This weekend's Daytona 500 means that the worst of the racing duldrums are over, and we can expect to watch fast cars from now until November (except for IndyCar and their six month schedule, but we've covered that ground before). Still, most of the major racing series, at least that we watch in North America, are still getting up to full speed, meaning there isn't a lot to talk about yet. So, I was looking over some back stories I missed the first time around when I reread an article that at least one of Nissan's LMP1 drivers at Le Mans will be a GT Academy graduate. For those of you who aren't aware, GT Academy is a program where Nissan cherry picks the best Grand Turismo players (yes, the PlayStation game) and tries to turn them into race car drivers, and I think this is a much bigger deal then most people give it credit for.
Before we get too far along, I want to talk about the development of my own interest in racing, because I think it applies here. When I was about 14 years old, I had two interests, cars and video games, but not racing. I couldn't drive the Corvettes, Porsches and Ferraris I read about in Motortrend, but I could pretend to drive them in games like Need for Speed. So I did. While I had a lot of fun pretending to be Sunny Crocket in my virtual Ferrari 355, it ultimately left me wanting. I knew this wasn't really how these cars drove. I wanted an experience that was more authentic, so slowly my interest started to drift to the more realistic racing simulations by Papyrus, famous for their hyper realistic NASCAR simulations and their brutally challenging Grand Prix Legends. These games got me interested in real world racing, so I started watching NASCAR, and then things spiraled out of control. I started watching other forms of racing, like F1 and the now defunct American Le Mans series. This got me interested in different kinds of racing sims, which got me interested in even more racing series. Next thing you knew, I was watching DTM racing and the Isle of Man TT coverage on Speed Vision.
Since I was thoroughly obsessed with racing, I obviously wanted to be a race car driver. I started trying to learn about how one becomes a race car driver, and was crest fallen when I learned that it all comes down to money. Which I didn't have. I was watching Formula 1 drivers, the youngest of whom were only a few years older then me, who had been racing carts for years. A season of serious carting may cost $10,000 or more, and I didn't have $10. It didn't take a genius to figure out that pursuing a career in racing wasn't the best use of my time.
And here in lies the problem with traditional driver development. To get your foot in the door, you need the money to buy yourself a ride, because no one's going to give you a car to wrap around the Armco. So, unless you come from a family that can financially support your early racing efforts, with no guarantee of success, you'll never be a professional driver. Now enter GT Academy. Suddenly, the highest barrier to entry for trying to be a race car driver, the financial barrier, has been removed.
I'm convinced that professional drivers getting their start in simulation racing (as us enthusiasts like to call it, because these aren't games, their "sims") are going to be the exception rather then the rule for at least the foreseeable future. Until we start seeing GT Academy graduates win races at the highest levels, the pro teams are going to be skeptical of drafting racers from the sim world, but I think the importance of GT Academy goes beyond driver discovery and development. It gets a new generation of fans interested in racing.
Read through RACER's "IndyCar 2018" series of articles. In that series, a topic that keeps being brought up is that the millennial generation of fans might like motorsport, but they like the fast paced, instant gratification style of racing found in Formula Drift and Global Rally Cross. Traditional circuit racing like NASCAR, IndyCar and Formula 1 just looks like guys going in circles for hours on end to these kids, but these same millennials who wouldn't dream of watching a two hour Grand Prix, will watch a NFL game that is at least as long. I think the reason for this is that a lot of people have first hand experience with traditional stick and ball sports in school (ie, they played stick and ball sports in school). Because of the high financial barrier to entry in motor racing that prevents gaining first hand experience, kids don't get to learn about the subtle strategies and race craft which makes watching a race exciting. Sim racing is the analogy of playing high school football. If sim racing gave a teen a chance to be a future Indy 500 winner, or Formula 1 champion, especially if they wouldn't have that opportunity anywhere else, don't you think that would make more teens interested in sim racing? I do, and I know from my own experience that an interest in sim racing can make a person a life long fan of real racing.
For racing to have a bright future, we need to have a new generation of fans. If no one is watching the races, racing is eventually going to whither and die. If things like GT Academy can democratize the entry into professional racing, and in turn broaden the base of people who are interested in racing, then I'm all for it. Having more people watching the races can only be a good thing.
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