GT World Challenge Drivers Can Win Real Championship Points from Esports Races

It is way less complicated.

Real racing is just for fun and pleasure. Professional sim racing is that too. It has nothing to do that sim racing is similar to the real thing. It is pure entertainment. And we all love it.
 
When I received the announcement from Fanatec by Mail I was very excited at first.

I rejoined simracing last year after an absence of roughly ten years and I love how things in the community escalated. I support basically anything that keeps players like Kunos and Fanatec alive and growing.

But on second thought I agree to the opinions that mixing real world and virtual championships is probably not a good idea. I think keeping them in separate championships on the same locations / same drivers would attract as much attention but not spoil the real world effort of the teams.

Letā€˜s see where this experiment gets us...
 
Yeah.... not a fan. We all love sim-racing, but deep down we all know that it should be separate for real racing. They require two completely different mindsets. If you are gonna implement it, have it be a separate championship like Kermit_2124 said.
 
Sabertooth
Yeah.... not a fan. We all love sim-racing, but deep down we all know that it should be separate for real racing. They require two completely different mindsets. If you are gonna implement it, have it be a separate championship like Kermit_2124 said.
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Same thoughts here.

Even just allowing 1 point could cause bad blood towards sim racing or real motorsports on the part of teams and sponsors, who did not enter the championship knowing there will be a virtual component. Or was this clear from the start? (apologies if I missed that last important detail in the article)

crooky369
Did Gerhard Berger set this one up to devalue the GTWC and make DTM the most prestigious GT3 championship?

:lol:
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Maybe not on purpose but devaluing it is a danger. Whether it is true or not is secondary, the perception of viewers, teams and sponsors is enough.
 
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I still donā€™t like this or even think this is a good idea.

One massive problem I have is how car balancing works in the game vs real life? Letā€™s say that each real driver is forced to use the same car online for points races. What if in the game the cars arenā€™t balanced the same way and that either gives drivers an unfair advantage or disadvantage? Thatā€™s one of the many reasons why I think this is a terrible idea.
 
MisterWaffles
I still donā€™t like this or even think this is a good idea.

One massive problem I have is how car balancing works in the game vs real life? Letā€™s say that each real driver is forced to use the same car online for points races. What if in the game the cars arenā€™t balanced the same way and that either gives drivers an unfair advantage or disadvantage? Thatā€™s one of the many reasons why I think this is a terrible idea.
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So are you basically saying that any e-ports competition does not make sense either?
Keep in mind that also in Simracing competitions we have professional drivers and hundred thousands of price money.
 
Fanatec...
So are you basically saying that any e-ports competition does not make sense either?
Keep in mind that also in Simracing competitions we have professional drivers and hundred thousands of price money.
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Iā€™m saying itā€™s not a good idea to have an esports series have influence on a real life series when the game may not be 100% accurate to the real life championship. I never said anything about sim racing as a whole.
 
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Agree with the assessment that there's a spectrum here between giving 1 point for whoever does the best across multiple sim races and treating the sim races as having equal points value to the physical races.

On the less extreme end of the spectrum most people would likely accept it fairly quickly, even if there was some initial pushback, in the same way that most people accept the legitimacy of championships with reverse grid sprint races or the like. On the more extreme end of the spectrum it would look farcical to most people watching (or indeed competing), but I'm sure the organisers know that anything more than a small number of points for the sim competition would be almost unanimously recieved negatively, rather than just merely being divisive (and thus drumming up interest in the series through discussions such as this one).

Ultimately it could be far worse. They're going to be using ACC for this, which is generally a very well respected simulator, and when that possibility is compared to the possibility of say, determining points by who wins at Mario Kart or at Scalextric or at Backgammon it seems far more reasonable.

It's really impossible to form an opinion until more details are announced. I suspect that they'll probably be awarding a very small points payout for this purely because they know any number of points paid for sim competition will attract controversy and thus create publicity, but they don't want to overdo it and, as I said before, create something which universally looks farcical rather than merely being divisive.
 
MisterWaffles
Iā€™m saying itā€™s not a good idea to have an esports series have influence on a real life series when the game may not be 100% accurate to the real life championship. I never said anything about sim racing as a whole.
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In the Fanatec GT World series they have a BOP (Balance of Performance) system which simply adds weight or reduces power if one car is too fast. The same is true for the virtual cars.

It is not about the cars in this series, it's about the drivers. And a good track driver with simracing skills is better than a good track driver without simracing skills. Very simple and very fair.
Of course the points you get for the virtual races are not equal. But they will be significant enough to motivate the drivers to seriously prepare for those races and it will make sure that those virtual races are not show runs for fun but serious competitions.
#AssistsOFF
 
https://sportscar365.com/sro/world-...eams-were-about-50-50-on-esports-integration/

While the feedback was mixed, with some teams opposing the influence of esports races on the real-world points system, Ratel said that the general response was positive enough for SRO to go ahead with the concept.

ā€œIf we had a really strong pushback, we would have certainly forgotten about it,ā€ Ratel told Sportscar365.

ā€œBut we didnā€™t. I have to say that the answer was about 50-50. Some were a bit reluctant, and others were saying they already had partners in the world of esports.

ā€œAll that taken in consideration, we said letā€™s be innovative and push for something new, with a progressive approach because the points that we are awarding for these esports competitions, weā€™re talking three points for winning, two for second and one for third.
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Winning all the title sponsors PR event's is equivalent to an actual podium for the teams championship then. Maybe somebody will like that but they're not a motorsports fan.
 
GOTMAXPOWER
Maybe somebody will like that but they're not a motorsports fan.
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I spend over a thousand dollars a year purely spectating races, but apparently Iā€™m not a motor sports fan.

I truly hope you are putting your money where your mouth is, otherwise your senseless gatekeeping only serves to keep people from becoming Motorsport fans.
 
Northstar
I spend over a thousand dollars a year purely spectating races, but apparently Iā€™m not a motor sports fan.

I truly hope you are putting your money where your mouth is, otherwise your senseless gatekeeping only serves to keep people from becoming Motorsport fans.
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I wouldn't call it gatekeeping, there are no real barriers to entry to becoming a sim or regular motorsports fan, unless you are so truly unsettled by having a different opinion on one specific subject to another person who's also a fan of motorsports that you consider that an unacceptable level of cognitive dissonance.

Nothing about this will stop anyone who finds racing appealing from being a motorsports fan. But it *might* stop a real motorsports purist - and they exist, one can't just write them off out of hand because it's inconvenient to one's point to acknowledge them - from engaging in this series over another series that hasn't wedged in an exceedingly gimmicky gimmick that will affect actual racing results to please its new title sponsor.
 
Northstar
I spend over a thousand dollars a year purely spectating races, but apparently Iā€™m not a motor sports fan.

I truly hope you are putting your money where your mouth is, otherwise your senseless gatekeeping only serves to keep people from becoming Motorsport fans.
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I've been a fan of motorsport/GT world challenge for long enough (Loeb and Parente were sharing a McLaren and the series wasn't even sponsored by Blancpain when I started to watch) and before Covid went to enough motorsport events to hopefully not be considered too poor for this conversation. And whilst it shouldn't really be relevant in the motorsport section of the forum I've played enough racing games to qualify for the top 24 superstars races on Gran Turismo. I even watched the biggest esports racing game series whilst it was on for a couple of months last year, even though it wasn't anything like real racing it was still pretty fun to watch.

The problem is when you mix two totally separate disciplines purely to piggy back off the popularity of the first. The reasons why they're doing this are pretty obvious and Fanatec have been marketing aggressively for the last year or so, it's been encouraging to see that the feedback on this has been pretty universal on the motorsports forums, hopefully that stops it from being expanded into the drivers championship and corrupting that.

In defence of SRO, it's good that they are running this just for actual drivers, I think most of us got tired of the over saturation of the same YouTube 'personalities' in every esport event last year. This should be a good video game series but should be a standalone series rather than a points paying PR gimmick.
 
GOTMAXPOWER
In defence of SRO, it's good that they are running this just for actual drivers, I think most of us got tired of the over saturation of the same YouTube 'personalities' in every esport event last year. This should be a good video game series but should be a standalone series rather than a points paying PR gimmick.
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The interesting thing about the "lockdown esports" was that in most cases, the YouTube personalities were the cleaner drivers, as they regularly race in these games.

In the World RX Esports Series for example the sim racers often had much cleaner races than the real-world drivers, and it's been the same in some of the F1 Virtual GPs too.

I'd say the key exception was the le Mans 24 Hours Virtual where everybody took it super serious.
 
PJTierney
The interesting thing about the "lockdown esports" was that in most cases, the YouTube personalities were the cleaner drivers, as they regularly race in these games.
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The most entertaining to watch was Clint Bowyer though. He wasn't the cleanest player but probably bought the most viewers since he was mic'ed up and full of beer, sim racing can get pretty dull since none of the variables of actual racing are there and players can do endless practice to perfect every corner
 
MaxAttack
I wouldn't call it gatekeeping
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Insisting someone isn't a fan because they don't fit some arbitrary requirement is the very definition of gatekeeping.

But it *might* stop a real motorsports purist - and they exist, one can't just write them off
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What exactly is a "real motorsport purist"? And how do they differ from a fake one?

please its new title sponsor.
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As they should, because a company getting involved in racing that doesn't have it's CEO or a board member (or relative of) behind the wheel of one of the cars is getting very rare.

GOTMAXPOWER
The reasons why they're doing this are pretty obvious and Fanatec have been marketing aggressively for the last year or so, it's been encouraging to see that the feedback on this has been pretty universal on the motorsports forums, hopefully that stops it from being expanded into the drivers championship and corrupting that.
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I wouldn't call the reactions encouraging. A company wanting to be involved and actively trying to raise the profile of something that is only losing popularity is a rare thing. Racing is increasingly relying on CEO's that happen to be race fans to fund the sport, this is even more prevalent in sports cars.

If you want to see the sport continue as more than just rich people playing with their weekend toys, we need to find a way to get people, primarily younger ones, interested. That means exploring new ways to reach people and get them interested and currently one of the easiest ways is through esports. Will it work? Only time will tell, but the fact someone is actually willing to put in the effort is great.
 
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Northstar
I wouldn't call the reactions encouraging. A company wanting to be involved and actively trying to raise the profile of something that is only losing popularity is a rare thing. Racing is increasingly relying on CEO's that happen to be race fans to fund the sport, this is even more prevalent in sports cars.

If you want to see the sport continue as more than just rich people playing with their weekend toys, we need to find a way to get people, primarily younger ones, interested. That means exploring new ways to reach people and get them interested and currently one of the easiest ways is through esports. Will it work? Only time will tell, but the fact someone is actually willing to put in the effort is great.
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I can't see it the same, title sponsorship is usually about increasing exposure of the brand, to do so through product placement in a way which directly impacts the competition is unprecedented. You're right about grids being filled with rich old men but GTWC has an impressive line up in the pro classes, much stronger than somewhere like WEC.

From a growth point of view I don't really see motorsports gaining much interest from video games, the reverse is true for the games since they are an accessible form of something motorsport fans are already familiar with.
 
GOTMAXPOWER
I can't see it the same, title sponsorship is usually about increasing exposure of the brand, to do so through product placement in a way which directly impacts the competition is unprecedented. You're right about grids being filled with rich old men but GTWC has an impressive line up in the pro classes, much stronger than somewhere like WEC.

From a growth point of view I don't really see motorsports gaining much interest from video games, the reverse is true for the games since they are an accessible form of something motorsport fans are already familiar with.
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The whole reason I got into some motorsports is because games introduced them to me. I never really cared for Rallycross before it showed up in DiRT, or some forms of Endurance racing had I not played Forza for example. Iā€™m sure there are others that feel the same way and their favourite game doing a tie-in with the real world can lead them to become real-world fans.

Granted this specific scenario is a little different since itā€™s the official game of the series in question, but you get my point.
 
GOTMAXPOWER
I can't see it the same, title sponsorship is usually about increasing exposure of the brand, to do so through product placement in a way which directly impacts the competition is unprecedented.
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Unprecedented may not be the worst thing for motorsports.

You're right about grids being filled with rich old men but GTWC has an impressive line up in the pro classes, much stronger than somewhere like WEC.
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While true, most of those pro lineups are reliant on factory support, which isn't exactly reliable.

From a growth point of view I don't really see motorsports gaining much interest from video games, the reverse is true for the games since they are an accessible form of something motorsport fans are already familiar with.
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As with @PJTierney games are what got me interested in racing. Only difference was my introduction was via playing NASCAR Thunder 2002 at a family friends house. That got me hooked on NASCAR which eventually grew to motorsports in general.
 
I didn't know Fanatec was the title sponsor. That just seems to recontextualize this whole thing as a "Buy all our playsets and toys" more than anything.
 

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