Where/how to start viewing/following?

  • Thread starter Mattatsu
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Canada
GTA, ON
Mattatsu_
Hi all,

I’m new here. I’ve always enjoyed watching races (mostly F1 and GT styles) but never really followed it.

I recently bought Gran Turismo Sport and read a few things about Racecraft/passing etiquette and now I’m finding watching live racing is a lot more exciting now that I have a better understanding of why drivers do what they do.

I’d like to start following it more closely and watching live races/streams. Unfortunately though, I’m having a hard time finding where I can go to view them and keep up to date (other than a bunch of Twitter accounts I recently followed).

The search is probably a bit harder on me because I don’t really know what I’m looking for (such as proper names for classes, or leagues, or what-have-you... I don’t even know if “GT” is a proper term for a league). All I know is if it has four wheels, pavement, high speeds, and isn’t on an oval track (like NASCAR), then I’m interested.

Any tips or direction would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
 
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First place to look is YouTube. Lots of series upload full races and live stream full races on official channels on YouTube. Some series, like Indycar and IMSA, will upload full races, but after a delay of a few days, sometimes a week (this to do with their TV contracts). Series available on YouTube include:

- Indycar
- IMSA Weathertek series (DPi, LMP2, GTLM, GT3)
- IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge (GT4, TCR)
- Blancpain Europe, Asia, and America (GT3)
- British GT
- various European GT4 series that run under SRO regulations
- Intercontinental GT Challenge (GT3 endurance races like Bathurst, Spa, Suzuka, Leguna Seca)
- TCR Australia, Asia, Europe, and America
- DTM

Those series are all uploaded to YouTube, completely legit.

There’s some other series that you can find on YouTube, but on “unofficial channels”. Many of these uploads are technically illegal, and violate various copyright laws....but until YouTube takes the video down, there’s nothing stopping you watching it. The two main series that function this way would be
- BTCC
- Moto GP

I believe you should be able to find Super Formula from Japan on YouTube as well.

Super GT used to be available on YouTube until this season when someone in Japan got greedy and stupid. You can still find every Super GT race from 2014 through 2018 on the old Nismo TV channel (now called “Lets Go Racing” or something like that).


Redbull TV is a FREE app that you can download, which features all kinds of obscure motorsport competitions. Additionally, RB TV provides full coverage of World Rally Championship, completely free!!

Motortrend on Demand is a subscription app you can download. I think I pay about $5CAN per month. Honestly it’s pretty crap, it has a huge delay of several weeks before races get uploaded. That said, it’s the only official place I can find to watch BTCC. I can easily enough do a media blackout of BTCC, so results don’t get spoiled. I watch it on YouTube when I can, but it’s not 100% reliable, or sometimes videos get taken down before I can watch. That’s when the motortrend app comes in handy.

WEC uploads full races to YouTube, but with about 6-12 months delay. Kinda tough to not know the results of Le Mans 6 months after the fact.


When there’s a live event going on and you can’t find coverage or an official stream (eg your area is geo blocked by the broadcaster), it’s always worth the time to do a search on TwitchTV. For major races like Le Mans, there’s usually a couple streams on Twitch, although none of them are legal, and often times they get shut down, removed, or the streamer simply goes to bed or something.


And that’s about as much as I can talk about here. There’s additional ways to watch more series, but I don’t want to end up with another 5 bonus points on my account, so I can’t discuss them. If you’d like more info, hit me up on PSN and I’ll share the goods with you.


Basically, to watch a variety of motorsport in 2019, you either need to shell out 100s of dollars per month in various subscription fees, or you need to become a petty criminal and delve into the dark back allies of the internet.
 
If you're outside north America, you can watch all of IMSA's races on IMSA TV: https://imsatv.imsa.com/
The next event is Petit Le Mans on 12th October, a ten hour race from Road Atlanta. You can watch the support races anywhere, those aren't geoblocked.

You can also watch past IMSA races, including the Daytona 24 hours and Sebring 12 hours on their YouTube channel.
 
Thank you @twitcher and @Roo very much! Thanks to your help, I’ve come across probably a 100+ hrs of racing to catch up and subscribed to a few channels to hopefully stay up to date.

I’m in Canada so I may not be able to see that Petit Le Mans live, but I’ll try to find it. Thanks again!
 
Thank you @twitcher and @Roo very much! Thanks to your help, I’ve come across probably a 100+ hrs of racing to catch up and subscribed to a few channels to hopefully stay up to date.

I’m in Canada so I may not be able to see that Petit Le Mans live, but I’ll try to find it. Thanks again!
Some more stuff I forgot :P

Regarding IMSA, I’m in Canada too, so their official stream is geo-blocked for me as well (that’s new for this year, and it’s bitterly disappointing). There’s a couple options available. For the Daytona 24hr and Sebring 12hr, I was able to find streams on TwitchTV. I had to switch steams a couple of times as they got taken down or went offline, but was able to watch most of the races live.

The other option, and this applies to more than just IMSA, but rather any series that uses geo-blocking (DTM does this sometimes for some reason), is you can get yourself a VPN, which will trick the geo-blocker into thinking you’re from a different area. I don’t have a VPN myself, never used one, but I do know people use them to get around geo-blocking of various streams.

Third option for IMSA is like I said before, just keep yourself in the dark regarding results, and just watch the race a week later, on your own time. Remember, Petit Le Mans is a 10 hour race...I doubt you’ll be able to sit through the entire thing. I find it much nicer to watch long enduros when I can pause them, watch them in chunks. The only endurance races I usually watch live are D24, Le Mans 24, Sebring 12, and sometimes Bathurst 12 (just because they happen in “off season”, and it’s tough to stay in the dark regarding results. Le Mans isn’t off season, but good luck avoiding spoilers).


I forgot to mention before, but if you like Prototype and sportscar racing (like IMSA and WEC), you can watch European Le Mans and Asian Le Mans series on YouTube, on official channels. Those races usually get uploaded a day or two after the race happens.


An additional resource that is handy to have is the calendar on Motorsport.com
https://www.motorsport.com/all/schedule/upcoming/

The website itself is nothing more than a motorsport tabloid, it’s decent if not usually slightly behind with “breaking news”, but most of the articles are recycled click bait trying to make mountains out of molehills. The calendar though, is super handy to keep track of everything that’s happening in the racing world. On any given weekend, there’s usually something going on, and most weekends from April through October, there’s dozens of races each weekend.

The other place I use to keep tabs of various series’s schedules is wikipedia. Just google search “series name + current year + wiki”. I like using Wikipedia because it’s the same format for every series, no need to navigate a graphically intense and complicated website for each different series. Just be aware that people keep the wiki pages pretty up to date, so there can be spoilers (sometimes, they’ll list results with the calendar).


If you enjoy vintage racing, search for Goodwood on YouTube. Most people know about the hillclimb event, but some don’t know that they also do circuit racing there...on the same track that we have in GTS. There’s all kinds of categories of cars, everything from pre-war to 60s and 70s GT, like this

RAC TT


St Mary’s Trophy highlights (these are professional drivers)


S.F. Edge Trophy (one of the best races you’ll ever see)


If you like production car racing, search Australia Improved Production on YouTube, you should find a bunch of races from that category. Not sure if you can find full seasons or not. I haven’t watched any from this year yet (that’s off season material :P), but the last couple of years there was this kid named Jordan Cox driving an EG Civic pulling off some of the craziest overtakes I’ve ever seen. He’s racing in TCR Australia now, so not sure if he’s still doing IP.



As for Twitter, a few recommendations.

Most F1 drivers don’t run their own accounts, not worth following. Lando Norris on the other hand, runs his own account and is genuinely hilarious. He’s called the meme lord of F1 for good reason :lol:. Carlos Sainz Jr is pretty good too.

For F1 related content, Will Buxton is my favourite. He shares lots of stuff, doesn’t just copy/paste headlines from news sites (does some of this, but not limited to just this), and has open conversations with both fans and drivers about all kinds of racing related topics. Not an “F1 elitist”, which I also like. The other F1 related account worth following is WTF1. It’s mostly just memes and banter, but it’s good fun. They also make content on YouTube. Oh, and Günther Steiner lmao. It’s not run by the real person, it’s a parody account, but it’s really funny (and the real Günther thinks is hilarious too). Well worth the follow.

For Indycar and IMSA news and info, Marshal Pruett is the best. Paul Tracy is active on Twitter as well, not super entertaining or anything, but good insight, and he asks a lot of open questions that spark good conversation. For current drivers, Alexandre Rossi and Graham Rahal are probably the most active, followed by Hinchcliffe, and a few others. Rossi and Hinch post some pretty funny stuff sometimes. Pipo Dirani is pretty active too, but a lot of his stuff is in Spanish. Lastly, and this one is a must follow, is Jordan Taylor. The guy is hilarious, and his alter ego Rodney Sandstorm is even funnier. Shae Adam (pit lane reporter for Radio Le Mans) is pretty good too, good insight and she’ll actually have a conversation with you.

For European and Asian sportscar related news, Graham Goodwin is my go-to. A lot like Will and Marshal, super insightful, but down to earth and personable.
 
That’s awesome man! Thanks. Followed and subscribed to a bunch of channels, even a few podcasts. Can’t wait to dig in. Thanks again!
 
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