(music and car sounds)
- Professional sports, is the most
meritocratic form of profession.
The athletes on the field, the courts,
or ice are there, cause they're the best in the world.
That's the case in most sports.
With one, glaring exception.
Racing.
That's a problem and here's how sim racing can solve it.
(Wheel House theme)
In most sports, greatness can be achieved by anyone.
Basketball only needs a ball and hoop.
Baseball needs a smaller ball and stick.
And, soccer needs barefoot kids with a ball and a dream.
Pele, the greatest soccer player ever,
learned the fundamentals by kicking a sock
filled with rags, down the street as a kid.
Conversely, motor sports are prohibitive by nature.
Prospective drivers need a car and thousands of dollars for
maintenance, repairs, (sound of tools drowns out Nolan).
Even at the lowest level, racing
takes a lot of money to get in to.
Because of this, motor sports history has likely
missed out on oceans of untapped, natural talent.
Simply, because the driver couldn't
afford to get behind the wheel.
Of course, there's no way to prove this,
but it is interesting to think about.
Especially, when I imagine myself as that
untapped potential, and I need Michael Shoemaker
to win the 2005 Formula One Driving Championship.
(dramatic music)
That was pretty cool. (dramatic music)
Good job, me.
What was I talkin' about?
Oh, yeah. Sports.
In both racing today and pro sports of yesteryear,
the roadblock is monetary but in different ways.
Back then, camping pro sports, unpaid,
wasn't just for idealistic purposes.
But a method of self-preservation as well.
Most upper-crust athletes flat out didn't want
to play with working-class people because they
smelled like sweat, and that's gross.
The rules different sports had about what you had to wear
on the field, and how you had to conduct yourself out
there, were designed to keep working-class people away.
But, as more and more working-class athletes
started participating, the argument over whether
or not to get paid got bigger and bigger.
The concept of amateurism, not getting paid for
playing sports, was very important for the
upper-class because that kept poor people out.
Meanwhile, the racing world was in its infancy
and taking a slightly different path
from the rest of the world of sports.
(dramatic music and sounds)
Early racers over in Europe, were a collection of
champagne exporters, heirs to nobility, and industrialists.
So, basically, rich guys.
Because of the material nature of racing,
it requires that you have the money to do it.
Not necessarily because the elite wanted to keep
the sport exclusive, but to be the fastest,
you usually just have to have the most money.
There are of course examples of
underfunded underdogs beating the rich guys,
but for the most part, money wins races.
Because of this, the transition from amateur
players to paid professionals, didn't really
happen to racing like it did to other sports.
The act of being paid to play
radically changed the world of sports.
No longer did athletes have to
come from affluent backgrounds.
Now, the best players in the game,
could truly be the best at the game.
And, they could come from anywhere.
(dramatic music)
Today, sports can be an avenue out of poverty and
allow an individual to make it out of a bad
situation on physical ability alone.
Don't believe me?
Well, ask Lebron James.
- There's no pressure.
There's no pressure at all.
- Love him or hate him, side note, you should
probably love him cause he's a great guy.
James is legitimately one of the
greatest to ever play basketball.
But, as you might know,
Lebron didn't have an easy childhood.
His mom was only 16 when she had him,
and they had to move around all the time.
To make things a little more stable,
Lebron moved in with youth football coach Frank Walker,
who showed Lebron how to play basketball at nine years old.
Honestly, the rest is history.
I don't need to tell you how good Bron Bron is.
His nickname is literally King James.
As I said at the top, racing is different
from other professional sports because
it takes a lot of dough to get into.
There's not that youth league, high school, college to
pro pipeline for racing like there is for other sports.
So, how can racing reach more working-class
kids who dream of going to the pros?
Well, I think sim racing could be the answer.
Sure, video games don't make you better at sports.
It's not like you can play Madden '19
or NBA 2k19, and get drafter to the pros.
Believe me, I've tried.
(beep and background chatter)
(beep)
Since the beginning of racing history,
especially Formula One,
motor sports have been a rich man's game.
But sim racing manufacturers like
Fanatec are trying to help change that.
We talked to Thomas Jackermeier to find out how.
- Up till now, if you want to be a good race driver,
then you had to have money, or connections, or both.
Now with sim racing, the teams, the car companies,
they have access to a huge pool of talents and
skilled drivers, and to learn consistency,
and good reaction, and all that.
It's not, it's not that easy.
It's much easier to pick one of those skilled sim races,
and make them physically fit, than getting a
sports guy and teaching him racing.
So, I think that's a big chance.
And we will ...
See many more sim races advancing
from virtual sport into the real one.
- You don't hear that very often in other sports.
Sim racing is unique because what you
learn using a force feedback wheel,
actually helps you in real life.
And that's not limited to amateur drivers.
Pros do it too.
- Force feedback use in simulations,
is actually showing a little bit
more than you get in a real car.
Because the games map sensations which were not
existing in real cars to be on the wheel as well.
So, for example, you can easily feel
over steering, under steering.
And that helps you a lot to feel
exactly when the tires start slipping.
When is ... I mean basically, racing is all
about to drive as fast that you're not losing
the contact between the tires and the road.
Right?
So, if you feel that with a strong force feedback wheel,
then you have a real good advantage because you know
you can keep your car always at that limit.
- But sim racing wasn't always like this.
It's come a pretty long way.
The first racing game to be considered a racing simulation
by gaming experts, is Indianapolis 500: The Simulation.
Released in 1989, Indianapolis 500,
featured sweet MS style graphics
and a rockin' Mideast soundtrack.
What sets this sim apart from games though,
is that the developers actually wanted the
cars to behave and handle like the real thing.
- We had some, it was some pixels.
And, you can barely have any
idea of what you are doing there.
We started with very simple steering wheels,
then came force feedback.
Now, we are (mumbles) force
feedback wheels with 25 mute meters.
Full cockpits, triple screens, motion simulators.
So ...
It's getting closer and closer to the real thing.
- Thomas wasn't lying.
These things might as well be real.
Check this thing out.
It's the Fanatec CSL Elite McLaren GT3.
And it's nuts.
It's pretty much exactly what
you'd see in a McLaren GT3 car.
- When we made contact with McLaren,
and they wanted us to make a wheel of them,
so, they sent us the original cat files of the steering
wheel, and the steering wheel is modeled one-to-one to it.
The dimensions, the materials, the button pressure,
everything is exactly like the original.
And of course the original one
is made of fully carbon fiber,
which drives the cost quite up a lot.
But other than that, yeah.
We came up with a replica, which is truly authentic.
And, gets you absolutely the same feeling.
- Racing sims and sim equipment is getting
more life-like than ever before.
But what does that mean for all us regular people?
Well, with some practice, and I'll be frank,
a ton of luck, sim racing could get you behind
the wheel of a real race car, and here's proof.
(techno music)
Back in 2008, Nissan and Polyphony Digital
introduced the Gran Turismo Academy.
It was a ranked competition, where you went
against thousands of players all over the world,
to get the best lap with a certain car at a certain track.
If you finished within the top 20,
you got flown out to compete with other racers.
And if you got into the final round,
you had a chance to race real cars to
determine who would win the grand prize.
A 100 percent legit, racing contract with Nissan.
And this wasn't some low-ball pat on the back, either.
GT Academy's first winner, Lucas Ordonez,
raced for Nissan's GT 14 in 2009 then went on to finish
second in the LMP Two class at La Mans in 2011.
Lucas was just a guy who loved playing
Gran Turismo with the wheel, and he finishes second
at the greatest race in the world three years later.
I'm not lyin', man.
Sim racing can make that kinda stuff happen.
Fanatec is partnered with the FIA.
They're basically the highest racing
organizing body in the land.
Fanatec and the FIA are working together to bring
more sim racers into the Formula One fold,
with the Formula One Esports series.
The first half of the season,
sees sim drivers from all over the world
compete for a spot in the pro draft.
Where real F1 teams choose the drivers they want
to represent them in virtual competition.
That's pretty rad.
- The reason why we are partering with Formula One,
is basically, that our brand is pretty
well known in the sim racing community.
So, we thought, okay.
We want to reach a broader audience,
and, at the same time, Formula One is high tech.
I mean, it's all about the best,
cutting-edge technology out there.
- This year's Formula one Esports series winner,
was Brenden Leigh.
A 19 year old dude from Banbury, Oxfordshire.
He had been sim racing since he was 13 years old.
And got to compete at the race of champions
after winning last year's Esports series championship.
Brenden had never driven a real car
before getting to race in the same venue as
racing greats like Heder Solberg and David Coulthard. (beep)
Did I say that right?
Coulthard.
How do you pronounce David Coulthard?
Couldtard--
- Okay. I found this on the web for
how do you pronounce David Coulthard?
- Sick (Nolan laughs)
- Stories like Lucus Ordonez and Brenden Leigh's,
show that sim racing can be a legitimate starting
point dor a serious career in racing.
Obstacles like a huge initial investment
and connections in the sport, are no longer
relevant if the raw talent is there.
I think it's completely plausible that we'll see
a Formula One great, start their career with a
controller in their bedroom, in our lifetimes.
Someone judged solely on their skill behind
the wheel, and not their pocketbook. (snaps fingers)
Done. (bleeps)
We got merch.
We got new shirts.
I want one, I don't even have one yet.
What the hell?
We have a lot more new shirts.
That's at donutmedia.com
Thanks for watchin' Wheel House.
We look at the stuff that affects
you in the car world every week,
so, hit that yellow subscribe button right there.
If you wanna know more about racing games in general,
we did an episode about that right here.
Check out this episode of science garage.
Follow me on Instagram @nolanjsykes.
Follow Donut @donutmedia,
we post a lotta behind the scenes stuff,
so check it out.
Roast me out, fam.
Be nice, I'll see you next time.