HOW SIMS ARE HELPING DRIVERS GET THROUGH THE DOWNTIME
During this enforced motorsport downtime due to the coronavirus pandemic, onlookers can hardly fail to notice that, for the drivers, simulators have stepped into the breach.
This has been for recreation, preparation, competition or a combination of the three. Yet within a variety of motorsport disciplines, sim work and online racing was already a big deal, and a rapidly growing one.
To find out what’s going on, Darren Turner seems a good place to start. The GT legend has a simulator business called Base Performance.
It started 10 years ago, via Turner’s friend who was a driver coach. “He had a client who wanted something at home which would mean he could actually then go to a race weekend and do a reasonable job from the start, rather than his best lap being his last lap on a Sunday,” Turner tells Motorsport News. “He didn’t have the time to go testing either. That is exactly how my little company Base Performance started.”
And the technology’s progress since has been sharp. “The software and different platforms that are available, every year they are getting better so the level of improvement has been stunning,” Turner continues. “The immersion is so much better now. The natural driving element of the sims is getting so much closer to the
