Opinion: can sim racing help ‘proper’ racers?

I renewed my racing licence in December. Not because I’m batting away calls from racing teams desperate to secure my services based on my mediocre iRacing results, but because if I didn’t renew it before the end of 2024, it would expire and I’d have to do the test again. Not something that tends to keep Lewis Hamilton up at night, I’d imagine. He’s probably lying awake, staring at the ceiling, worrying about which special edition, one-of-a-kind Ferrari he’s going to spec to drive to work this year.

Going through the renewal did make me reflect on the one and only season of motor racing I completed, back in 2018, and how it related to the sim racing that has made up the bulk of what could be generously referred to as ‘my racing experience’. For a start, there’s no doubt that the reason I ended up lining up on a real life grid was racing games.

My love of motorsport is inextricably linked to driving games. I’d watch motor races or rallies as a kid, then seek out the games that featured those cars and tracks, or I’d play the games and discover racing series I never even knew existed. Like most Westerners, I only became aware of the unhinged brilliance of the Japanese Super GT series after trying to cling onto the TOM’s Castrol Toyota Supra in Gran Turismo.

The car I chose to race in was a Ginetta G40, in an entry level series set up by Ginetta specifically for first timers. The car itself was a great learning tool, a modest 135bhp but in a lightweight spaceframe chassis and with no driver assists. My genuine concern ahead of the season was that going racing would spoil sim racing for me forever. If anything, though, it made me appreciate how close modern sims get to replicating the vehicle dynamics and sense of competition you feel in real life.

The other question was where I’d finish, with my aforementioned deeply average skills – whether the standard would be higher than your average chaotic multiplayer race. In reality the spread of abilities was much the same and I was mid-pack, making exactly the same niggling, pace-sapping mistakes as I do on the sim.

Where the sim came in really useful was learning tracks I wasn’t already familiar with. I’m not sure I’d turned a lap at Snetterton since TOCA Touring Cars 2, but with iRacing’s laser scan and a Pontiac Solstice standing in for the Ginetta, I was able to work out the lines and posted my joint best result of the season. Don’t get too excited, it was 7th.

Unfortunately it might be a while before I race again. Ginetta’s entry level championships are now via its G56 GTA, which looks like great fun to drive but, at around £100k for the car and a season, it prices me out. Still, at least I can drive my G40 in both Forza Motorsport and Automobilista 2 on several of the circuits I competed on. It’ll definitely do for now...