The story of someone going from gaming in their bedroom to then stepping into a 200mph rocket has become almost commonplace now, but Luca is beginning to wonder if it's even worth pursuing at all.
Sim racing, it is all in the name after all. With the skills that can be carried over from a computer game using the same controls into the real thing, it has become a viable proving ground for hopeful drivers to not only show what they have got, but also now get into the real thing. The pathway from virtual to real-life racing has proven so successful that it would be impossible to list all prominent examples.
The first major driver to get into motorsport through video games was Lucas Ordóñez, the first GT Academy winner. Since then, we have had Jimmy Broadbent, William Byron, Norbert Michelisz, and whilst not starting in the virtual world, some F1 drivers have a big sim racing footprint like Max Verstappen and Lando Norris.
It is obviously a great thing to see how so many drivers are afforded opportunities now that they would not have gotten if they could not display their abilities in such a relatively inexpensive way. But it has happened so often now and proven not to work in the long term that it almost feels like it is hardly worth pursuing anymore.
Sim to Real: Not Viable
I was recently watching a video by Kevin Ellis Jr, who is someone that people may recall from broadcasted iRacing Special Events, Porsche Esports Supercup and Rennsport R1. Ellis was a member of the Apex Racing Team for the longest time until he switched to gaming esports organisation Virtus.pro for their short-lived sim racing program, and recently signed for Drago Racing.
Unfortunately, following the completion of the Nürburgring 24-hour iRacing Special Event, Drago folded and released all of their drivers. This has followed a rather worrying trend that we have seen in competitive pro sim racing in the past few years, a real drop off with major championships that these teams and drivers need to compete in.
In a video following Drago's closure, Ellis expressed frustration at a lot of the major sim racing championships having to lower their prize pools. Rennsport R1, as of this year, is no longer affiliated with the Esports World Cup, meaning no more hefty pay-outs to the teams, and the Porsche Esports Supercup has heavily reduced its prize pool. To make up for it, they have provided an opportunity for one of the top five drivers to get a race seat in a real-world Porsche one-make series.
Incidentally, I know there will be a lot of people who will revel in all of this because of this incredibly backward belief that nobody should be earning a living from 'Playing Video Games'. But I believe it was Mark Twain who said "Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life" so ask yourself if finding a way of making a living with competitive sim racing is really a bad thing, especially as the real racing path is clearly unviable for these guys.
That, of course, leads very neatly into the point of this article, and that is how this promise of going from the virtual racecar into the real thing, whilst having proven possible, hardly ever seems to translate into anything in the long term.
One and Done
Perhaps one of sim racing's most prominent converts, James Baldwin, won the second edition of World's Fastest Gamer, and the prize was a season of GT3 racing. Whilst initially set for a season in the GT World Challenge Europe series, the impact of COVID instead resulted in the plan changing to British GT, and it started off immensely well for Baldwin with a debut win.
Together, Baldwin and teammate Michael O'Brien completed the season with Jenson Team Rocket RJN and ended up fourth in the final standings with three poles and three additional podium finishes. For the following year, it was expected that Baldwin would pick up another full-time campaign, but instead, as he put it, the people behind WFG who funded his season just "ghosted" him. They just stopped communicating with him and he found himself on the sidelines.
Baldwin has run the occasional race with the Garage 59 team when they are a driver short, and has achieved two class podium finishes with third at the 2024 GT World Challenge finale at Jeddah, and second after starting on pole at last year's Nürburgring round. It is especially frustrating to see, knowing just how good he truly is and not seeing that enough potential sponsors are taking notice despite how marketable that these competition organisers would have you believe.
I had the fortune of meeting James after I won two tickets to attend last year's British GT round at Oulton Park, and we got talking about how the competitive sim racing scene is on a downward trajectory. But if by some miracle he got a fully paid-for race seat, that would not be such an issue for him, and besides, he is now part of Verstappen Sim Racing, and we see Chris Lulham's real-world racing presence expanding as a result, so hopefully that will also be the case for Baldwin.
Going back to Baldwin's WFG competition win, that only resulted in a single season's worth of racing, which is hardly enough, surely. Of course, they cannot just create money out of thin air, but for all of the marketing they get out of it, the process almost feels like they figuratively milk these gamers for all they are worth and leave them out to dry after getting use out of them.
In Ellis' video, he mentions how he is not interested in racing in the real world and just wants to be able to make a living out of sim racing. Whilst it might be many people's dreams of making the leap into the real thing, you would have to be doubly fortunate to not only make it but be able to also get paid for real life racing. They are selling this idea that this one season's worth of racing will be enough to keep providing opportunities and soon, maybe just maybe, you will be able to make it a sustainable career path.
But more often than not, you get a race or if you are lucky, a full season and as soon as you have a taste for it, you are then ripped away.
One of the very few exceptions to this rule is Jimmy Broadbent, and that is most likely because he has been able to overcome the dead-end nature of sim to real racing by becoming a personality more than strictly a racer. We see all of these major sim racing esports events being broadcast, and they get a fraction of the viewership compared to the competing driver's POV streams.
Ultimately, sim racers are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. Sticking to virtual racing is quickly becoming difficult without a sufficient amount of high-profile championships to compete in, but a single race or even season in real-life motorsport is not going to guarantee that it will become a viable career path. With how saturated it has become, the sim to real life racing path just seems to no longer be as lucrative as it once was.
Unless these real racing opportunities become way more long-term for sim racers, it just seems that anyone thinking they can go from the sim rig into a real car is just - and it pains me to say it - kind of naïve. Sim racing has proven time and time again to be a solid means of proving oneself to be able to drive actual cars, with its lower barrier of entry allowing the cream of the crop to truly rise to the top.
But if there is no money backing these guys, then what even is the point? I hope things can change, but I just do not see it happening any time soon.
Do you believe that sim racing can still prove a viable pathway into real-life motorsport? Let us know in the comments and join the discussion in our motorsport forum!
