Looks like Formula 1 teams has also taken an interest in esports. With Formula E sponsoring race sim events, the FIA backing Gran Turismo Sport’s online racing tournaments, and the rest of the big racing sims (Forza, Project CARS, etc.) and smaller ones (iRacing, rFactor 2, etc.) having their own tournament circuit, esports in motorsport is catching up big time.
Which explains the new competition McLaren F1 is spearheading with Logitech G. The World’s Fastest Gamer competition seeks to find, well, the world’s fastest gamer in racing games. The prize is a one-year contract to be McLaren F1’s first official sim driver. Dubbed “the best job in esports”, the sim driver will be working hand in hand with the F1 team and its official drivers to help develop their F1 cars (which, suffice to say, needs a lot of work this season).
No specific games are mentioned to be part of the competition, but it will use various games on various platforms. Six players will be hand-picked by “experts in both gaming and Formula 1 ” and another four through online qualifiers. Then the 10 players will have to compete in various racing games as well as other attributes- teamwork, engineering knowledge as well as physical and mental strengths. Here is a brief (and broad) explanation on how the competition works.
While it is certainly an interesting initiative, calling it “the best job in esports” might be a bit off, considering the sim driver role being offered here isn’t about participating in esports events but helping the F1 team. It is still cool that such an opportunity is offered nonetheless.
The World’s Fastest Gamer competition is also backed by GIVEMESPORT, Sparco, the racing gear manufacturer which has started making gear for racing sims, as well as Darren Cox, the brainchild of the GT Academy and now running the eSports+CARS race sim team.