NASCAR Racing 2003

‎Nascar Racing 2003 aka NR2003 was released in Febuary 2003 by Papyrus, as the 6th installment of the long-running Nascar Racing sim franchise. Despite its age, it is still an incredibly faithful simulator of American oval racing and depicts the sport at its peak, representing the late Generation 4 stock car with accuracy few other games can match.

Installing the game

Files here!

• Acquire a disk image or a real copy of the game. NR2003 is not portable and will not work if not installed properly with its installer.
• Set up the game with the installer. Be patient during the video settings setup, the program may hang for a moment.
• It is no longer necessary with newer versions of Windows 10 to turn off DEP or use any compatibility options. However, older versions of Windows may still require it. For other racetime crashes, do not enable the 3D sound option.
• After setup, run the game, calibrate your controller, attempt to start a race. Then exit the game and install the patch.
• After patch setup run the game once more.
• The game is now working and ready to install mods or just turn left!

Note: because the original game used Securom DRM, you may have issues starting the game up until it is patched and the nocd is installed.

Making the game work

If the game crashes as soon as you try to enter the track, you need to replace the .exe file with the one provided in the NR2003 Encyclopedia further down this page.

If that solution doesn't work, you need to disable a Windows setting called DEP by opening a command prompt as administrator and typing in the command bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff and then restarting your PC. Keep in mind that some (Multiplayer) games might require DEP in order to work properly, so to enable it again simply type in the same command replacing AlwaysOff with AlwaysOn and restart your PC afterwards.

Blurry Texture Fix

If you are racing against a lot of cars, the textures will most likely appear blurry. In order to fix this, you'll need to edit 3 .ini files. These are core.ini, rend_dxg.ini (potentially called rend_ogl.ini or rend_d3d.ini) and player.ini. The first two can be found in the base folder where you installed NR2003, the third one is found in the folder of your profile, found within the players folder.

This website will calculate how you should edit certain values in these files, depending on how much memory your graphics card has and what resolution you use.

Graphics before and after the fix (note the Papyrus car and RVs next to the track)

Keep in mind that the blurry textures might return and you need to redo the fix. This is most likely when you change settings in the Config program (like changing resolution) or when you change profiles

NR2003 Encylcopedia

Most popular racing games have big mod communities and NR2003 is no exception. However, many good mods have been lost to the winds of time with many old sites closing down and being inacessible nowadays.

Luckily, we have the NR2003 Encyclopedia! A collection of mods and miscellaneous files to make the game better. Definitely worth checking out

Installing mods

Installing mods is very simple. Track mods go into the tracks folder and car mods go into the series folder.

You can then select the tracks like usual and switch the series with the arrows on the bottom of the main menu

Cars won't show up

Most car mods come with skinpacks for different seasons, which is why they won't work right away. To fix this, open the folder of the series and then rename the folder of the season you want to use to cars.