F1 Esports Star Beats Real F1 Driver

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

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Over the weekend, F1 esports star Enzo Bonito beat former F1 driver Lucas Di Grassi in a one-on-one race. Eurogamer reports that the 2019 Race of Champions in Mexico, which Bonito took part in, attracted several high profile motorsports stars, and they note that this is just further eveidence of the esports racing world blending with real-life motorsports.

Check out the full race on Twitter, and I embedded some dash cam footage of the short course here.

Bonito faced up against Di Grassi in a preliminary round, taking part in a head-to-head with the pair behind the wheel of Vuhl 05s, ending up ahead over the tight, winding course by over half a second. It's some achievement, and part of the burgeoning creep of sim racing into real world motorsports. Sim racing has its first FIA-endorsed champion in the shape of Igor Fraga, the Brazilian also emerging successful at last week's McLaren Shadow Project finals - all while he pursues his own real-life racing career. Bonito, meanwhile, is part of the same Team Redline set-up that includes F1 star Max Verstappen - who's just as brilliant on the virtual track as he in the real world.
 
That's pretty cool and all, but I'd imagine it is pretty predictable.

Driving a F1 simulator on a PC, even with a wheel and pedals and a fancy setup is completely different than driving an actual car. The two cannot be compared. An actual driver uses all sorts of G-force, road feel, etc. cues you just can't get even on a fancy simulator. It's apparent that the real F1 driver would feel disconnected and off when driving in a simulator, and the "eSports" dude would have a lot more experience with the game.

In the end, these are not real simulators, they are games. For fun and amusement, but don't for a second think that driving an F1 game means you know how to race on a track. Skill in one has no bearing on the other. They might has well have been competing at Mario Kart.
 
I'm not super surprised. It's very hard to get into F1 or MotoGP racing, and takes a certain amount of privileged as a child. Not every family can afford to buy karts or minibikes and make weekend road trips for years.

Basically, unlike soccer, the talent pool is very slim IMHO. Maybe sims can help bridge the gap?
 
So I read the article and watched the video... from what I can tell, this wasn't done on a simulator but in a real ROC car. I may just be missing where they said Enzo was in a simulator but if that's the case, this is more impressive than Zarathustra[H] might be implying.
 
I think GT Academy was the first to show that virtual experience can translate to the real world, and even success in professional competition.
Zarathustra[H] said:
That's pretty cool and all, but I'd imagine it is pretty predictable.

Driving a F1 simulator on a PC, even with a wheel and pedals and a fancy setup is completely different than driving an actual car. The two cannot be compared. An actual driver uses all sorts of G-force, road feel, etc. cues you just can't get even on a fancy simulator. It's apparent that the real F1 driver would feel disconnected and off when driving in a simulator, and the "eSports" dude would have a lot more experience with the game.

In the end, these are not real simulators, they are games. For fun and amusement, but don't for a second think that driving an F1 game means you know how to race on a track. Skill in one has no bearing on the other. They might has well have been competing at Mario Kart.
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This was a real-world competition they're talking about. Really the only thing racing sims these days don't prepare you for is the g forces and the car movement that goes with it (or vice-versa), but anyone competing in racing sims seriously will be able to quickly adapt to and handle it.
 
criccio said:
So I read the article and watched the video... from what I can tell, this wasn't done on a simulator but in a real ROC car. I may just be missing where they said Enzo was in a simulator but if that's the case, this is more impressive than Zarathustra[H] might be implying.
Click to expand...
Armenius said:
I think GT Academy was the first to show that virtual experience can translate to the real world, and even success in professional competition.

This was a real-world competition they're talking about. Really the only thing racing sims these days don't prepare you for is the g forces and the car movement that goes with it (or vice-versa), but anyone competing in racing sims seriously will be able to quickly adapt to and handle it.
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My bad, I jumped to a bad conclusion. This really is rather impressive if on a real course in a real car.
 
That dash cam footage doesn't look real to me, which is probably what threw me. It looks rendered :p
 
My first conclusion was this was done in a sim as well until I watched the video. It is impressive, but I'll buffer that by saying this particular sim racer in the video has/does race real cars as well so it's not like he's jumping straight from video games into a car for the first time.
 
This is a electric car on a short track with small tires and limited grip. Give both a weekend with the cars and a setup team and the gamer would get killed. Lifetime of real world racing would begin to show. But I am impressed the gamer managed in such limited circumstances.
 
Verge said:
I'm not super surprised. It's very hard to get into F1 or MotoGP racing, and takes a certain amount of privileged as a child. Not every family can afford to buy karts or minibikes and make weekend road trips for years.

Basically, unlike soccer, the talent pool is very slim IMHO. Maybe sims can help bridge the gap?
Click to expand...


the pools not as slim as you'd think. the problem F1 and motoGP and honestly most high level EU motorsports is that you have to buy your seat or bring a main title sponsor with you which is what the feeder series are for, your performance in them is only a small portion of getting into F1 or motoGP. if you can't get a title sponsor then no F1/motoGP team will pick you up which is why most of them end up going to WEC, IMSA, or one of the other factory series. i have a feeling over the next 3-5 years F1 will change drastically and eventually open the door for less money privileged drivers to get into the series but it's going to be a tough road before that happens.
 
Simulations definitely help you prepare..... Ask any pilot if simulators help them or not.

That being said, you also need the real world experience to prepare you for the real life physics.

This was not entirely unpredictable given the eSports guy's real life racing aspirations.
 
It's one lap, no pitting, no other cars for pressure. The esport guy has skill but this is like a 3-point contest where you don't have a guy blocking you.
 
one - no one cares about race of champions. It's just some corporate sponsored event bs done for fun.
two - driving one or two laps close to race car drivers time was done before by race-sim champion(s) ( cant remember which sim was that again, should be on youtube) , but even that sim champion had to call it after this many laps because of the high Gs.
three - and of course to get an actual third-driver seat, you've got to race up from the lower ranks, F3 etc,where you can show that you can compete with other cars on the track, manage your tires and fuel, have high situational awareness of who's lapping/pitting/flags , instantaneous response times to crashes and errors of other drivers. So many more skills involved.

oh, and in the proper event, there are two buggies

or just get rich and drive a closed top lower ranked GT in Asia
 
Verge said:
I'm not super surprised. It's very hard to get into F1 or MotoGP racing, and takes a certain amount of privileged as a child. Not every family can afford to buy karts or minibikes and make weekend road trips for years.

Basically, unlike soccer, the talent pool is very slim IMHO. Maybe sims can help bridge the gap?
Click to expand...

True. I think even Bernie Ecclestone has acknowledged this on at least one occasion. F1 doesn't have the best drivers in the world. Just the best ones who can afford to be there. Sadly, a lot of good drivers have been replaced with lesser ones because of money. That's F1...
 
If i recall a while back, a Sim racing champion was invited to try out real F1 driving and ended up keeping pace with the pro racers, only he may have vomited in his helmet a few times ..
 
My problem with racing/driving sims is that no matter how good they are I always feel disconnected.

In a real car, the G forces, the sensation of speed, the vibrations from the road, everything blends together and gives me a huge amount of tactile feedback as to what is going on. There is a sense of the car becoming a natural extension of your body, heel-toe:ing around corners, downshifting and gunning it out of the corner, carefully counter-steering when the rear end loosens a bit.

Now put me in front of a game, even if it has a wheel and pedals, and I can't drive for shit. A short 30mph drive around town results in 17 collisions :p
 
You guys are thinking of "The World's Fastest Alien" where iRacing took Gregger Huttu to Road America in a Star Mazda (F3ish) car and he puked in his helmet and never came close to a proper lap time.

This is the worst example however. GT Academy and now McLaren Shadow and other selection programs have shown that you can find legitimate race car drivers using simulations. This isn't so much a sign of how great an actual sim is, rather that if you start with a pool of 500,000 good gamers, who skills translate fairly well to performance driving, you then whittle them down based on sim racing skill, you then select them for physical fitness and market-ability, then you begin to test the dozen or so left in real cars, you're bound to find a decent driver from that pool. Most real drivers main qualification is that they bring funding to their race team.

Enzo is the real deal, the kind of guy who if he had a shot might have been a proper race driver, but with the average cost to make it to F1 figured at over $8 million dollars, esports is his only way in.

Also, it's Lucas Di Grassi he beat, lets not get to excited.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
the pools not as slim as you'd think. the problem F1 and motoGP and honestly most high level EU motorsports is that you have to buy your seat or bring a main title sponsor with you which is what the feeder series are for, your performance in them is only a small portion of getting into F1 or motoGP. if you can't get a title sponsor then no F1/motoGP team will pick you up which is why most of them end up going to WEC, IMSA, or one of the other factory series. i have a feeling over the next 3-5 years F1 will change drastically and eventually open the door for less money privileged drivers to get into the series but it's going to be a tough road before that happens.
Click to expand...

there are dozens of cart champions waiting in line.
MrMitch said:
You guys are thinking of "The World's Fastest Alien" where iRacing took Gregger Huttu to Road America in a Star Mazda (F3ish) car and he puked in his helmet and never came close to a proper lap time.

This is the worst example however. GT Academy and now McLaren Shadow and other selection programs have shown that you can find legitimate race car drivers using simulations. This isn't so much a sign of how great an actual sim is, rather that if you start with a pool of 500,000 good gamers, who skills translate fairly well to performance driving, you then whittle them down based on sim racing skill, you then select them for physical fitness and market-ability, then you begin to test the dozen or so left in real cars, you're bound to find a decent driver from that pool. Most real drivers main qualification is that they bring funding to their race team.

Enzo is the real deal, the kind of guy who if he had a shot might have been a proper race driver, but with the average cost to make it to F1 figured at over $8 million dollars, esports is his only way in.

Also, it's Lucas Di Grassi he beat, lets not get to excited.
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heck no. This is just a time trail on a shitty car in a shitty track, with no pressure. Even the Grand Tour guys can do it if this is the situation.

These eSim guys can't even win in kart . All this eSim campaigns is only good for pr/marketing.

A proper race car driver will still only be selected by their success in lower tier competition. ( but that does not preclude some gimmicky team selecting an eSim driver, and running a marketing campaign on that)
 
going on a beer run gives me a bigger rush than a racing video game ever would.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
That dash cam footage doesn't look real to me, which is probably what threw me. It looks rendered :p
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Graphics in games are becoming more and more realistic each year. It is getting harder and harder to distinguish what is real and what is in-game. I love it.
 
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