Motorsport round-up
F1, WRC, Indy, Spa 24, BTCC
in Banbury, which came in handy for the esports high jinks of recent months. Racing wheel to wheel with Alonso and Jenson Button in the Legends series, in virtual Brabham BT44S, was a buzz.
“It’s been amazing, and off the back of it, there’s a Whatsapp group going on,” he says. “It’s so nice to be involved with these drivers: good banter and good competition. Esports gives you the racing fix without the big pressures of being out there for real. That makes it a friendlier environment. And I’ve been selling sims too: Jason Plato, Dario Franchitti and Karun Chandhok have all bought our sims recently… I never thought I’d take money off those guys!”
Turner has 17 Le Mans starts and three class wins under his belt, but the virtual 24 Hours that ran on the June weekend the real race was supposed to be happening was an eye-opener. “My first stint was midnight until 3am,” he says. “Beforehand, I thought: ‘I’m not sure I can do three hours in a sim.’ Three hours in a racing car, with all the adrenaline, goes really quickly at Le Mans. But in a sim… Turns out it went like that: really quick.
At the end of three hours, I was ready to go again.
“Car damage was ‘on’ so you had to look after your car. You couldn’t go in with a no-consequences gaming attitude. Also, having to deal with faster LMP1 cars and managing the traffic was just like the real thing. And there was a little moment when a Corvette came alongside me on the Mulsanne and the noise that was reverberating between the two cars was exactly like what you get in the real world. It blew me away how realistic it was. I was grinning all the way down the straight.”
Turner will return to real racing – all being well – in the World Endurance Championship on 15 August at the Spa 6 Hours. Le Mans is scheduled for 19-20 September, the first time it has been delayed until the ninth month of the year since 1968. “Hopefully it will go ahead,” says Turner. “It’s important in our little world that we start again. Le Mans in September will make it completely different to anything I’ve experienced before: probably lower ambient temperatures, running in the dark a lot longer [up to 11 hours]. Things will be more crucial than they usually are.”
Esports has been a welcome diversion, not to mention a good bit of business for a true racing entrepreneur. But as his Whatsapp friends would surely agree, it’s only ever a substitute for the real thing.