Why motorsport is on the verge of the Olympics

Are we about to see motor racing in the Olympic Games?

This was one of the talking points of the 2018 FIA Sport Conference in Manila, which featured high-level thought leadership panels looking at the future of the sport. Another was the steady rise of eSports as a funnel for new fans and competitors to the world of motor racing.

The Olympic Charter has long contained a rule that bans sports with mechanical propulsion. But the word in Manila was that this rule is now quietly being dropped.

And at the 2018 Youth Olympics, taking place in October in Buenos Aires, an event where new sports are tried out such as sport climbing, karate and roller sports, there will be a demonstration event of electric karting.

This might seem a small step, but it is a significant one.

By itself this doesn't mean that Lewis Hamilton will be eligible to challenge for an Olympic gold medal any time soon. But it does show that the recognition in 2012 by the International Olympic Committee of motorsport's governing body the FIA is starting to open some interesting avenues.

The continued success of the Olympic Games has relied on their ability to iterate and stay relevant to the modern world. In the Tokyo 2020 Games, for example, free-running will be on the timetable. And just look at some of the crazy X-Games-derived disciplines that have become a huge hit on the Winter Games programme.

Motorsport has to evolve, too, and recognise the changing landscape in which it operates.

Hence the steady rise of Formula E, the growth of electric karting and the embrace by the Le Mans 24 Hours of an exciting new top category for 2020 based around hypercars.

There are a lot of exciting things happening in the sport and these put pressure on Formula 1, as its pinnacle, to get its house in order and present a format and formula that fans will want to watch for another ten years.

F1 may be top dog at the moment, but there's nothing to say that it has to be the pinnacle of motor racing eSports.

And in that space a lot is happening. This was one of the dominant themes of Manila, that in some ways eSports is the new grassroots of motor racing because the barriers to entry are very low in comparison with, say, the cost of karting. It also appeals to the younger generation that conventional motorsport is struggling to reach.

Motor racing is a sport uniquely well adapted to the world of eSports because the controls that the gamer uses are exactly the same as the real thing: steering wheel, gearshift levers and pedals. Hence why an eSports champion like World's Fastest Gamer Rudy van Buren can jump into a World Rallycross car and go quickly straight away.

Rupert Svendsen-Cook, an ex-Formula 3 driver who now runs the Veloce eSports team, told the conference that eSports represents "the biggest increase in the global driver talent pool in the history of motor sport."

If we can find a way to bring the two together, then all of a sudden, the sport increases in size dramatically," he continued.

"We're engaging a millennial audience and a fan base which is crucial to the future of our sport. It's very realistic to say that the next generation of drivers will graduate through racing eSports - the opportunities are huge."

The elite drivers, such as those who compete in the F1 eSports series and who will fight for supremacy in the new Le Mans eSports series, are becoming increasingly professional, as are the teams they compete for.

Another thing motorsport is uniquely well adapted to is providing accessibility for all genders, races and religions to compete against each other. And for the disabled to compete on equal terms with the able bodied.

There is the example of Robert Kubica's recovery from his accident to become the Williams reserve driver. And in no other sport could someone like Billy Monger suffer an accident where he loses both his legs, yet comes back the following year to compete in a higher category and succeed.

With their helmet on and strapped into a car, there is no way from the outside to tell whether a competitor is male or female, disabled or not.

This was another powerful theme of the conference and it was embodied by Nathalie McGloin, who was paralysed from the chest down in a road accident as a teenager, but who races a Cayman S with hand controls in the British Porsche Club championship.

She has recently accepted Jean Todt's invitation to become president of the FIA Disability and Accessibility commission and she will be a powerful voice for this sector of the sport in the coming years.

Like eSports, it's an area where the sport really has something to shout about and it shouldn't be shy about doing so.