Why Verstappen believes Esports is key to F1's future

By electing to attend last week's Gran Turismo World Finals in Monaco off his own back on a rare weekend free between Formula 1 races, Max Verstappen highlighted the genuine attraction of top level Esports events.

Verstappen, fresh from his win at the Brazilian Grand Prix, was not there as a paid celebrity to give it endorsement. Instead, he simply wanted to cheer on his Team Redline sim racing team-mate Mikail Hizal, and the Red Bull driver was left raving about the atmosphere and buzz inside the arena.

"It will definitely be the future," Verstappen tells Autosport afterwards, regarding the boom in Esports.

"I'm sure real racing will exist, but this is definitely getting bigger and bigger. And it's also a great opportunity for those guys who can't afford real racing to have a platform like this to still have great results."

But despite Verstappen's bold claim about Esports' future, sim racing competition still divides opinion among motor racing fans.

There are those who look down on it, and claim it is just something for kids with too much time on their hands. Then there are the competitors - who understand and love it. And, like Verstappen, they are excited about the journey it is on right now.

Even those who regularly take part in sim racing are not all in it for the same reason.

Some do it just for fun - and even Lewis Hamilton admits to a bit of secret Gran Turismo playing (he is an ambassador for the game) during the off-season.

"I play this game all winter, and this is kind of what I practice," he says during an appearance at the World Finals. "I have two [rigs] set up. We ski during the day and in the evening we have competitions between my brother [and I]. I've been online too actually, playing last Christmas, and no one noticed me.

"I saw there was a couple of different people using parts of my name - so HAM something - and this guy kept crashing into me and taking me out. If only he knew!"

While people are watching and taking part in sim racing for totally different reasons, there is at least a consensus that it is not some temporary fad for the minority

Other Gran Turismo drivers sim race because reaching the top in the game is a significant standalone achievement.

Hizal, who delighted Verstappen by dominating the Gran Turismo World Finals Nations Cup on Sunday night, is a mechanical engineering student who didn't get into gaming as a means of making it to F1. He just liked the challenge of sim racing and found he was exceptionally good at it.

Then there are those that believe sim racing has a valuable role to pay in their driving careers or because it makes them a better racer in the real world.

F1 stars such as Verstappen and Lando Norris regularly compete online in iRacing because it's fun and it keeps them sharp. Other drivers at an earlier stage of their careers are doing it to both learn and perhaps because they cannot afford to keep racing in the real world.

Igor Fraga, one of sim racing's top current stars and a race winner in the Formula Regional European Championship last year, has no doubts that his real world career would have been over if he had not been able to keep his name in the spotlight through gaming.

After winning a karting championship in Asia as a kid, the world financial crisis left him struggling to find sponsors to fund the step up to car racing. His only option was to keep racing online.

It was the profile he gained there - winning the McLaren Shadow Project and last year's Gran Turismo Nation's Cup - that has helped him greatly.

"The simulator was all I could really do for a while," he says. "I practiced and learned a lot of things in Gran Turismo that definitely improved my skill on the real racing track. And especially since last year, I have been having a lot of coverage with the media, which has helped with sponsors and everything. So, it has definitely really helped me."

But while people are watching and taking part in sim racing for totally different reasons, there is at least a consensus that it is not some temporary fad for the minority. It's growing fast and that is why ever bigger organisations are getting properly involved - including the FIA.

Examples such as Fraga are of most interest to motorsport's governing body, which is mindful that the increasing costs of karting are making the grassroots of real motorsport too expensive. Therefore, it has been stepping up its own involvement with sim racing, and last year certified the inaugural Gran Turismo World championship.

Stephane Fillastre, who is the head of the FIA's brand, licensing and retail, says that the governing body sees benefits from the low cost of competing in sim racing.

"We want to ensure that we find the greatest exposure, and that means easy access," he explains. "We are lowering the financial barriers, which is always the problem with motorsport as we know.

"So let's say for $500 or whatever, you can have any equipment, which is at the level of the best drivers we have [in sim racing], and everyone can compete with equipment that is to the same standard. It is very important that we are developing ways to make motorsport accessible again."

Teams and manufacturers are paying attention too. F1 has managed to get all 10 of its squads on board with its own official Esports Series, including Ferrari for the first time this year. At the Gran Turismo event, it did not go unnoticed that car makers had sent some of their works drivers to offer assistance to the sim racers competing in the Manufacturers' Cup.

Twitch figures suggest the League of Legends World Cup had a peak audience of 1.7m, F1's most recent event had just 10,000

Lamborghini CEO Stefano Domenicali also turned up to help reveal a new Gran Turismo Vision concept car, which will be raced exclusively in the game. The Italian supercar manufacturer uses games such as Gran Turismo to appeal to a younger audience.

"Esports is very important because Lamborghini is a very young brand with very young customers," Domenicali explains. "We have simulations for them and we create the base for these products to be experienced by the young generation. We know that simulation and gaming are important."

All too often in motor racing, something new arrives and prompts a hype machine detailing how big it can become and suggestions it could ultimately be a rival to F1.

But it's a mistake to think of Esports as direct competition to real world racing, or something that could replace it. Instead, it needs to be viewed as complementary - it's about raising awareness and bringing in a new audience.

As Fillastre says about the FIA's attitude: "We want to use the strengths of video gaming to create a new kind of motorsport, but avoiding exactly replicating what the real world is digitally.

"So it's adapting the rules and putting in a framework that that can transfer the values that we have in our sport - like integrity, equality, sportsmanship, behaviour and fair rivalry. That will help us deliver a good championship. And if we deliver that, then that starts being aspirational for the players."

In terms of racing sim events, they are still very much in their infancy. F1 only hosted its inaugural Esports season in 2017, whereas Gran Turismo's first World Finals were last year. It is no real surprise that sim racing events are not yet matching the viewing figures of more established Esports events, and can't yet offer the incredible prize money of other games.

According to data from Esports Charts, the biggest Esports event of 2019 was the League of Legends World Championship, which attracted a peak audience of nearly 4m viewers for one game - and had a total of 137m hours watched.

For its 2018 season, F1's Esports audience totalled 1.2m TV viewers and 3.2m livestreaming the three live events it hosted.

On gaming streaming service Twitch, figures suggest the League of Legends World Cup had a peak audience of 1.7m on that platform - while F1's most recent event (its 2019 finale has not yet taken place) had just 10,000.

In terms of prize pools, the biggest on offer in gaming comes from Fortnite, which had a $30m fund available for its World Cup finals. The winner walked away with $3m.

F1's own Esports championship offers a $500,000 prize pool, while Gran Turismo has opted against having any prize money incentive at all - which, it can be argued, keeps a purity to the competition. Sometimes fighting for honour matters more than cash.

But perhaps what the audience and prize comparison shows most of all is not how far behind Esports motor racing lags at the moment, but what the potential upside there is in the next few years.

For the motor racing industry as a whole, there are huge benefits to be had by attracting a whole new young audience through games such as Gran Turismo, the F1 franchise, Forza, NASCAR, and Real Racing.

On the gaming side, the new generation of drivers that sees sim racing as an essential part of a career will only get ever more engaged in events, as Verstappen showed, and that will bring more legitimacy.

Successful gaming content creator Steve Brown, perhaps better known as SuperGT, has nearly 290,000 subscribers on YouTube. He reckons online racing is at an exciting moment and has huge future potential.

"In five to 10 years, this could be could be seriously huge," he says of the evolving Esports racing landscape. "With the prize money you see in some games, not motorsport just yet, but League of Legends, Fortnite - these millions of pounds - people are becoming global superstars from being very good at video games.

"I'm not sure motorsport games are there just yet, as people outside of motorsport probably don't know so many of the winners. But maybe in a few years' time, with the growth that we're seeing, we could get to that kind of point."

Maybe Verstappen's prediction is spot on after all.