The 2022 Autosport Awards winner using Esports as a launchpad
A trail blazed in Esports has inspired a revamp of the annual prize that aims to discover the best young engineering talent. Autosport met Autosport Williams Engineer of the Future winner Michael Preston
The Williams FW44 is blasting along the pitstraight at the Red Bull Ring. After sweeping through the rapid final double right-hand sequence that ends the lap, it picks up even more speed powering past the pits and grandstands and heading up the hill to the Turn 1 right. But here, it swings wildly left and traverses the braking zone over the kerbs lining the outside of the track in a way Alex Albon and Nicholas Latifi would never do. Autosport is perplexed…
“The Esports drivers can run kerbs a lot more aggressively than you would in the real world. And, aside from that, you also wouldn’t do that in a real car because you’d probably break it after 10 laps!”
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Alex Kalinauckas is Autosport's Grand Prix Editor, covering every Formula 1 race since the start of 2020. After completing a master's degree in journalism at Goldsmiths College University of London in 2014, he worked for a range of motorsport and technology publications while covering national racing as an Autosport freelancer.
A lifelong motorsport fan - no one in his family can explain quite how or why such a development first occurred - Alex joined the Autosport staff in April 2017 as the magazine’s Assistant Editor covering Formula 2 and GP3, before being made Formula E correspondent and Autosport.com’s Plus Editor in March 2018. He lives in north-east London and is constantly frustrated by the Central Line.
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