Can A Sim Racer Become A Real World Racer? | Game To Glory: Level Up

0:01 My name is Sebastian Job and I am a sim racer for Oracle Red Bull Sim Racing. My view on sim racing is that the virtual world is becoming ever closer to reality. They're able to go in and change the roll bars, the springs, the ride heights. It's becoming incredibly realistic. It's come to a point where it's good enough that you can measure performance through iRacing. Does that skill set transfer from virtuality to reality?

0:49 This is the perfect experiment to see if somebody can go from sim racing to real racing. We'll have to see how he performs in a Porsche Super Cup, Formula 4 and the 3.5. Whether he has the capability and the competence to drive a Formula 1 car. In the sim, if you go off, you just press reset. But in real life, it's another story. I mean, obviously there's a bit negativity. Some people don't really believe in the transition between it. If he doesn't succeed or show his aptitude in these cars, then there's no way that we'll let him drive a Formula 1 car. Yeah, a little bit nervous. I've got bit of butterflies in the stomach.

1:34 I'm trying to get rid of it. Just, not be too nervous about it all. But, you know, that's easier said than done. Morning Seb, you okay? Morning. Nice to meet you, mate. Nice to meet you. James Wallis is going to be my coach. He has a lot of experience in this car. I'm the Porsche Carrera Cup junior driver. Doing some coaching with Sebastian Job in the Porsche Carrera Cup GB car. It’s pretty similar to your esports livery, right? Yeah, I’d need to see them side by side to spot any difference. I'm Joe Naugthon. Today I'll be working with Sebastian as his race engineer. I don't know if I want to set too many lap time targets. Maybe a 1:53.000 would be good. Wow, that's just like on the sim.

2:21 It’s exactly like on the sim, isn’t it. James is going to warm up the car for me, dial it in. I did my first lap as a reference for Seb. My main focus is for my racing and then help Sebastian throughout the day as much as I can. I have driven this car at least thousands of hours on iRacing at this point. I'll be curious to see how accurate the car feels. This is completely new to him. He's going from, being a young guy in the bedroom playing on his simulator to now driving one of these cars. Which are going incredibly fast. I feel a bit on edge. Like there's too much adrenaline. I just kind of want to get started at this point.

3:49 Wow, the acceleration, the braking. When I turn in, the responsiveness is phenomenal. I think that's partly the G-Force. It just pushes you into the side of the seat straightaway. When I drive on the sim, I feel the rear go through the steering wheel. Whereas this, I feel it in my bum. I feel the whole car shifting around under me. That’s so cool. To go from sim racing to that. Now you can relax a little bit. It’s alright mate, you still got a job.

4:44 How was that? Awesome, really good. It felt very natural. Like, just really similar to the sim sort of thing? Yeah, I did have a bit of a lock up at one point. It wasn't one that I could feel so much, but I saw the light and it just stayed on and I was like ‘oh my God’. We'll get you guys in debrief now. So if you go with AJ and James into the truck. That’s close to the grass, I thought I might be a bit. That wasn't too bad, to be fair. Just probably grab a little bit more apex. So that’s your lap time, 1:53.420. That's the lap I'm going to compare. So, I'm a bit surprised with the lap time, it’s good.

5:30 That's that means we can start working already. Overall the whole lap, you’re braking quite a lot. You don't need to break that much. You need to get more confidence with the car and carry more speed into the corners. Glad you said that, because that was my feeling too. Yeah, you are slowing down too much. After every session, we had a debrief that was super insightful. I know in sim racing what I'm looking for, but how that translates to the real car, that's another question. Instead of having 1:53.000, let's see if we can go to 1:52.700. For me that would be just perfect. If you're feeling well, I think we can go again. So the first goal of the day was basically start off, build up the speed and to get used to the braking. Sebastian didn't exactly do that.

6:16 He got straight into it. And this was very impressive. I locked up for a good two seconds. I just couldn't get it off. As he was exploring the limits of how hard he could break, the fronts would lock up. And this happens quite easily, even with a little bit of steering. First half lap, be super careful on the brakes because you don’t want to lock these wheels as well. And waste any other tyres. The tyres on the sim, most of it is out of your control, and it's just a matter of pushing as hard as you can. Whereas here, got a look after the tyres.

7:03 There's this whole process. Turn two? Yeah, I looped it on the exit. It should be fine, right? Yeah, he’s just going to plug in, download the data and make sure everything is fine. Just switch the hazards off. I don't know, it was so out of nowhere, it felt like. Have you seen the video of it? I haven't yet, no. So that was a little bit embarrassing. But it showed that I was pushing.

7:50 Yeah, I think you have a slight double turn as well. It was just going in here. We could see it was just a small little mistake being a little too aggressive with the throttle. But the idea of today was to find the limits of the car and see how much he can push. We quickly learned what I did wrong and I made sure not to do it again. That's the main thing. He is a second off race pace now: 1:52.340 He did that? Yeah, so a second off race pace now. On that one? Yeah.

8:37 So right now I am using iRacing. I'm doing some testing before Snetterton. A couple of real life Porsche Cup drivers helped develop it, which means that right now it's probably the best reference I’ll get. It's becoming incredibly realistic. For example, the tracks, they are laser scanned. So it’s many data points and very high detail. The drivers can spend hours upon hours fine tuning the setup of the car. The track grip levels might be better on the sim or worse on the sim, and I don't know what I should be aiming for until I try. I can't get it 1 to 1,

9:25 Now, we’re going to try to do a long run, but is has to be consistent. We’ll see if we can be between the target for pro cars. Sebastian will go out and do a long run, with more fuel, more weight, and here we will test his consistency. We want to see if he's able to repeat the lap times. It shows that he's able to drive the car and understand what he's actually doing.

10:17 You don’t really see many people get in this car and be fast. I thought he was going to be within a second of me, but for him to be within half a second is, yeah, a bit of a shock, to be honest. These are your lap times here. 01:51... That's brilliant. That could be like a P1 pace. Really? Yeah. I had my doubts before you came here, but so far I'm very happy, honestly. It’s a really good job. I've been coaching many drivers already ...impressive. Thank you.

11:04 I mean, at the start we said 1:53.000, I’d be happy with. And, we did a 1:50.440 with race fuel. So that's way faster. For me the highlight of the day. I think it’s very impressive. I mean, looking at these times. It's a very quick circuit and one that takes great bravery as well. it just shows how quickly he actually got used to the car and was very, very positive. I’ve always been one of those guys who believes in those sim racers who come through. I think today's taught him a lot, and I think he can take that going forward into the next steps. Those cars are going to be a lot more intense physically. That's my biggest worry.

11:49 To be able to adapt from a GT car to a single seater will be fascinating to see. Like, this is serious shit. It would be a great shame, to have this amazing opportunity but not be able to make the most of it by simply not being fit enough. The physical aspect is arguably the biggest challenge. If you’re not fit, forget it. Stay at home.