Falk Goes Sim Racing - Let's go!
A brief introduction...
As some of you may remember, our first Sim Racing announcement back in November 2022 ("The GP Days Winter Cup") was a bit of a fail. What sounded like an absolutely fantastic idea to begin with, didn't really work out in the end as we didn't manage to get enough Sim Racers to join the series we put together with our friends over at Rennwelten.
Essentially, we wanted to offer our regular Track Day participants and other interested Sim Racers the chance to get together even during the time of the year, when the real race tracks are closed - this time though, in the virutal world.
This little hiccup didn't discourage us though from thinking about Sim Racing and E-Sports in general. In the end, the setback was probably necessary to understand that we cannot underestimate what Sim Racing has become over the last couple of year.
While we will need some more time to rethink our concept of bringing our Track Day philosophy to the virtual world, the seeds were sown and I myself (Falk), used all of this as an excuse to properly get back into the topic off Sim Racing,
The seeds were definitely sown and right now, there is no going back! We'll just going to do it in a different way but first, we'll be truly getting to know what Sim Racing has developed into!
I want to take you along my journey of rediscovering Sim Racing in all its aspects from setting up a proper Sim Rig, to try rising up the ranks across different simulations - especially iRacing and potentially some Assetto Corsa Competizione (ACC).
I've already started getting familiar with sitting in the virtual racing seat the last couple of weeks, slowly familiarising myself with recording and commenting my driving and setting up all that's necessary to creating the first GP Sim Racing content and! we already have a dedicated Instagram Profile in place: @gpsim1).
To broaden the GP Community and bridge the gap between the real and virtual world, we've also created our very own Discord Channel: The GP HUB.
Are you keen on finding out a bit more about my Sim Racing stroy and where we want to take this? Then keep on reading!
How it all started...
I wouldn't want to age myself that much but Iinitially go into Sim Racing around 15 years ago. It all started with some good old GTR, GT Legends [I still love this one so much] and a bit of Grand Prix Legends - though this was almost a bit too challenging back then.
Later on, Live for Speed came on the radar. This was also the first time, where I properly got into some online racing on public servers as well as with some friends.
Around 2010 I discovered iRacing and really loved the concept of the structured licencing system and the generally higher quality of the racing going on.
With a trusty old Logitech G25 clamped to my wobbly desk, I raced around and felt like a superstar however mostly engaging in some quick Time Trial session than really doing the full races.
Looking at my iRacing statistics now, it pretty much all stopped in 2014 right around the time I finished my studies.
I briefly reactivated my iRacing account in 2020 and rememember that during that time, I also did some laps here and there in the first Assetto Corsa and Race Room but it never amounted to much more than that.
Why I'm getting back into it...
Writing this post, I tried to pinpoint where the urge to get back into Sim Racing came from. Of course the planning for our GP Days Winter Cup I mentioned above was the intial impulse. In the process, I got into checking out several streams and videos on Youtube to see where Sim Racing is at today.
When I started to catch myself diving into the Youtube Sim Racing "rabbit hole" more regulary, browsing different kinds of forums as well as Reddit, I started to realise this was not going to go away any time soon - I had to scratch that itch.
This set off some kind of chain reaction and come the beginning of 2023, a complete Sim Rig was taking shape and found its place in our office - surprise!
We'll dive deeper into the hardware I'm currently in a later post (and maybe some videos).
What's the plan?
Undeniably, Sim Racing experienced a huge popularity boost during the COVID crisis. Not only did more and more people try to finds ways to enjoy there hobby in the confines of their homes but even professional drivers such as Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and many others helped fueling the hype around it.
As so many things changed compared to when I initially got started 10 years ago, this new beginning may help some of you who're trying to get back into as well and I'm going to try to explain us much as I can about setting up my Rig as well as PC so you can get as much value as possible about it. Since Sim Racing is not to far off what we do our Track Days and we have a couple of ideas floating around how to combine the two, its also a good justification to buy all the gear and jump on the hype train!
With "Falk goes Sim Racing" I want to cover Sim Racing not only in the form of postings on here, but also create more and more video content of the races I'm doing as you can already see in the post.
To be honest though, that makes me a bit anxious as I've never thought I will ever go in this kind of direction and so far have only little idea what I'm doing. At the same time, I am super exctied though! Let's see how this turns out!
