Yahoo Autos The Pros Turning to Sim Racing While Motorsports Waits
The worldwide spread of COVID-19 has ground motorsports to a halt. With no tracks open and no prospect of racing until late May at the earliest, pro racers are coming together in iRacing, F1 2019, rFactor 2 and other games. Formula 1, NASCAR, and IMSA have all held virtual races in place of postponed and canceled events, and IndyCar will join soon.
Last weekend, NASCAR held its first invitational eNASCAR race, which featured a number of current and former pro drivers. It was the most watched sports telecast of the weekend on Fox Sports 1, and the highest rated esports TV broadcast ever, so the channel is picking up the rest of the season. One of the stars of the race was Parker Kligerman, a NASCAR cup series racer and presenter for NBC Sports. He's been involved with sim racing for years, turning to racing games to help develop his real-world racecraft.
"My family didn't have the financial means to be able to have me racing all the time. So for me it was a necessity," Kligerman told Road & Track. He logged hours in NASCAR Racing 2003, F1 Challenge, and rFactor while racing karts. "When I sat on the pole for my first ever Xfinity start back in 2009, on the front row with me was Kyle Busch. And that year Busch had done, I don't know, 50 plus races already… I had done 50 car races my entire life. But I had probably raced four to six hours every single night for the last 10 years on simulations."
Sim racing opened doors for Kligerman just as much as karting, and he continues to be a big advocate. "I've always been a big proponent of drivers using it. First of all, because it's fun. And second of all, it's the only esports thing that relates exactly to really what you do in real life."
It's a good point. You don't see many NFL players training in Madden, but a lot of aspiring racers and well-established pros spend lots of time with various simulators. The 2015 Formula 3 champ and 2019 IndyCar rookie of the year Felix Rosenqvist is among them. He's been participating in a number of all-star sim-racing events over the last few weeks, and plans on participating in IndyCar's iRacing challenge.
