How McLaren has become a benchmark again

In August, a young British teenager achieved a lifetime's ambition.

Seventeen-year-old Lando Norris took part in the Hungaroring test for McLaren, getting his first taste of real F1 machinery. It was the culmination of a journey that began 13 years earlier. The Bristol-born youngster remembers trying to reach the pedals and steering wheel set up by his older brother to play Gran Turismo 4 on the Sony PlayStation 2. It was the beginning of a lifelong passion for both racing and games.

Last February, Norris joined the McLaren young driver programme and clinched the FIA European Formula 3 title at his first attempt. He'll race F2 in 2018. When his racing calendar permits, he also provides track support for both Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne by driving McLaren's simulator in Woking, testing virtual setups between practice sessions that can be fed back into the real-world car.

But there is another team with whom Norris competes. Running in parallel in the virtual realm, he is also a member of ultra-successful Team Redline, competing in sim racing games such as iRacing, which he does on a state-of-the-art rig, connected to a PC he has set up at home. It's a far cry from the rudimentary pedal-and-wheel combo he played when he was four.

"I spend quite a few hours each day on iRacing, which I do mainly for fun with GT3 cars or a Maxda MX5," says Norris when we meet at the MTC, while taking a short break from the sim. "I also practice the circuits I'm going to be racing on rFactor, as that game has a very good Formula 3 model. I'll do a few hours ahead of a race weekend to get a reference for braking points and racing lines."

His sim expertise has made him the ideal adviser for McLaren on the competition they launched in 2017, World's Fastest Gamer. They're the first F1 team to bridge the gap between amateur gamers and full-time pros. The best racing enthusiasts, be they dedicated sim racers or casual gamers, who play on mobile or tablet, have entered a series of qualifying rounds for the once-in-a-lifetime prize to convert their hobby into a paid job: a year's contract to be McLaren's official simulator driver.

And it's not the only online F1 racing competition launched in 2017. Keen to expand into the gaming market, F1 launched an official eSports series last September, to coincide with the release of the F1 2017 video game. Entering was easy: simply set a time or complete a race on your console then compare your pace on a global leaderboard.

A total of 63,827 drivers took part in the qualifying stages, completing 976,870 laps, while over 195,000 race times were posted on the leaderboards. The final 20 competitors took part in a televised final in Abu Dhabi and the winner, Brendon Leigh, will feature in the F1 2018 version of the video game.

Racing games have come a long way since the days of putting a ten-pence piece into a Pole Position arcade machine and circumnavigating a rudimentary facsimile of Fuji Speedway.

The current generation of racing games, Project Cars 2, rFactor 2, iRacing and GT Sport have brought the handling, realism and connectivity to a new level. And unlike the F1 eSports series, McLaren's competition hasn't been restricted to one type of platform or one game. They have broadened the reach out to consoles, PCs and even mobile devices.

If you think this is just a frivolous exercise, you'd be wrong. The world of competitive gaming which fans can either watch online, or at organised events, is a huge business and quickly growing in popularity. Industry reports estimate the eSports economy will grow to $696million in 2017, a year-on-year growth of 41.3%. And in total, the global eSports audience will reach 385million this year, made up of 191million eSports enthusiasts and a further 194million 'occasional viewers'. The number of eSports participants globally will reach 58.4million, up from 49.8 million in 2016.

"We had one person, a surgeon by trade, who'd never bought a console and had never played a racing game before. He downloaded the game to his mobile device and beat 26,000 other people to win"
McLaren's James Bower

"With our licensing agreements, McLaren is already embedded in a number of games," says James Bower, director of brand partnership at McLaren. "And as eSports have been gathering momentum, we've been looking for a way to create a competition."

McLaren's World's Fastest Gamer was launched in July last year and subsequently six qualifying rounds took place at different locations on a mixture of different games and consoles, with entrants from 78 countries.

The first event was for Forza Motorsport 6 gamers who had to race a GT4-spec McLaren 570S Coupe across five different classic North American tracks, including Daytona and Sebring. There were also broadcasts online on Sunday evenings, as the best iRacing drivers faced off in MP4-30s against each other on circuits including Suzuka, Monza and Interlagos.

Two events took place at gaming festivals and there was even a qualifying round for gamers who play on either their phone or tablet. Over 26,000 took part in that competition and the winner was the one with the best compound time over three races. The game, GearClub, had 550,000 downloads and the accessibility of the game resulted in some unusual participants.

"We had one person, a surgeon by trade, who'd never bought a console and had never played a racing game before," says Bowers. "He downloaded the game to his mobile device and beat 26,000 other people to win.

"What's great about this competition is that the reach is huge and it's mixing established gamers with the man on the street."

The finalists underwent a week of gruelling evaluations, including cognition and human performance tests to ensure they met the criteria to become a simulator driver. Outright speed is important, but it's critical to display other skills, such as to offer feedback and direction, to perform under pressure, and also to be consistent lap after lap.

"We are looking for someone who is adaptable and can work with a team,"says Bower.

"No other eSport competition has the level of sophistication in terms of testing and evaluation these candidates will undergo."

The winner was a 25-year-old sales manager from the Netherlands. Rudy van Buren (pictured below) won the Dutch karting championship in 2003, but was forced to stop racing when he ran out of money. This competition has given him a second chance.

The pioneering programme in this arena was the Nissan GT Academy, which promoted successful Gran Turismo jockeys into the real world of motorsport, but McLaren's competition is aimed at a different type of gamer.

"The GT Academy helped people to become professional drivers, but actually a lot of gamers don't want to become racing drivers," says Bower. "What they aspire to is the cutting-edge simulation technology which they know exists in F1, but they can't get near it."

At 18, Norris is what those in the technology industry like to call a 'digital native'. He's been surrounded by racing games his whole life, and is fortunate enough to be able to transfer the skills he's honed in his living room into the hi-tech simulator at McLaren. As the team attempt to unearth their next sim driver, are the current generation of games up to scratch?

"It's kind of there. You can learn the basics, turning, braking, finding the exits," says Norris, who was appointed McLaren's official test and reserve driver in November. "But the difference with the simulator is that it is physically difficult to drive. You have to hit the brake pedal with 100 kilos of force or more. Then you need to be much finer with your inputs; how you load the tyres and turning points make much more of a difference - you need to be a lot more accurate.

"Although the strength of online gaming and eSports is that it is getting much more realistic in terms of driving a car and you can drive as many hours as you want and the costs are the same. There's no fuel costs, circuit hire or repair bills. I enjoy racing people in Team Redline as they are amazing. So fast. I can't beat some of them. But... I can beat them in a real car."

And ultimately, despite the swell in gaming and virtual racing, that's still the biggest challenge for a racing driver.