A historic opportunity for sim racing

Deprived of real-world competition, the sports world is increasingly turning to the virtual world. Formula 1 will thus hold virtual Grand Prix races with drivers and stars until the season can be officially launched.

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Video games are an important communication tool for new generations, who are increasingly less interested in traditional television. Especially with the soaring costs of careers in the real world, the virtual realm is particularly appealing for nurturing new talents in motorsports. All F1 teams now have an esports team, and these drivers are also utilized in the teams’ simulators to advance the development of the race cars during race weekends.

Last week, Jean-Eric Vergne had a keen sense by jumping on the opportunity presented by the last-minute cancellation of the Australian Grand Prix. The co-founder of the eSports team Veloce launched the idea of #NotAusGP, aimed at having racing drivers (with Lando Norris leading the way) compete online alongside gamers and athletes from other fields, such as footballer Thibaut Courtois. Given the success of the initiative (Lando Norris set a viewer record on his Twitch account), it was decided to repeat the experience this weekend with the #NotBahGP on the virtual Sakhir circuit.

Faced with such a trend, F1 has decided to follow suit and offer its own series of virtual Grand Prix. Thus, during each of the seven race weekends that have been canceled or postponed so far, an online event on F1 2019 will bring together drivers from the current grid and stars, without Liberty Media revealing the names of the two categories… We can imagine that drivers like Lando Norris or Max Verstappen will certainly be involved, but it will be interesting to see who else will join them.

In order not to favor the biggest users of the official game, it has been decided to adopt identical settings and a mild damage management, while the duration of the event will be limited to 50% of the actual race, which is 28 laps in the case of Bahrain. For the events that are not included in the game (Vietnam and Zandvoort), it has been planned to use another track. For all practical purposes, it has been specified that the ranking of each of these virtual races will not earn points for the official world championship standings…

F1 is not the only discipline to adopt such a stance since Nascar announced yesterday that it will also have its own race this Sunday, with 35 drivers from the three categories (equivalent to F3 to F1) participating in the same event. This will even be broadcast on FOX, the official TV broadcaster of the discipline.

These initiatives can provide top-tier exposure to eSports and truly make it an industry of the future, capable of competing with real events.

With the participation of www.racingbusiness.fr

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