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Simracing is compared to football and FIFA: "Then you don't stand a chance"
- GPblog.com
George Russell, like his contemporaries Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, Alexander Albon and Charles Leclerc, has become very adept at sim racing now that the start of the Formula 1 season has been postponed due to the coronavirus. The Williams driver is quite competitive, but states that sim racing is very different from actually driving on the track.
Russell compares virtual racing with FIFA and football. For example, if you're good at the game FIFA on PlayStation, it doesn't automatically mean you've got those skills on the football pitch itself. "The best Fifa player in the world would probably beat Lionel Messi on the game but put him on the football pitch and they wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Feeling of speed is incredibly important
In conversation with BBC Sport Russell discusses the differences between sim racing and getting into the car. "The biggest difference is you don’t quite have that sense of speed or fear. Obviously when you drive at around 200 miles per hour around a track you know that if you make a mistake you can be in the wall and there can be big consequences whereas on a computer game you can hit restart and you go again", he explains.
According to the 2018 Formula 2 Champion, your body learns speed over the years. "That sense of speed and what it feels like to manoeuvre a car, your body just learns that. You build these senses over time", Russell says. "I know some of these top esport racers are doing simulator work for F1 teams and they are doing a good job but you need to have that feel when you get in a car and in a simulator you don’t have that sense of speed or feel the tyres", concludes the 22-year-old Briton.