"Turn that off" , "how do you drive in circles for so long" , "how can be interesting for you to drive alone" , "stupid game, i can do it anytime" are phrases i bet we have all heard times and times again. It's like i have made some sins! They don't understand that beating the best time on a given track with given car even by -0.100 or winning a race is hours and hours, and again hours of hard work of testing that is so close related with real life testing, that makes you sweat on your PC like you run 2-3 kilometers.
They don't understand that not only they won't "do it anytime" but they won't do it ever! Because it's not a simple game. Because you need skills. You need to think. You need to react in a matter of a seconds in a situation. You need reflexes. You need engineering knowledge to prepare your car. You need the full package. And you need talent without any doubt. To be good in it at least to compete with others who don't do mistake in 2 hours of consistent driving, thats perfection.
People will say why bother? But there are many reasons why many people around the globe are doing sim racing. My reason personally is that at the age of 9-10 as kid, apart from the races with our bicycles around the streets, risking our lives in front of cars passing by after each blind corner, we(me and my friends) wanted to race on PC either and not that to be some Need For Speed crap but some decent, close to real physics racing game were we could measure, who is better who is fastest. Many are doing sim racing because they never could in their real lives. That includes me as well. Some others might be computer nerds who found new obsession. But we all bind with one common truth, we are all a hell of competitive guys who like to win. Sometimes at all costs. We want to do things where we are fully in charge and we like to spend our time on something that really is challenging. Not just any simple everyday game that kids can play. Have you ever driven 1 hour and a half long race with Force Feedback on your steering wheel turned ON at 100%? Your hands after that would be in pain! With the opponent for whole hour not more than 1 second behind. What other game will give you that much pressure or make you concentrate that much, not to do one single mistake in 1 hour, like sim racing would do? Answer is easy. No other.
To try to explain this madness, we are enjoying the competitiveness of the field full of other, sometimes random sim racers, sometimes in Championships well organized for which entry can cost 500 euros, competition(people behind PC on the other side of the planet) who express their emotions, their skills, their mentality at virtual racing circuits. You encounter many different sim racers with different racing styles, smooth - aggressive, all part of their mentality. Many who are doing sim racing will say sim racing makes us better drivers. The other group would only laugh at how naive we are, yet now quite often we find that sim racing has indeed produced real life racing drivers who won races in their new careers who were not older than a year or two in real life racing against racing drivers who spent their lives since 4-5 years old in go-karts an so on through the ranks of the motorsport. That stands for something! That only tells how sim racing technology has advanced. Many real racing teams use racing simulators as training tools. Although this is very much used times and time again when trying to explain or justify what we are doing, honestly even that is not what keeps us on a given track hours after midnight.
We all want to escape from the reality and go in a place where we can enjoy, racing virtually. Place which in real life is not allowed for everyone everywhere on the planet. For that hour or two or three, we are living in a world where the only goal is 'to beat the Stig' or win the race, without any doubt, to have a lot of fun and enjoy racing with others on track. How can i explain when the other behind you or in front of you is doing what you are doing, all in manual control. Computer is not involved! And you both are fighting through the corners. Braking later. Accelerating sooner. Changing lines blocking sides and try to be on the limit without hitting each other. That's tense in same time beautiful and gives us very big pleasure. Pleasure that not many have experienced.
I am not writing this so my friends can read it, or even less my parents etc but to the people out there in the world who are thinking, like one guy that bothered to point me that DOTA was harder, i can only say - keep on dreaming kiddo!
Till next time!
Inspired by Ryan Ogurek on his beautiful article at RaceDepartment.com
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