| Title | Sim racing gets into the lead during the pandemic |
| Author | Nick Diamon |
| Posted in | News |
| When | March 25, 2020 |
Sports have taken a beating during the global novel coronavrius pandemic. Games are happening in empty venues or being delayed indefinitely, which impacts the viewership and money the events can generate…
This is actually really awesome. To think just a few years ago the state of the art were the Papyrus Indy500, nowadays you almost think it’s real life.
and INDYCAR
and sportscars (Sebring was held last weekend)
and F1
Super Sebring was the best of the two pro races last weekend. I think I linked to it somewhere on Qt3. Look up Moradness on Twitch to see his VR setup.
I’m excited to see IndyCar on Saturday. Some of them are really well versed and skilled at iRacing and some are not. There’s an article on Racer.com with Alexander Rossi and how he’s struggling to get up to speed for Saturday. It’s all good stuff.
The fact that IndyCar is the one racing series I try to watch more than a few times a year and that they’re racing at one of my favorite tracks and that I’m starved for sports content means I’m also looking forward to this (today at 4 eastern). Even better is that almost all the real drivers are participating—Scott Dixon’s not there (but Aussie V8 series driver Scott McLaughlin is if you require a Kiwi) and neither is Marco Andretti. On the other hand, Jimmie Johnson from NASCAR is there. I watched a bit of one of the RFactor virtual races a few weekends back and lost interest since the sim racers were much better than the real ones. I don’t follow sim racing at all so had no real rooting interest other than Rosenqvist. So, limiting it to real drivers is more in line with my interests.
The IndyCar race was great. Karam had it wired but it was clear that one mistake and Rosenqvist would have been there. He also dodged a bullet when Kirkwood lost it in front of him. I thought it was a much better race than the NASCAR event if only because they didn’t have yellows so you screwed up and you were a lap down. Scott Speed proved that when he nosed into the fence and decided he had to reset to the pits and was immediate a lap off the pace despite running up front to that point.
Will Power acquitted himself really well too. Overall it was a great event and Diffey, Bell and Tracy were great on the call. They treated it all with the seriousness it deserves when it’s pros out there. My brother and I think they need to show the drivers at their homes. Get the Twitch feeds if you have to, but I want to see them driving. I looked around and saw Askew’s and it was fun to watch that. I would love to see that on the broadcast.
Good stuff.
NASCAR drivers really aren’t taking to virtual racing all that well.
And you thought rage quitting was bad!
Just like Twitch!
Can’t wait for his apology video where he’s sorry if you were offended and, actually, calling him a racist is the most racist thing of all.
His apology is in the article:
“I made a mistake, said the word that should never, ever be said,” Larson said. “There is no excuse for that. I wasn’t raised that way. It is just an awful thing to say. I feel very sorry for my family, my friends, my partners, the NASCAR community and especially the African American community. I understand the damage is probably unrepairable and I own up to that. But I just want to let you all know how sorry I am and I hope everyone is staying safe during these crazy times.”
I’m sure there’s some game theory there but that’s still what I would want him to say.
It’s an actual apology, so that’s good. Somewhere, Willy T. Ribbs is saying “see!”
Meanwhile, the Aussie V8s have had a couple virtual events now and for a collection of upside down bogans on terrible internet connections they’re doing a solid job. They have most of the regular commentary crew in with more esports-experienced on hand and the drivers are all in their race suits with sponsor decal boards behind in shot on the in-person camera views.
They need to learn to tone it down on lap one, but the racing has been good so far.
It also says a lot about the quality of Codemaster’s official F1 game that Max Verstappen can’t be seen in their series, but has shown up now in the middle-of-the-night Aussie events on iRacing.
I used to be into this hardcore back around 2000. Had the gated shifter, clutch pedal setup and we played on Papyrus’ NASCAR series. Was pretty amazing playing in a good league. After each season we would always find 1-3 of the players were pros that were under fake names and they would reveal themselves. Tony Stewart did it. I think Kevin Harvick as well. I remember the year Chicago’s new track debuted and at least one driver had no practice time on the real track so he ran it in the league and ended up grabbing pole and credited the game.
Most of the drivers agreed that the sim is actually super close to the real thing but harder since they can’t feel the car slipping and the g’s letting them know when to lift.
I learned there are a lot more real life rally drivers on the DiRT Rally 2.0 leaderboards than even I would have expected after the Kiwi drivers replaced their lost real life national rally championship events with some virtual ones. No wonder why some of those names on the leaderboards are so darn quick.
Makes ever being able to match them feel just that little bit more rewarding at times.