Real Racing 3 Ea Sports
Waneta
E-Sports are big business already. The real Formula E driver was beaten by the sim racers. This 21 year old sim racer just earned more money driving a racing game than most do working for a few years. In fact, more than most real world racing drivers earn in a year in a single race!
This Bono name rang a bell (not from the lead singer of the band he was named after ). After a moment's racking of my brain I realised I raced against this kid (Bono Huis) many years ago in the FSR World Series, the peak of world sim racing then. I almost got pole at Spa that season with a low DF setup, JV 97 style . I could have earned money from Sim Racing had I stuck at it, no doubt. I was 7 tenths faster than Bono at Spa that year (2009):
After a poor start on old tyres (forgot to change them after qual!) my race was ruined by a cretinous Lee Morris, the Pastor Maldonado of the 2009 season, who took me out Rosberg style at Les Combes forcing a damaged lap and an extra pitstop to repair damage. I held fastest lap for most the race. Bono came 5th, I came 10th.
In the 10 races or so I could commit to I had 1 points finish (only points for top 8 back then!) and a few top 10s in sim racing's top echelon but the time that was needed to perfect setups to compete wasn't compatible with normal life. Think what would happen if real F1 teams had completely unlimited testing time, they'd have cars running 24/7. That's what the top sim racing teams did to perfect the setups and driving style. Teams of drivers perfecting setups. The level of driving and racing was unbelievable on the whole. The Suzuka race that year was epic, battles for the lead going lap after lap, side by side through T1 and the esses. No contact, top quality. A lot higher than many real F1 drivers IMO. Yes, none of the physicality or danger but the quality of racing is what really matters to real racers. The purity of competing.
Bono has gone on to be the Michael Schumacher of Sim racing winning many titles including 5 FSR world championships and this CES formula E race has boosted his profile further. I'm sure he has the driving talent to be a real racing driver and it would be great to see him get a test in a Formula E car.
To give you my background I've always been as big a racing and F1 as anyone here. I love cars and motorsport. Being born in the 80s I also love computer games. These passions naturally combined into racing games. From my first racing game, pole position on the Atari 2600:
The GT Academy is another successful crossover of the real and virtual disciplines, -turi.../academy/about/ producing many top racing drivers in recent years including Lucas Ordinez and Jann Mardenborough who have both won major races and championships.
The question is, can virtual racing become a popular sport in itself? I'm sure it can. As virtual reality becomes more feasible and mainstream the immersion will only increase. Computing power for graphics is almost lifelike already. In 10 years F1 might be second fiddle to Virtual Formula E.
I made a similar one in another topic but focusing more on how technology is improving so quickly that setting up a quite advanced sim station in your home was now relatively cheap. Questioning how long it would be until we saw an alternative route to top level racing. From kids starting out in karting moving to lower formula moving towards pure sim racers who have raced many more hours and from a younger age than those who took the physical route over the virtual.
The idea of kids getting into Formula 1 from 'computer games' is easily scoffed at but teams use simulators and we all know as tech gets cheaper it appears in our homes and it already is on this subject (you have to assume to sim driver also keeps up with fitness too, the whole package is a requirement obviously)
Simracing could get bigger, but I don't really see it becoming an actual alternative for real racing or equalling the success of other esports. There's one main difference here. Games like CS:GO or Dota 2 don't have their real-life versions (well, CS is based in reality but that's not what I mean) hence they offer something new and different to the public. Simracing is just a virtual version of something already existing and well established. We don't really consider FIFA or PES as competition to actual football, I can't see why it would be that much different with racing.
What I can see happening is simracing becoming more significant in driver development and training. GT Academy already proved that the skills between virtual and real racing can transfer in a pretty major way. I'd expect the two worlds to become more and more connected and intertwined.
I don't think this is quite the same thing as simracing overlaps far far far more with real racing, than pushing a couple of controller buttons whilst watching the full pitch overlaps with real footballing.
Also simracing can work as a cheap replacement for real racing which is prohibitively expensive, and dangerous. None of this applies to football, anyone can just do a kick about with their mates anywhere with no dangerous consequences. Whereas going racing round a track is a pipe dream for most.
From a competitor's perspective you're absolutely right. I was writing more about viewers as it's mostly those who matter in a popularity context. As in what does virtual racing have to offer to the public that real racing doesn't.
But these big tournaments like this are backed by huge sponsors and mainly designed to PR their series and products. Clever idea. And you have been able to win decent money in Iracing for years. What might happen is an age restricted F1 series backed by teams like Mercedes and Red Bull, I can see that as a grooming area! lol
It's popularity will rise, but I can't see it becoming a spectator sport in it's own right. It just looks silly. I struggle to watch sim races that I was in!
Oh, and that last picture. He's doing triple screens ALL WRONG!
Time will tell but it is definitely on the rise in terms of popularity. Even Forza Motorsport (which is a pretty casual racing game and no where near a sim racer) is getting into E-Sports via ESL. Just last summer they had their first tournament and the overall winner got a brand new Ford Focus RS, along with cash and prizes going to the players who finished in high positions. Also, they recently did another tournament with $150,000 in cash and prizes.
The closest i've done to sim racing was doing organized races with TORA in Forza Motorsport. Those guys eventually got recognized by the MSA and also streamed their top lobbies on motorstv.com. Pretty cool stuff considering the people running that site are just average joes. Who knows what they could do with some proper backing and a better (and more popular) racing game.
In my opinion the simracing will never take off, it is very much an isolated niche sport inside of an ocean of casual players. But the top 1% of them deserve a lot of praise. You only have to see that iracing, Rfactor2, Assetto Corsa ,Automobilista, or RBR combined are nothing against Gran Turismo or Forza player base, hardcore simulators are not for everybody, for most of the people are boring and frustrating, leading to a crash fest in the first corner in the public servers. This is not simracing, this is videogaming. If there is not a fanbase for hardcore simracing nobody will see a race, so, I don't see it taking off as a popular esport.
But, they should have a lot more recognizment, the elite of the simracers are the people with the best driving technique in the world. Because they all have the same equipment, the same resources, ilimited testing oportunities, ilimited chances to setup the car, the track limits are a lot more enforced in serious simracing than in the real life, and because they know the cars and tracks way better and they don't have their lives on the line they are pushing 100%. In 10 years one simracer can do more laps than any real driver ever.
The top 1% of this guys are used to race with 10 or 15 people able to qualify in 3 tenths of second of the pole, so they have to fight under a huge deal of stress without any chance make a mistake. And also natural selection, the best are the best purely on merit, not like in real motorsports where 90% or even more of the world population can't even mind in do a regional karting championship because how expensive is real motorsports. In simracing everybody can win at the very best driver provided he has the talent needed. In real life motorsports only god knows how may Ayrton Sennas have failed to jump categories in karting or never even had the chance to test a kart. Real life motorsports are an extremelly elitist sport, and all the nepotism we have been seeing lately shows it, you only have to see how many sons of exfootballers are in the top teams and how many expilot sons are in the 20 F1 seats available. In the Team Redline they have a lot of real life drivers, even Verstappen in in his team and trains with them and he is not the faster of them, Gregger Huttu dominated gplrank for years against +12000 competitors. it shows the level.
People think they are only guys playing a videogame, well, try iracing look a gregger huttu replay and try to take only a pair of corners as fast as him, after that you only will think that either he is blatlantly cheating or he has a super car setup, none of that is true, he is not called an alien and dominating the simracing scene for more than a 15 years for nothing, there is supreme hability and talent in what he does.
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