How an innocent video game led me to start racing cars - Part 1

I am not a car enthusiast, I am a sports enthusiast

I don’t consider myself a car enthusiast. I didn't care about watching autosport until very recently. In fact, my passion for racing cars has less to do with a love for cars themselves, and more to do with the physical and mental challenges of driving a car as fast as possible around the track, and, of course, the crazy amount of adrenaline it involves. I played a lot of sports growing up, and learned what competing means through many years of table tennis, volleyball and indoor climbing. Before racing, I think I experienced the most adrenaline through skiing. Although there are a lot of similarities between these sports and car racing, the amount of focus and energy required while racing a car is like nothing else. For example, there’s no such thing as “taking it easy” or? “taking a break.” You have to be at peak focus the entire time (doesn’t matter if it’s a practice day or an actual race) and you have to react extremely quickly to dynamic conditions. It’s often a matter of survival: your own as well as that of your car, as any damage is at your own expense. In endurance racing this can be for 2 hours at a time. When you finally stop, you’re exhausted and drenched but if things went well, you will feel the biggest high of your life, as well as empowered and accomplished.

Stuck at home

Like I said, I was never into cars much but I have always been a very active person: to me playing sports was the best way to spend my time and I resisted playing video games my whole life. But when the pandemic hit and forced me to stay at home, I conceded and installed “Steam” to try my hand at PC games. I stumbled upon “Shadow of the Tomb Raider”, it was a lot of fun and I finished the game in no time. As I was looking for the next game, the blue plastic box titled “Gran Turismo 3” that was sitting next to the Playstation 4 caught my attention. It was a car game and I knew the basics of driving a car, so I thought I’d give it a go. I struggled a lot initially to drive the car around with the console (it was nothing like real life), but I eventually got better and loved pretending to be a racing driver. I was certainly a late bloomer in discovering how cool Gran Turismo was (and gaming in general) in my early 30s and after 10 years in the computer and network industry, but I got there.

Discovering what car simulation really is

Soon I learned that I could take my gaming experience to the next level with a “fake” wheel and pedals which would make the experience even more realistic. I purchased my first wheel a couple of months later, a Thrustmaster T300 RS, Gran Turismo Edition with the pedals set. It cost me exactly $452 which I thought was a big investment at that time, just for a hobby.

Sweet innocent thought that was: I didn’t know back then about the world of expensive hobbies and how much I would later spend on real car racing. Maybe in the future I’ll share a bit more about my annual racing budget and how I decide what to spend it on.

I wish I could show you a picture of my “car simulation” setup during COVID… I had a decent wheel and pedal but I used to sit on a living room chair and had found the ironing board to be the best structure for my wheel to rest on, while staring at a gigantic and disproportionate living room TV screen. I probably waited longer than needed before spending money on something a bit more comfortable.

Fast forward a year into Gran Turismo I decided to invest in a proper car simulator: I was very excited at the prospect of choosing my new equipment. The key items were still about the same: wheel and pedals, but it was all going to be mounted on a sturdy structure so that nothing moves when I battle around with the pretend car. There’s a lot of different “structures”, for different budgets. I decided on a Trak Racer TR8020 black aluminum floor, and I am still very happy with it two years later.

You can (and should) also buy a proper seat (which is nothing else but a real car seat): it gives you better immersion, driving position, access to the pedals and comfort (immensely more than what a living room chair can offer). The high resolution screen is also very important, and there’s a whole science on how far you should position it from your face. The whole setup is visually quite impressive which was another reason for me to invest: it wows me every day and impresses any party guests.

As much as I enjoyed playing Gran Turismo, it’s not really a car simulator. So in the process of building my new setup, I switched to installing and practicing with the two most popular simulation software for road racing: Assetto Corsa (low cost, available on Steam) and iRacing (higher cost, subscription based), which, by the way, are also used by professional drivers such as Max Verstappen and Lando Norris.

I then realized that car simulation was more than a video game and it drastically changed the way I approached “pretend car racing”. I shifted my mindset from playing a game to practicing and learning performance driving, and I was hooked.

From Simulation to Reality

I spent hours and hours on my car simulator for two years, without once thinking I could be doing it in real life, because that would be way too crazy. But I did, little by little. How, exactly? I will continue the story in part 2 of this article.

For now, I am focused on my next race: the Daytona 14H with ChampCar, in Daytona Beach Florida. The race is planned to start at around 9am next Saturday and last for 14 hours! I will be driving with the same team (Twoth Autosport) and teammates.

You can tune in and follow our result live on the following channels: (look for car #822 TWOth Autosport Inc )

ChampCar Official Race Channel to see the live results and follow the top cars.

Earlybird Racing Network to follow the camera streaming from inside our car.