When virtual and real-world racing meet!
Speak to any modern racing driver or even a professional engineer and it won’t be long before they talk about working with a simulator. The word ‘sim’ has become a staple in the lexicon of the motorsport business.
But now there is a growing breed of non-professional, budding race drivers who are living and breathing the virtual racing life. They are the cybernetic racing drivers competing in an organised series, so realistic that they even have their own stewards and officials!
Meet Niel Hekkens - student media designer, racing fanatic and expert sim-racer. The Dutch youngster set up the first season of NEO Endurance Series last year with his friend Egil Sandfeld and uses the Sim iRacing software for a full blown interactive racing series.
The championship has its own regulations and, like the FIA WEC, puts a premium on hard, exciting and fair racing. The NEO Series even has a special award called the Clean X challenge which promotes fair racing.
“The first season we had five races but we are looking to expand to maybe seven for season two,” Niel told us. “We have six hour races like WEC and we have some additional rules which are based on WEC and IMSA regulations. We have penalties for avoidable contact which is a 60-second stop and hold penalty. We make it very realistic which in turn makes it more fun and disciplined.”
Niel met with the FIA's WEC Race Director Eduardo Freitas and his assistant Lisa Crampton at Spa last month and was enthralled as to the set-up, taking away some valuable knowledge and advice.
“In the virtual world we do have a big advantage over the real world: we can view incidents from any angle we want,” surmised Hekkens after the tour of race control. “When there is an incident on the track involving multiple cars, we can choose the most ideal angles to view the incident from. We can view the incident from the sky, both cockpit views, chase cam and many more angles. In real life they are limited to a CCTV, TV and onboard cameras and even then they have to hope they can see it clearly. But they do have the telemetry data available to fill in the gaps.”
“It was fascinating to see how WEC worked,” said Niel. “It was also nice to see they were impressed how we run NEO. That is a great compliment and a huge boost to our motivation of course. We cannot wait to start season 2, but there is still a lot to do.”
The NEO takes in some current and past WEC circuits such as Spa, COTA and Interlagos. The second season of the NEO is scheduled to begin this autumn and Hekkens believes that it will be bigger and better than ever as they have just announced the full calendar.
“The beauty of the series is that we have an audience as well so people can watch if they are not taking part,” concludes Niel. “We have a broadcast and live timing just like WEC, so it is an inclusive entertainment for fans too.”
For more on the NEO Endurance Series click here - http://www.neo-endurance.com/
Sam Smith