The $750k Formula 1 virtual battleground
In an exclusive interview with F1 Debrief, representatives from McLaren and Aston Martin discuss the F1 Sim Racing series and how the stakes are just as high in the virtual world.
Imagine a world where Ferrari is back to winning championships and three drivers stand a chance of winning a world title with a $750,000 prize pot on the line. That is exactly what F1 Sim Racing delivered.
Each of the 10 teams on the grid entered their own virtual counterparts, taking part in 12 races, with the 20 drivers consisting of experienced sim racers - some of whom are barely even 24 years-old - that spend countless hours grinding out sessions on time trial in preparation.
It is why the virtual series can often mimic what happens in the real world; close lap time margins which mean a mistake takes you from a front row start, to the back of the grid.
“A lot of people don't realise just how competitive this sport and this industry is getting,” says McLaren Shadow’s team manager, Joel Chapman. “Much like in Formula 1, there's almost as much competitiveness on track as there is off track behind the scenes.
“The gaps and the margins are so small. You’re seeing teams win championships that have two top drivers capable of getting into top ten in qualifying, finishing in top five positions race after race - that is extremely difficult to build. And the drivers capable of that are so sought after.”
One of those is 2022 F1 Sim Racing World Champion, Lucas Blakeley.
The Scottish-born 22 year-old was already known among the esports circles, but put himself on the motorsport map in 2023 when he knocked out four-time F1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel during a head-to-head heat in electric rallycross cars at the Race of Champions.
Now he drives for one of the most prestigious teams in world motorsport, representing McLaren on a virtual stage that is watched by millions of people worldwide.
So, what does it feel like to be a McLaren driver?
“It is a massive privilege,” says an excited Blakeley. “Growing up and watching them as a kid on TV, idolising the team, that is very special.
"Getting to experience some of the things that we do in and around F1 Sim Racing, whether that’s attending F1 races, getting to drive some McLaren’s, but also competing and representing McLaren Shadow.
“It’s something that, if you'd have told me five or six years ago ‘This is what you're gonna do…’ you would say ‘No, that sounds too crazy!”
Crazy it might be. The most recent championship, won by Red Bull’s Frederik Rasmussen, was one of the most competitive in its seven-year history. Blakeley scored a pole position at the Circuit of the Americas round, but missed out on a race win and was seventh overall in the close battle for drivers champion.
“Every year we always bring it up and think ‘Oh, this is the most competitive year’ And then you see the same thing the next year, and then the next year, because the level just rises and rises and the margins become so fine,” says Blakeley.
“Even in a qualifying session, the difference between being on the right side or the wrong side of our Q1 or Q2 cut off can be literally thousands of a second. You've got to be millimetre perfect, you can't mess up, you’ve got to be perfect every single lap that you perform. It demands a lot from a driver and team to make sure that you're extracting everything you can.”
The game changer
Sim racing enjoyed an explosion in popularity during the COVID pandemic and has been riding that wave ever since. Series prize pots have increased, the level of competitiveness has been raised, and it has emerged as a genuine feeder for new talent in the grassroots ladder.
Some teams have even seen the advantage of sim racers, notably Red Bull who signed 22 year-old Sebastian Job as their official sim driver in 2022. Since then, he has run test setups for Red Bull’s drivers across F3, F2 and F1, including for Max Verstappen’s 2022 win at Zandvoort.
Verstappen even flew out a sim rig from his Monaco apartment to Italy so he could drive a stint in the Virtual 24 hours of the Nurburgring. Hours later, he went on to hold off Lando Norris for the Emilia Romagna GP win in a tense last-lap thriller at Imola.
When the F1 Sim Racing series started off seven years ago under the ‘F1 Esports’ banner, none of the 10 teams took part officially and most of the drivers were selected after going through a series of qualifiers worldwide. It was open to anyone who purchased the officially licensed F1 2017 video game on any platform, but the standouts were the ones who put in the hours on sim rigs at home to achieve the perfect lap.
Now, it has a commercial rights deal with German esports organiser ESL Gaming, sponsorships from logistics and F1 global partner DHL, and sim equipment partnerships with Fanatec having reached viewership heights of over 23 million in 2021.
The series underwent its first major change in 2023, when it switched back from an internet-based series ran by Gfinity to being a LAN-based tournament ran by ESL. It was supposed to be a grand upgrade after being plagued with accusations of cheating and unfair advantages due to the online element forced by COVID.
It also brought with it some hiccups, including a cancelled event in November last year which put some question marks over its future. The 2020 champion, Marcel Kiefer, criticised the series for leaving drivers "in the dark” over its plans after some had quit school, university and other commitments to dedicate time to the cause.
It eventually returned in 2024 with a successful event at ESL’s studios in Stockholm, Sweden which was watched by more than 1.7 million people. The prize pool consisted of $60,000 paid out for the Drivers’ Championship, $640,000 for the Teams’ Championship and $50,000 for the in-season Events.
Makings of a champion
The drivers are all professionally contracted to the teams, which in itself consists of between six and ten people. This includes three drivers, an engineer for each driver, a team manager, and in some cases a physiotherapist.
It’s a surprising amount of effort for a video game tournament. But what makes a successful team?
Chapman’s role encompasses looking after the relationships between key personnel, the team’s branding, and talent scout all in one. It’s his job to identify where there are opportunities to increase performance or support them, ensuring they are in the best place to stay competitive.
They also work with Veloce, a multifaceted sports company that participates in both real and virtual championships and rivals McLaren in the all-electric off road championship Extreme E.
“We've worked with them for about four or five years now,” explains Chapman. “They helped supply the team that we won the championship with in 2022. So it’s very much a joint effort when we're looking at drivers, who are rising through the ranks, to identify who we think might be a strong fit for the team.”
This is where there is a lot of crossover with the actual F1; it’s not any one individual that brings success like Adrian Newey or Lewis Hamilton. F1 is the epitome of a team sport, and Chapman recognises the importance of this when putting together their roster.
“It's a very intense four or five months and requires a lot of focus. So getting that team chemistry is essential. We retain our talent really well and I'm proud of our approach to doing so. A lot of that comes from building the right team of independent individuals that can function together in a kind of cohesive team environment.”
At the latest finals, McLaren ran Blakeley, fellow Scottish driver and 18 year-old Wilson Hughes, and 22 year-old Spanish driver Dani Moreno. Much like Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, Chapman ensures there is a lot that goes into making sure the drivers feel like they are part of the team.
“Anyone that drives for McLaren has McLaren on their chest, we want them to feel like a McLaren driver. They're coming to the technology centre and we're giving them experiences outside of their F1 Sim Racing time. We've had Lucas doing some real world driving and Wilson [Hughes] as well, making sure they feel - as they should - like a driver for McLaren.”
When they are told which tracks they will be racing at, the drivers will spend hours at home on their sim rigs practicing qualifying simulations and race simulations. It is very similar to how F1 teams go about their race weekends, but as Blakeley points out, there is one key difference.
“We're unrestricted with testing unlike the real F1, which is quite the opposite these days where every lap is super precious. For us, we can jump on whatever we like, we're not restricted. That's why the margins are so close, as we are having to chase extreme levels of perfection.
“We need to make sure that we're preparing every scenario. With the championship we just finished, we had three weeks between the second and third event. We had five tracks to prepare, so thats five qualifying’s in the dry, five qualifying’s on intermediate, five qualifying’s in the wet. All of that, but in race trim.”
It’s not your regular nine-to-five job, adds Blakeley: “Then you've got the strategies, test racing, set up creation, working with your engineers. You’re working with your development drivers on a frequent basis throughout the week to try and understand the best way to approach whether that's racing, or that's qualifying, or knowing what you're going to do in wet weather.”
Drivers are not told ahead of the session what the conditions are going to be like, which is why Blakeley spends those extra hours in the simulator to ensure he is ready to combat any conditions.
“In a dry to wet scenario, when you have those mix of conditions, we are trying to preempt things that we've learned through simulating those exact scenarios in practice.
“That's where it's unique with F1 Sim Racing. You can just prepare everything you can think of, there’s really no limit to what you think you can try and prepare. The only thing you can’t prepare is being under pressure. That is something, in that moment, you've just got to really be locked in and resilient all the way throughout.”
Work, rest and play
Many people understand why an F1 driver needs to be physically and mentally prepared for competition, but often don't understand why the same applies to the professional sim driver.
The daily schedule in Stockholm is long, with the drivers participating in multiple practice, qualifying and race sessions that take approximately 55 minutes each.
Dan Williams, director at Elevate Human Performance, works with Aston Martin’s drivers and pit crew to help them achieve their record pit stop times. He recently started helping out their esports team, delivering the same human performance principals to the gamers.
“The big thing for me was the nutrition, because they’re spending hours practicing the game, not eating or drinking the right things. We also wanted to boost their immune system before they travelled to events, with the ultimate goal of getting them in a high cognitive space,” explains Williams.
Those who play video games will know how addictive they can be, having myself spent hours in a day or sometimes stayed up late to complete a specific mission or collect in-game items. Sim racers are no different, which is why Williams worked on a meticulous plan to ensure they are getting enough rest.
“What tended to happen was they would be practising a circuit to get a particular lap time and they could just keep going, and going, and going, and going. They would just practice going long hours in the night,” explains Williams.
“We tried to adopt a strategy of ‘Practice for a set period of time, then take a break’ because optimal concentration for the brain is between 20 and 22 minutes, then you should have a break. So have an outlet for 5-10 minutes, completely away from that environment. We tried to bring in like these structured breaks, but it’s quite hard because once they are locked in, they get an addictive mentality to keep going until they crack it.”
As well as looking at their posture and overall physicality, Williams focused primarily on regulating their drivers sleep patterns: “We tried to get them to wake up at the same time, go to sleep at the same time, get the efficiency of sleep, maximise the amount of sleep and how effective it was.
“I could put them on the best nutrition programme, the best training programme etc. But sleep is going to give them the biggest performance gain. If they get a good night's sleep, cognitive function is massively improved.”
Blakeley believes handling scenarios which demand high cognitive performance comes down to first-hand experience: “I've definitely been in my fair share of extremely high pressure scenarios, which naturally just helps the more you're in that scenario.
“You also learn more about yourself in these situations as well, how you deal with it, what works for you, what doesn't work for you. That's sort of the beauty of it, there’s not one thing that would work for everyone, you learn about yourself, learn about your team and what’s best as a unit.”
Endless possibilities
Many success stories have come from the world of esports, notably drivers making the switch to real life and using all of those skills acquired from those hours on the sim.
A Hollywood film chronicling the story of Jann Mardenborough who won the GT Academy sim racing contest on Gran Turismo, and arguably became motorsports first gamer-to-real life success story, was recently released to critical acclaim.
Turkish driver, Cem Bolukbasi, became the first driver to graduate from F1 Sim Racing to Formula 2 in 2022. He credits his participation in the esports championship with giving him the opportunity to race in the feeder series that is used to breed the next generation of F1 stars.
Blakeley has also done his fare share of real racing having started off his career in motorsports in go-karting: “I've been very, very grateful to go into the esports and sim racing industry that's given me the platform to then go into some real driving, which is what I grew up idolising to do in a way.
“I’ve been very fortunate to do some Formula Fords, even some GB4, and of course the Race of Champions. Those were some phenomenal experiences that I think, regardless of whether I get to go and do more real racing, I'm very, very privileged to look back at those experiences say ‘okay, that's what was possible’.”
Indeed, the possibilities are endless for sim racers. So the next time you see your son, daughter, or friends grinding out hours on the games console, they could be setting themselves up to be the next world champion.