[joncrane]

No. In the less formal event last Sunday, the e-sports drivers dominated the race and the highest finishing "real" F1 driver was in 8th, and incredibly proud of that achievement.

Edit: this is for a variety of reasons. The greatest of which is that when you're actually going 200 MPH and risking hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage, and moreso your own life and limb and those of your competitors, your risk aversion is higher than when it's a video game.

Secondly, the drivers train massively to withstand the physical forces that F1 racing causes on the body. Take away those physical aspects and a) the barrier to entry is much lower and b) the drivers are probably used to being able to feel what the car is doing, and that tactile connection is completely broken in a video game.

[sprsquish]

I think your point about not feeling the car is a big part of what makes driving a simulator so difficult. Every part of a real car is giving the driver direct feedback into various parts of their body. How hard they are on the brake and throttle. Small changes in lateral g-force let them know how close to the edge of traction they are. The screen isn't going to be the same as the real world. The only feedback you get from an (affordable) at-home sim is through the screen and wheel. It requires you to tune into different sensations.

On the last stream Lando Norris (McLaren F1 driver) was asked if it felt like the real thing. He was response was something like, "Not at all. Nothing is like driving an F1 car."

[C1sc0cat]

Its the shear physical impact on the driver - I recall seeing drivers having difficulty at the end of the race getting out of the car.

[sjm-lbm]

This is correct - Top Gear did a test years ago where they put a very good sim racer in a real race car (https://www.topgear.com/car-news/gaming/geek-rebooted).

TLDR: he did OK, but was nowhere up to the physical challenge of staying in that car for full race distance. And, for the record, that car won't be on the same planet as an F1 car in terms of physical forces put on a driver.

[lozaning]

I've heard that nascar drivers can lose up to 8 pounds in sweat over the course of a race. The constant forces on your body for that long have to take a physical toll on your body.

[lttlrck]

An hour of karting did that to me...

[Someone]

I would think the physical aspects aren’t the largest barrier to entry.

As one could bluntly state it: because it takes a lot of money and connections to even be considered as a driver, it is statistically highly unlikely that, talent-wise, the current F1 drivers are in the top 1% or even top 25% of the world.

If Senna were born in tropical Africa, or even if he hadn’t had wealthy parents, he probably wouldn’t ever have raced a F1 car.

It’s way more likely for a talented soccer player from a similar background to make it into a top team.

[kayoone]

That's a bit harsh on F1 drivers tbh. Sure, ultimately you need money, but Senna started early in Karting and was already showing great talent there allowing him to get financial backing and support that helped him further his career. He went through a lot of Karting and open wheel racing until finally reaching F1. You don't get there just by money, at least the top5 guys have mostly won everything there is to win before entering F1.

[Ididntdothis]

Senna came from a super rich family. A regular person will have trouble affording karting even at the lowest level. I used to have a race kart and even with a job the tires, engines and other parts are barely affordable.

[joncrane]

You still need thousands and thousands of dollars for a decent Sim racing setup, a stable internet connection, and a room to do it from.

Sure, it's not formula racing, but there are still massive barriers to entry for sim racing.

[reidjs]

True but it’s at least an order of magnitude less money to do the e-sport than the real one

[sokoloff]

True and, further, those costs are almost the same whether you race for 1 hour or 1000 hours in the sim-world. Definitely not the case in the real-world racing series.

[magduf]

Sorry, I don't buy it. You could make the same argument about almost any sport. But the reality is that training is a huge part of skill, not just in-born talent. You can't just grab some random person from tropical Africa and have him play some sport alongside trained and experienced veterans and expect him to win, no matter how great his physical attributes are.

The money and connections are useful for getting drivers into the sport, but they're not going to succeed in it if they can't develop the necessary skill.

[Someone]

”You could make the same argument about almost any sport”

Yes, but for many of them, to a much lesser degree. I specifically mentioned soccer because it is extremely cheap to start playing it. All you need is a somewhat level playing area, anything that can mark the locations of the imaginary goal posts (coats, garbage cans, or just heaps of mud), and something resembling a ball (say a few crumpled newspapers tied together with tape or thread will work, if needed)

You don’t need grass, inflatable balls, side line markers, real goal posts, team uniforms, or even shoes.

Long distance running is another example at the other end of the range, as is cricket (for which you only need a few sticks, one bat, a hard ball, and a fairly hard surface), and, where sandy beaches are available, beach volleyball (for which the only expensive item is the ball. A rope can substitute for the net, if needed)

That’s why you see don’t see kids in favelas race karts, but see them play soccer or cricket (and, in Brazil, play beach volleyball)

”You can't just grab some random person from tropical Africa and have him play some sport alongside trained and experienced veterans and expect him to win”

I didn’t claim that. What I said is that, likely, there are kids in Africa who, if they were given the same opportunities as Senna, would have turned out to be better F1 drivers than him.

[magduf]

>What I said is that, likely, there are kids in Africa who, if they were given the same opportunities as Senna, would have turned out to be better F1 drivers than him.

Yes, it is likely, just given the sheer numbers. But F1 driving is a sport requiring lots of skill and training and that opportunity just isn't available to many people due to the expenses involved. So I don't know why you're even bringing this up, unless you're trying to bash race car driving or the fact that not everyone in the world has equal opportunities, and I don't see how that's productive here.

[rowanG077]

I'm not sure what Africa has to do with it. There are probably millions of kids all over the world who would have turned out to be better F1 drivers then him. But talent is cheap it's all about opportunity and dedication.

[nikofeyn]

you don't buy what? they didn't say what you imply.

they didn't say the drivers didn't need skill and only need money. they only said money was an additional and the larger barrier to entry. of course they need skill, but you'll never know if you have skill or not if you don't have money. nearly any type of racing is incredibly expensive.

[radley]

I recommend checking out the Formula 1 series on Netflix. Sure, a few drivers come from money & connections, but others earned their position by winning races in their youth.

[Ididntdothis]

You can’t race in your youth if you don’t have serious money. You don’t have to be super wealthy but you need to be able to spend probably tens of thousands per year before you can make a name for yourself.

[Ididntdothis]

You were downvoted but I tend to agree. Even karting costs in the tens of thousands per year once you want to be competitive. You have to either have well off parents or live in good circumstances like Schumacher whose father worked at a track. And there is almost no amount of talent that can compensate for new tires and a rebuilt engine at every race.

[usrusr]

And top e-sports drivers will likely have far more hours behind the virtual wheel than the real drivers have in reality and virtual combined.

I used to do online ww2 combat flight sim as a hobby and one day I realized that all those virtual aces had not only the skill advantage of virtual death trial and error, most had also been flying virtual ww2 planes for longer than than the entire duration of the original war (in years, not in stick-hours).

[nikofeyn]

i have always wondered if society could get something useful out of gaming other than entertainment (not saying entertainment isn't good or not useful). gamers seem to have this uncanny ability to focus in on a game for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours, becoming skilled well beyond any of the developers' dreams. even when i was younger i could poor hours into games like that. it's pretty amazing, because i don't really feel like i see as many people doing that for other things.

[sixothree]

Also the drivers are backed by huge teams. This is the part of the sport that makes it so much fun. The physical aspect of the pit stops & the strategy and the pains that causes.