do it in a clean manner, to maintain that high safety racing while also competing against other top competition out there?
It’s probably the most important aspect for me is to race with respect and just to race others how I want to be raced and to hopefully be a role model to others out there that winning doesn’t mean wrecking to win. A good friend of mine, Justin Krizenesky, likes to lay claim to being the safest driver on iRacing, and he jokingly refers to me as the second safest. So, yeah, it’s. That to me is, you know, because particularly with my health condition now, I am not, I’m not even able to get in a rental cart just at the, you know, local rental cart place. So I’m not going to be able to race in real life. So I want to, I, I treat this like I would racing in real life. So I would, you know, and that includes, you know, pretending that if your car gets damaged, you’ll have to pay for those repairs, that sort of mindset. So, you know, and on my channel, I try and show how I race and talk about those things and try to develop a sense that other people can see that it can be done and to encourage others to race in that manner because that’s, that’s what’s gone downhill the most since I’ve been on iRacing. I think, is just the general respect that everyone has for each other on track.
Class A Licenses, all at 4.99 Safety Rating. Even his retired Road License was frozen at 4.99.
Since you’ve earned the Alien, there are four new cars that have been added to the service that you haven’t won with yet, including the two new Formula Vee’s, the EuroNASCAR and the Porsche 992.2. They’re not going to take ‘The Alien’ award away from you because you’ve earned it and that was, you know, at that time, but do you think that you’ll try to keep winning in new content to maintain that status that you’ve won with everything and everywhere?
Since I won ‘The Alien’, I’ve actually won in 10 more cars since getting the award. I’m actually attempting the EuroNASCAR today and I will have a go at the Vee’s later in the season. As for the Porsche Cup, I don’t really like the car, and the series is possibly one of, if not the worst series to race in on iRacing, so it would need a very specific set of circumstances for me to attempt to tick that one off. But, as new cars and tracks get added in general, yes, I will be trying to win in them. The Porsche will still be on the list, but I will need to see a very small list of tracks that if it goes to that at the right time and I get the right field, yes, I might attempt it. For the most part, I really don’t want anything to do with that series.
True! I didn’t account for the fact that, yeah, you’d won that award last year and we’ve had four build releases since then, so there would be more cars on that list that I didn’t see that you have already won in.
EDITOR’S NOTE: That same day, Karl messaged me on Discord and let me know that he had ticked off the EuroNASCAR at Snetterton 200.
I believe you have 149 of the 191 possible iRacing awards. Are there any other awards on that list that you might be looking to complete next?
I’m not a long way from 5,000 iRating in Dirt Oval. While I’m not chasing iRating, one of my ‘sort-of’ goals going forward is to get better at Dirt Oval. I think I’m getting the hang of it, and it doesn’t feel a long way away to become or get to a level I’m happy with. If I do get to that level, then 5,000 happens without chasing it, so that’s hopefully within the next season or so. I might also go for the 500 Time Trials because I’ve only got 80-ish to go. The last-to-first ones—not necessarily last-to-first, but gaining 40%, or 60%, or 80% of the positions in a race—I might have a go at some of those. I don’t really like the idea of those, but I will try and do them and show that it can be done cleanly and politely.
I’ve got to tell some of my co-workers to get in some of your races too because you need some I Let You Win Awards, it seems.
Karl Samson
I was gonna raise that actually. Yes, because I just need to literally get in a race with some of them for a few of those beating an iRacing Staff Member. I’d be happy to just coordinate a few of those. That would be useful.
Do you have any other general goals on iRacing moving forward? Are you specifically an ‘officials’ guy or do you also do leagues every now and then? Do you partake in any Hosted Sessions? Do you compete in Time Attacks?
There is a New Zealand-based league run by Kiwi Sim Racing on Tuesday night which I do try to make, but my son has karate that night, and by the time I’m home from that, had dinner, and with my limited amount of energy, it’s often a tough one for me to make, but that is excellent racing. Aside from that, I generally do just do officials. In terms of goals, there is a website called the Duncathlon. What this is, it tracks your best result in every series. There are 137 series on iRacing currently. As from what I can work out, I’ve driven in the most series, and I’ve won in the most series. So my aim, I’ve won in 113 of them and there’s a bunch more that I would like to try and tick off there. Part of that’s going to be learning how to build setups and what have you. I’ve been chipping away at that for a while. I’ve been going for these other awards, and my other goal is that now that I’m somewhat freed up to just race and car and track combos that I enjoy instead of what I need to do to tick off certain goals.
Have eSports ever crossed your mind? Would you partake?
I did try to qualify for the Rallycross World Championship in 2019, 2020, and 2021. But, in most of those years, I ended up playing more of a supporting role in terms of practice partner, setup builder, and mental coach for a few boys that did make those series in each year, and that was definitely cool to be a part of. Going forward, I have no aspirations to compete in them because that experience showed me that how I like to go racing—which I suppose you could call me a gentleman racer—it does not line up with the ‘win at all costs, drive through everyone’ mentality that it takes to qualify in those series.
In saying that, I might do the Coke Series qualifiers for fun, possibly, and I might also have a go in some of the Dirt Oval qualifiers provided I get to a level I’m happy with just to, not necessarily to try and qualify, but just because they should be good races. If Rallycross ever got a World Championship again, yes, I would do those races, but again, not with the intent to qualify, but just to have a go, I suppose, and actually get to race some high quality Rallycross again. I think that’s where once the money gets involved, things turn a bit crazy. So much so that I realized that it’s not for me, but I love being a part of helping the other guys qualify and help because the mental load and the stresses and strains was enormous. It was a lot better for me to be on the sidelines helping and spotting and that sort of thing.
Of all the races that you’ve done across all the different disciplines, across all the, you know, different cars and tracks and everything, is there any one race in particular that you always think back on fondly?
I have three, actually.
One was the 2022 Nurburgring 24. In the first race, the first time split, we were in the Top Split in the TCR, and we got the win. Whenever you finish a 24 hour race, it’s probably pretty special to just get to the end of it, to enjoy the camaraderie, and all that sort of thing. But to actually win it, that was just awesome. Everyone did their job. We drove great. It went like clockwork. A great bunch of guys I did that with, with the Kiwi Sim Racing boys.
The second one was winning in the Oval Sprint Car, because that’s an incredibly difficult car. It’s the most difficult car on the sim. It’s crazy. I knew to tick that off would take something special. I put 700 laps of practice in at The Bullring. I did a lot of setup building with my dad, who’s a mechanic who built and raced cars, and he knows that side of it. I can just drive. That’s all I know. I managed to get a race to go official. I think it was a 3,700 Strength of Field, and I had one of the regulars right on my rear end for like the last half of the race, and I managed to get it done. It was the one race I did in the car, put all that effort in and got the reward. I think that’s my highest oval Strength of Field win.
Karl’s winning Aston Martin (left) from last year’s iRacing Portimão 1000.
The last one was last year’s Portimão 1000. I did that with my Kiwi Sim Racing friend, Matthew Pluck. We were Top Split of the Aussie time zone race. It was a 4,200 Strength of Field. We were in the Aston Martin GT1. It was a very strong field and we somehow we didn’t just win, but we won by just over a lap, and that was just such a feeling of accomplishment. Things went wrong as well, like I had to do a full stint with no force feedback. We had issues, but we still came out of it and had a result like that, it was just unbelievable.
Due to my health, I’m no longer doing endurance racing. I sort of can’t rely on myself to be able to do longer stints. To be able to look back on those races, it’s a pretty fond memory. The Aston Martin GT1 is one of my favorite cars in the sim, and that race was so much fun last year.
Last thing I wanted to know. I am constantly trying to find any iRacing to Reality stories out there. You’ve got to have a story of racing against like a real-world driver, right?
Oh, yes. Back during COVID in 2020, Brendon Hartley, a New Zealand racing driver who’s raced in Formula One multiple times, and a Le Mans winner, he set up a thing to help local businesses here, whereby he got 20 New Zealand professional racers and created a league where 20 just New Zealand iRacers would get a chance to race with them. He did it over five nights, whereby each night there would be 50 or 60 of us that would try and qualify into the race with the real racers.
I did two or three of those weeks and it was just an incredible experience. My first race in that league, I was on the grid next to Scott McLaughlin and I finished the race between Earl Bamber and Brendon Hartley, and Liam Lawson was there, Shane Van Gisbergen… a whole bunch of V8 Supercars drivers, Mad Mike the Drifter. Just so many names you’d know and recognize and to be on the grid with them and have them in voice chat talking with each other, it was unbelievable, it was incredible.
I have been in some other races with Shane, and he is unbelievable. A year or so ago, I was able to find this thing where someone had worked out where people would be ranked by total iRating and I think I’m in the top-50 or thereabouts on the whole service, and Shane’s ahead of me. When I’m on track with him, I am well aware that he is a long ways better than me. It’s just mind blowing how good he is, and that’s in any car.
I used to run in a series with Shane back during COVID times and there was this Michigan race in the ‘87 car, and I thought I had everything going my way that night, and here comes SVG just blows by me. I was so dumbstruck by how fast and how far ahead he got in just a short amount of time. This is before he was even doing the real-world NASCAR stuff, it’s crazy how good he is.
I’ve gone and done this in every car at every track. It’s like, he is so much better than me in every car at every track. It’s just unbelievable. When I see what he does in NASCAR, in any series he’s done anywhere, it’s like, yeah. There’s a reason he’s doing what he’s doing, and why I’m not. He’s a real eye opener for me. Another one who’s like that is Brodie Kostecki, who’s another V8 Supercar champion that has done a NASCAR race. He is seriously good in any car.
Just seeing any real drivers you get to race against, it’s always a pleasure and always shows you why it is they do what they do, for sure.
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