F1 and NASCAR races are canceled, but sim racing events take their place

For many, the cancellation of major sporting events was when the coronavirus pandemic first truly felt. But while baseball, basketball, and football fans wonder when they’ll see players back in action, racing fans don’t have to wait – because many of their favorite drivers have been taking part in online sim racing competitions staged in the days since the first real races were canceled.

The first few of these replacement sim races, held last weekend, were successful in a way that surprised even the organizers. Now many of the people they applied have spent the intervening week trying to figure out how that momentum can be used to close the gap left by real-world racing, while fans around the world are at home in a collective effort try to spread a worldwide virus.

It probably won’t be that difficult. The success of these first few replacement races was a testament to how far sim racing has come during the rise of esports (and the era of Twitch), but it also sheds light on a truth that many motorsport fans have become aware of: a new era of competitive, virtual motorsport has arrived.

Despite much buzz and buzz from the best racing series in the world, Formula 1, NASCAR and IndyCar decided just over a week ago to cancel their Sunday races and suspend their seasons in the face of a growing pandemic. For F1 and IndyCar, that meant dumping their respective season openers, the Australian Grand Prix and the St. Petersburg Firestone Grand Prix. For NASCAR, that meant giving up the annual race at the Atlanta Motor Speedway – usually the most watched race of the season outside the Daytona 500.

But within minutes of those races being canceled, people like TJ Majors started calling and sending text messages.

Majors is the “spotter” for the # 22 NASCAR team, which means that he will be on the stands every Sunday during the season and let the driver know (by radio) which cars are around him when the safe to change lanes, things like that. So it’s no surprise that he contributed to a virtual replacement for the canceled race in Atlanta. After all, it is literally his job to look for other people.

“When I got home on Friday, there was just a really weird feeling,” Majors explained in an email to The edge. “I was hanging out with my daughters and when we got confirmation that everything was down for two weeks, I started thinking about all the people in the NASCAR industry who would probably be free to do something on Sunday.”

Over lunch for his daughters, Majors said he thought he and some of his colleagues might be able to join an already planned race that iRacing, a very popular sim racing game that also allows a large number of online racing competitions. But it didn’t take long for Majors to get texts from his NASCAR colleagues about starting them own instead, race on the in-game version of Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Majors thought it was a good idea, so he called iRacing’s executive vice president to get the green light. He also began contacting NASCAR personalities, such as Dale Earnhardt Jr. (That retired last year after multiple concussions), rising warrior William Byron and Chad Knaus, who was the crew chief for each of Jimmie Johnson’s seven championships.

Majors also mentioned James Pike of Podium eSports, which makes broadcast quality productions of sim races. “I got the call from TJ on Friday afternoon and he told us about the idea they had come up with,” Pike said in a call with The edge. “He asked if we were interested in broadcasting the race, and I said,” are you kidding? Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and all those other drivers will run in our race? Where should I sign? “”

Facing a sudden interest, Majors said that he and fellow spotter Kevin Hamlin quickly realized – like everything in NASCAR – that they needed good branding.

“One of the funniest moments was [Hamlin] called me to ask for the name of the race, “Majors said. He kept thinking about the movie The replacements, so he suggested that, with a minor tweak, “The Replacements 100,” a nod to the number of laps they would run.

When they started promoting The Replacements 100 on social media, Majors, Hamlin, Pike, and others received dozens of calls, text messages, and instant messages from people all over NASCAR who wanted to get involved.

In an interview with Pike before the race, Hamlin suspected that about 50 percent or more of the people working in and around NASCAR are already using iRacing and have home setups – including a steering wheel, pedals, and often custom PCs – ready to use. So he and Majors tried to fill a field that reflected this marquee, admitting fellow NASCAR crew members, as well as some public relations and social media specialists. But a few more drivers drove on, including Parker Kligerman, who has raced in all of NASCAR’s top three series, and is now racing in the official eNASCAR series of iRacing.

“When everything failed and all real races were canceled, my phone immediately blew up with people saying ‘let’s run a race!’ So I wasn’t surprised to see it all come together so quickly, “Kligerman explained. “It was cool to see everyone behind it.”

The race went without a lot of problems. There were a few more wrecks than you’d find in the eNASCAR series. And yes, at some point (and while fight for the main role, no less), Pike said that Kligerman’s computer was trying to force a Windows update, causing him to run straight into the wall. But the combination of iRacing’s realism and the professional quality broadcast of Podium eSports was an excellent simulacrum – a ‘substitute’ race in almost every sense of the world.

The result was a very good audience for a sim race, according to iRacing. The main race stream on Twitch peaked at 23,000 simultaneous viewers and delivered over 70,000 unique viewers during the two-hour broadcast. Race highlights were even hosted on NASCAR.com “Pretty impressive with almost no announcement or advertising,” Kevin Bobbit, iRacing’s marketing director, said in an email.

One reason for its popularity, Kligerman said, is the similarity of the skills. “It’s the only esport to run so parallel to the real world,” he explained. “The reason you see so many drivers in the real world doing this all the time is that not only is it fun, but it can literally feel like I’m doing something that can help me as a real driver in many ways.”

That is of course not the case with other sports. “If some kid beats LeBron James on NBA 2K, it doesn’t mean that kid will stand on a basketball court to beat him,” Kligerman said. “But the funny thing about this stuff is if someone joins in and irritates me, or outdoes William Byron? If they were given the chance to get into a real car, that could very well translate. ”

And much of that just comes from the technology that’s at play, Pike said.

“Anyone worth salt runs with a wheel and pedals, just like in real life. The only thing really removed is all the G-forces, but many of the same types of skills are much more directly applicable in sim racing compared to shooting a jumper at a controller or shooting a jumper in real life, ” said he.

Even Majors, who watches over a driver driving 200 miles per hour every weekend, agrees to some degree. “Real racing requires an enormous amount of skill and courage,” he said. “Racing Sim is still incredibly difficult.”

Across the virtual pond, and hours before the green flag waved at the Atlanta NASCAR virtual race, two other replacement races such as F1 stars Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, IndyCar drivers Simon Pagenaud and Felix Rosenqvist drew, and a bevy of popular professional sim racers and YouTube personalities. (While IndyCar is an American sport, the ability to drive its open-wheel cars often translates better to other open-wheel series like F1, even in the sim world.)

And just like how The Replacements 100 was born, these sim races were pieced together in a wave of calls and messages during the aftermath of the decision to cancel real-world races.

The first to be announced was The races All-Star Esports Battle – a race in racing sim rFactor 2 which was promoted by a relatively new motorsport news site, The race, and the parent company, Torque Esports. But while The race Perhaps unknown to most, one of the organizers was a man who built some of the cornerstones of sim racing for more than a decade: Darren Cox.

Cox started Nissan’s “GT AcademyIn 2008, when the best video game racing games in the world competed against each other in the popular PlayStation racing simulation Gran Turismo, where the eventual winner gets the chance to become a real driver. While it seemed like a lark at the time, GT Academy (and a spiritual, multi-platform successor created by Cox called ‘World’s Fastest Gamer’) ultimately helped prove the skills that make a good sim racing driver and the ones needed to drive the real thing.

“It was the starting point for many things that people are doing these days,” Cox, who is now helping to lead the Mercedes-Benz F1 esports team, said in a phone call last week.

Cox says he started hearing “rumblings” that the Australian Grand Prix would be canceled about a day before the F1 announcement, and immediately thought, “You know what? We have to do something for the fans. We should try to race on Sunday. ”

He cooperated The race and Torque announced the event, saying drivers – including Verstappen, Pagenaud, Rosenqvist and even ex-F1 and IndyCar star Juan Pablo Montoya – are reaching out to ask how they can get involved.

“I said, look, you know, let’s do it, I’ll finance it. We didn’t confirm drivers. We didn’t know if anyone was coming. And it was really that great old fashioned line,” build it and they will come “” said Cox. “And they did, you know. And now I can be on record saying that no one was paid to be at that race. No one asked for money. No one asked for a “Nobody asked for specific terms. Nobody asked for a favor.”

Unlike The Replacements 100, Cox and The race has not attempted to make a virtual substitute for the canceled Australian Grand Prix. Instead, they said the track and car everyone would compete in would be a surprise. They also filled the field with sim racers and YouTube personalities to keep things light. The result? Hundreds of thousands of views, numbers that Cox called ‘insane’, although given the circumstances he was not all the way surprising.

“The fans are starved of racing. Nobody wants to watch the news. We all want to be distracted, and this is just a light-hearted way of getting through a difficult time for everyone, ”said Cox.

The other big sim race of the day was heralded as a direct replacement for the canceled F1 Australian Grand Prix. Dubbed the “Not the AUS GP”, it was set up by Veloce Esports, a company that deploys teams in different esports disciplines.

Jamie MacLaurin, one of the founders of Veloce, said in a phone call late last weekend that as soon as the Australian Grand Prix was canceled, “we sat down as a team and thought, ‘can we get this done?’”

“It was hard not to get too positive about something, given the current circumstances,” said MacLaurin. “But our philosophy was to give fans something they would miss. And esports can be done from the comfort of your own home. ”

MacLaurin and Veloce experienced a similar domino effect as Majors and Hamlin when organizing their race. “We have a good network in the real racing world,” said MacLaurin. “Once we got a few drivers on board, they messaged their friends. In the end, we had to send people away because so many people were so eager to participate. ”

MacLaurin said Veloce was deliberately trying to assemble a field that wasn’t hyper competitive, just like the organizers of The Replacements 100. “There is a time and place for competitive races, but with the nature of the corona virus we wanted something a little more light-hearted, which is why we involved some YouTubers who … may not be the best drivers been, “said MacLaurin, laughing.

When Sunday was over, F1 driver Lando Norris headed the field of sim racing drivers and YouTubers as they competed in a condensed virtual version of the Australian Grand Prix using the game. F1 2019. The sim race drew remarkable attention, with Norris’ Twitch stream alone for much of the broadcast 70,000 simultaneous viewers. MacLaurin said that at some point, a total of about 175,000 people watched the race, combining Norris’ songs with the main broadcast and streams from other competitors.

“We had all hoped we would reach this number, but to be realistic, I never thought it could happen,” said MacLaurin.

One reason the Veloce event attracted so much interest is that many of the people involved have built their own followers on Twitch and YouTube that go beyond competitive sim races, according to Hazel Southwell, a motorsport journalist and co-founder of Inside Electric, a news site dedicated to the electric racing series Formula E..

The Veloce race ‘had less big names in theory if you come from the perspective of’ real ‘motorsport than The racesSouthwell said. But the race eventually drew large numbers because drivers like Norris also ran their own streams. “Lando is famous with an F1 fan as an F1 driver, but for many people on Twitch he’s just a funny guy who plays PUBG and has a screaming laugh and they think it’s cute enough to subscribe to.”

In February 1979, a surprise, record-breaking snowstorm bury much of the east coast of the United States under one to two feet of snow, causing millions to crave their homes for a weekend. The timing of the storm was critical to NASCAR, Pike said, because not only did the Daytona 500 take place, but it was the first time a race of that length was broadcast live from start to finish on television.

As a result, he said, “A lot of people tuned in to that race – and it just so happened that the race itself was one of the best races of all time.”

With half a lap to go, NASCAR legends Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough fought for the lead. Yarborough tried a daring pass for the win, the left side of his car chewed in the grass. Allison moved on. The two cars got confused and crashed into the wall. Another NASCAR legend (perhaps the NASCAR legend) sneaked by to win his sixth Daytona 500: Richard Petty.

“That race started single-handedly with NASCAR’s expansion from a predominantly southeastern sport to a national sport,” Pike said. “And we immediately recognized that we were entering [last weekend] that this was kind of our ’79 Daytona 500 moment. ‘

Looking at the success of the three races last weekend and what has happened since then, it seems Pike might be right. Hundreds of thousands of people not only tuned into three very different last-minute sim races, but each group of organizers – and a few others – have now held or announced new races with deeper rosters of famous names and a much bigger push marketing.

The replacements will now be a series of eight races it will take place every other week on Thursday evening. The race and Torque Esports held a second race on Saturday. Veloce is organizing a “Not the BAH GP” race instead of the canceled F1 race in Bahrain on Sunday. Existing sim racing series also see a bump. The eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing drew series in which Kligerman participated nearly 300,000 viewers for a regularly scheduled race on Tuesday evening.

The sidelined series themselves also jump into the mix. F1 announced a “virtual Grand Prix” series take the place of the canceled races. IndyCar mounts into a special series of races iRacing. And NASCAR partners with Fox Sports and iRacing to organize a pro invitational sim race that will do that be broadcast on television as well as online.

For some, validation has been going on for a long time. “Sim racing has long been a bit of a weird outlier to other esports,” said Southwell. “Not a lot of money, not a lot of enthusiasm, but things like the official F1 games that add the capacity to set up online competitions have made it much easier to access as a form of competition. Just like with something like Dota, just install the game, git gud and try a blushing good try. ”

The sim racing and streaming mix seen last week also has inherent momentum. The big drivers attract fans who may be new to sim racing. The YouTube personalities and Twitch streamers bring their own in real time and even make videos about the events before and after. And people like Norris do both.

However, growth is known to kill a good thing. And so others, like Cox, are a bit wary.

“Over the past week, we’ve figured out how we can help each other, how we can avoid collisions, which drivers will be driving and which championships they will distribute,” he said. “Now is not the time to have rivalry. This is the time to work together, that’s how the sim racing community is built.”

When asked if that sounded a bit noble, Cox replied, “Now is the time to be noble. If you cannot be noble at this time, we will never become noble. It is a terrible situation out there. “