The Red Bulletin December 2019 (UK)

F1 Esports Pro Series
titles is that they emulate the inputs that
a professional driver is giving.”
It’s for this reason that a high
proportion of drivers on the esports grid
have a background in racing karts. Like
many others, Blakeley had to quit karting
due to spiralling costs, but he credits his
experience on the track for his success
in esports. “It has absolutely helped me,”
he says, citing general racecraft and a
knowledge of how to drive in wet weather
as two advantages he has over those
without a real-life racing background.
“The link between sim racing and real
life is without question. Every F1 team
has a simulator – how much further do
you need to look than that?”
Game-changers
Isaac Price was 15 when he had his
accident. A successful kart racer at
national level, the Brit would spend his
summer holidays travelling the country
to race. Then, one day, during a practice
lap, the steering column of his kart
shattered, pinning the throttle open
and sending him hurtling helplessly into
the wall at high speed. “It took 10-15
minutes to untangle me, because my
ankle got wrapped on the spring of the
brake,” he recalls. “I was airlifted to
hospital and they took a few hours to
put me back together.”
During his recovery from a broken
ankle, Price passed the time by taking
part in online races on the PC game
Live for Speed. That was 10 years ago,
and after competing at a high level
on leading motorsports simulation
iRacing and winning the game’s GT
World Championship in 2017, Price went
full-time, existing on savings from a job
in data entry and any winnings he could
bank from his victories online.
That same year saw the launch of
the F1 Esports Pro Series – a real gamechanger
for Price. “I wasn’t really playing
the [Codemasters] games at the time,
but if Formula One was getting behind
esports, it was inevitable that it would
become the pinnacle of sim racing,”
explains the 25-year-old. “That made my
decision for me.”
After making it to the finals of
McLaren’s World’s Fastest Gamer
competition in 2017, then a failed Pro
Draft appearance the following year,
Price raced at other events for Williams
Esports, putting himself in the driving
seat for a place in the team’s F1 Esports
line-up. “I’ve shown what I can do and
This could be the
first step to a
career in actual
motorsports
I fit into the dynamic that they already
had, so in that way it all made sense,”
he says after being selected. “As a team
I think we can be confident; we’ve got the
potential to do really well.”
Fast friends
Not all esports drivers have a karting
background to draw on, however: Floris
Wijers from the Netherlands has no
For Scottish 18-year-old Lucas Blakeley, the F1 Esports Pro Series
transformed an after-school gaming hobby into a full-blown career
experience in actual motorsports, but
began playing racing games when he
was just four years old.
Wijers bought his first proper steering
wheel in 2017 and, along with Blakeley,
failed to be drafted by an F1 Esports
team the following year, but the pair
quickly became friends and spent the
next 12 months racing together to
prepare for this July’s Pro Draft.
Balancing esports with college and an
internship in media broadcast operations,
20-year-old Wijers dedicates between
four and eight hours a day to sim racing
at home in Soest, near Utrecht. “Luckily
I don’t need a lot of sleep, so I practise
until midnight or 1am and just get up
late,” he says. Having performed well in
the qualifying events, beating first-pick
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