They're bad imitations of player names. They're bots.

Career mode use AI bots. No real players. Have to go online to race against real players.

Tournament mode is AI bots too. But you might see see my evil twin *Purple44. I paid $70 to get my user name into Wreckfest. ;)

The AI names are people who supported the game early in development. The avatars are just random pics though I believe.

If you want, there's mods to change the names too (though unfortunately they don't work in the Tournament). This one's my favorite:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2392469867

But for career mode, the Bugbear Devs made a 100 name list to be used in the avatars_console.avli file.

http://www.lay-zmattress.com/flatout2/purple44/Next%20Car%20Game%202023/ai-names.jpg

http://www.lay-zmattress.com/flatout2/purple44/Next%20Car%20Game%202023/ai-names2.jpg


On the PC side there the avatars_pc.avli file that has 691 user names of players that paid $50 or $70 to get there name into WF 1.

http://www.lay-zmattress.com/flatout2/purple44/Next%20Car%20Game%202023/ai-names-pc.jpg

Originally posted by HuskyDynamics:

If you want, there's mods to change the names too (though unfortunately they don't work in the Tournament). This one's my favorite:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2392469867

This one is pretty good too and is what the game used to use for the AI names. Apparently, these names are still used in the console versions of the game.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2053913332