F1 Video game and Simulators effect in current era of the sport

In the current age of Formula 1, simulators and the F1 video game have become an essential tool for drivers and a means of engagement for the fans.

That is the claim of former F1 driver Johnny Herbert, who was active at a time when such gadgets were not available, when the sport was analogue rather than digital like our current times.

Herbert touched on the effect of the F1 video game; he said: “It’s all these different elements that we never had, and it’s now become the norm.

“[The official F1 video game] is very beneficial because it can just drag in fans that were maybe not interested in it. They may have liked their racing, done karting, been successful, but it never quite worked out.

“But they can still have an enjoyment, and they still have an understanding of what it’s like to be in an F1 car because they are so close to the real thing,” he maintained.

The current crop of F1 drivers are known to be quite active in the virtual racing world with heavy use of simulators, with four-time F1 Champion Max Verstappen most famous for his racing exploits in the digital universe, as he also owns and runs Team Redline, a professional Simulator Racing Team competing at the highest level of sim-racing esports.

Get in the sim or you will lose out!

“The sim world helps to give drivers that extra little edge,” Herbert commented. “I hate to say it because I never thought it would be the case that sims would be as powerful as they are. What it adds is another dimension and another capacity within your brain.

“When I have driven them, there’s a certain numbness that is there, that is inherent in a game,” he revealed. “But that numbness is actually something that happens in reality. You do have a car sometimes where you can’t feel it properly.

“The gaming, the sim racing, gives you that sense. And it’s a sense that you don’t think about because you’ve already felt it. But the ones who probably don’t do the sim, haven’t got the feeling.

“They just have the feeling there and then, then they don’t actually know what to do. Because Max [Verstappen] has done it for so long, it’s just there, doesn’t even think about it, and it’s actually instinctive.

“That’s another capacity, a very small capacity, but any marginal gain is important. It is where that world has definitely become an important part of the real world. And it actually does work.

“Sims are an unbelievably massive tool that is very, very beneficial. And the young drivers who don’t do it, listen to me: ‘You should be doing it. If not, you will lose out!’” Herbert concluded. (Quotes from Thunderpick)

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