Paul Jeffrey
Premium
New Formula One head honcho Ross Brawn has indicated that the sport could look to sim racing in its quest to find solutions to improving the F1 "show".
Speaking during the outstanding Formula One demonstration event on the streets of London today, Brawn opened up to the "massive potential" of eSports and sim racing to trail new ideas and regulations, before introducing them into the real life racing series.
"Where we are looking at improving the racing in the future, there is a huge community of eRacers out there through whom we could potentially put different environments and different changes to the way we race.
"We can get them to tell us whether the racing has improved or not.
"We can get them to tell us whether the racing has improved or not.
Brawn acknowledges that the consumer sim racing experience has improved by such a rate in recent years, a move towards simulating ideas and design improvements now has a very real merit to the decision making process prior to introducing new concepts to the world of Formula One racing.
"It is not that far removed from the simulators the real teams use. A lot of the F1 teams use software generated from the games industry to give a more realistic environment for their driver simulators. There is scope in that area as well, which we are exploring."
Brawn feels that with the advanced state of modern racing simulations, and the level at which many of the sim racing community currently compete at, gaining experience and learning lessons in a virtual environment could have very real benefits for the future direction of the sport -
"In the eRacing community, if we change the aero property of the cars and that is fed into their community, does that create a better race or not from their experience?
"At the moment we are trying to understand what makes a good race: what is it that makes a great race," he said. "It is not just overtaking. You can have a great race without overtaking.
At the moment however, Brawn is keen to gather a sound understanding of what exactly the fans expect to experience when watching Formula One racing, something that appears to have been constantly overlooked by the previous circus masters of the sport.
"We are mining all the information that exists in F1 to start to build a vision of what makes great racing, and what makes great on track action, and which tracks consistently produce great races."
Could our virtual racing activities eventually feed into the future direction of the sport, and could a move towards investigating the advantages of sim racing in respect of the real world series help bring Formula One back to the pinnacle of motorsport racing? Only time will tell....
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Do you think using sim racing can help produce better racing? Do you think the new direction Brawn appears to be taking behind the scenes will be positive for the sport? Let us know in the comments section below!
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