When i was younger, just a boy, i used to do kart racing. From the moment i stepped into a kart i was fast, really quite fast infact, it felt absolutely natural to me from the moment i stepped into one, i had no fear of speed and always felt 100% in control of the vehicle, to the point where my mother would not watch me drive as she was afraid of my confidence, sadly i was unable to take it anywhere due to the funds, haven't driven a kart in 8 years. But in sims i was unable to have the same success, the only racing game i really played at that age was Sega rally, until later i got gran turismo which took a LOT of practice to get anywhere near the same confidence.
When i got into PC sims (which is only recently, last 2 months) it was also a big learning curve, compensating for the lack of feel, the physical aspect of feeling the tires through the steering wheel, the g-force's the sense of speed... none of that is really there in a sim, you have to learn to drive completely different and yes it is harder.
The reason that real life is harder is down to fear, and the forces and uncertainty of how fast you can approach a corner at a given moment, these are things that take a lot more from a persons body and mind, and those are the things that truly make a race driver in real cars. Being able to drive is almost a natural thing, something that many people have the ability to do, some better than others ofcourse, and a huge part of developing into a racing driver is the practice of it. But with sims i dont think the same is true, its a different animal, the same concept but not the same sensation at all as a huge part of the physical sensation which many people rely on is removed and thats why i think that sim racing is still gaming, good gamers will be good sim racers, greger huttu would not beat schumacher in a real car, as much as schumacher would not beat huttu in a simulation game.
Dont get me wrong, i'm not bad at sims, but when i got the steering wheel 2 months ago and installed rfactor, i thought i would have the confidence to just jump in and go flat out, it felt like it was there in me, like riding a bike, but it wasnt. I was slow, much slower than i expected, even when i thought i was fast, i was still slow compared to the sim racers. I found a lot of cars in the sims near impossible to drive without the aids, i felt like there was no control. But as a "Gamer" i have honed my skills a lot and improved, but to me, while it is still driving, its not anything the same as real driving, the skillset lends itself to that of a gamer atleast as much, or more than it does as a driver of a physical real car.
My opinion atleast.