I know it’s only a simulation (but I like it)

The 2020 motor racing season is taking place in two halves. The second half, all being well, will be a crazy, calendar-crashing affair, back on the real race tracks of the world…feel free to have a quick look at my previous column on this.

However, for the first half of the year, not only do you not need to leave your homes, but nor do the drivers.

While esports is hardly new, its form has changed somewhat in the last two months. First, we’ll quickly park the debate over whether esport is really a sport, or just a rather glamorous title for “playing games online”? The truth is somewhere inbetween, as calling it ‘playing it games’ belittles the dedication that pro sim racers have put in, and the skills they’ve developed.

Pro sim racing though, is certainly an insanely competitive field.

The way most esports competitions work, first there’s a leaderboard contest, and then a cut of the fastest drivers progress into a qualfying session and series of race heats.

Now, imagine if that happened in real life?

You may say “Well, that’s exactly what does happen?”, but it’s not quite that simple. First of all, the barrier to taking part in a sim racing hot lap competition is not much more than owning a computer.

To get your real-life racing seat at the top levels of motorsport involves a magical concoction of speed, talent, marketability, or a little dose of cash as well (or just a big dose of cash instead).

And so what we’ve now seen is pro sim racers being mixed with real-life racers to quite an extent in the last two months.

The real-life racers fall into various camps. Some who don’t do sim racing online at all; they may train in a simulator, but that’s it. So adapting to a home simulator is certainly something they can do, but they’re still on a learning curve.

Then there are some who don’t use simulators at all (and still won’t).

And then there are some who are quite used to simulator racing; for example, the current WTCR - FIA World Touring Car Cup champion Norbert Michelisz, who started his career in the 2000s this way. You can hear more on his career start on this podcast.

When you mix the pro sim racers, and the real-life racers on a racing game, you generally see it’s quite split.

We’ve already seen that come to play in both the WTCR and the SRO GT World Challenge’s first attempts, with their online races dominated by the pro sim drivers; who qualified within a few thousandths of a second of each other, and then drove around the track lap after lap with almost pixel-perfect precision.

The real-life racers behind them, it was a little more sporadic - and arguably therefore true-to-life. Some aren’t taking it too seriously of course. Others, just aren’t quite as suited to racing online as they are in the real world.

While some real-life racers are adapting fast. You only have to look at the marked improvement of last year’s nearly-WTCR champion Esteban Guerrieri between the first and second Esports WTCR series race to see he’s taking it seriously - and has been practicing - as he took the fight to some of the world’s best online racers.

Other advantages of sim racing to real life

In the simulation world, the differentiator is less “what category do you race in?”. In the sim world, there’s no real cost differential between a Formula 1 car, and a Audi TT Cup.

This means the show is even tidier online - car liveries can be cleaner, less cluttered by the designs of random sponsors - the grid isn’t formed up of multiple classes with ageing cars at the back because the teams and drivers can’t afford anything better - instead, you get a beautifully polished grid of fully balanced cars.

How the real-life series have tackled the coronavirus sim racing season

Now, with almost no exceptions, every major motor racing category has jumped on the extended off-season sim racing band wagon.

Formula 1

The FIA Formula 1 World Championship very quickly threw together an event, which set the standard for its ongoing format right on the weekend of its cancelled Australian Grand Prix. However, participation from its real-life grid has been limited; the Codemasters F1 2019 game itself, although an incredibly immersive gaming experience, is a cross between arcade racer and simulator - and as a result the virtual F1 season is mostly comprised of a mix of real-life racers, celebrities, and popular online racing YouTubers - with popular real-life racer and simmer Max Verstappen staying clear due to his preference for iRacing.

Sports cars, stock cars and IndyCar

The series that have been able to put together the most realistic portrayal of real-life races, and as a result have been able to encourage almost full fields of real-life drivers, are those who have licenced their cars on the iRacing platform - regarded as the benchmark sim racing platform, but also one of the most expensive.

The American platform has played host to virtual races of NASCAR, IndyCar, the IMSA SportsCar Championship, as well as the Australian Supercars Championship.

The sportscar powerhouse SRO kicked off with the a mixed pro sim and real racer mixed event as a pilot, but come the launch of their E-sport GT Series proper last week, decided to split the real-life racers from the pro sim racers, and in doing so produced a bumper grid of professional racers, not just from within their own discipline, but others - roping in 2009 Formula 1 champion Jenson Button, and then a last-minute addition of Ferrari Formula 1 driver Charles Leclerc.

SRO actually has both its European and American championships competing in the virtual world, and is able to take full advantage of its licenced game, Assetto Corsa Competizione, which ranks along with iRacing as one of the most realistic publicly available sim racing platforms.

Touring cars

The WTCR, which is on the RaceRoom Racing Experience platform, went with a mixed series of sim racers and real racers - with a hot lap challenge bringing in some lightning-fast gamers to compete against a handful of its real-life racers, and some invited past drivers. The WTCR perhaps suffered slightly with its generational mix of drivers this time - as unfortunately previous champions and 90s super touring graduates Gabriele Tarquini and Yvan Muller have not been convinced to join the gaming world.

Another touring car series engaged early-on is the Australian Racing Group, the licence holders of the TCR Australia Touring Car Series - which launched its ARG eSport Cup using the Audi RS 3 LMS model within iRacing. The series has many drivers from both its TCR Australia series, as well a guest spot for British Touring Car champion Ashley Sutton, who won on his debut and was leading the standings early-on.

Another championship to recently launch its virtual off season series is the FIA World Rallycross Championship - with less of a pro simulator platform, making use of its licenced product within the Codemasters DIRT Rally 2.0 game - again attracting a healthy number of its real-life racers, with a few celebrity YouTubers thrown in for good measure - and hosting a full length rallycross weekend event condensed into a mammoth three-hour session.

This weekend, the TCR Europe Touring Car Series also joins the action, opting for its own creation within the Assetto Corsa platform, which is also something it plans to licence to all regional and national TCR series.

The promoter has managed to entice a field of 25 real-life racers from the European series to take part in the opening round at a virtual Spa-Francorchamps circuit this Saturday. The race takes place just ahead of the IndyCar CHALLENGE’s season finale, a virtual running at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Is it virtually over for real racing?

It’s not real racing of course, but it’s also important to note this isn’t really esports either.

What we’re being treated to is a more of a patch; while we suffer withdrawal symptoms as we endure the longest motorsport off-season we’ve ever known - which is even more cruel as just when it was all about to get started again ahead of the Australian Grand Prix oh so long ago now.

So, you can still ‘kind of’ watch the motorsport stars we’ve been watching for years racing in some form. Some out of their comfort zones in the sim racing world, and some racing in other series we never would have seen them in otherwise - Ash Sutton in Australian touring cars, Dale Earnhardt Jnr in IndyCar, Joey Logano and Max Verstappen in V8 Supercars, or Charles Leclerc in a lawnmower race!

So we can have a bit of fun while we wait, and wait, and wait just a bit longer for the real thing.