Hitting the virtual track with Formula E driver Sébastien Buemi
With "real" racing on hold in the wake of COVID-19, major international motorsports series have gone quiet. Formula E has always been quiet, but it's managed to keep the racing rolling.
Not quite real, but close.
The surge in sim racing interest we've seen since the global outbreak of the coronavirus is completely unprecedented. Motorsports fans are looking to get in on the action, but it's not just the amateurs who are turning wheels in the world's best racing sims. More and more professional series are turning online to fill the motorsports glut, and Formula E is certainly among the biggest.
Ahead of the series' virtual visit to a virtual Monaco, Nissan set me up with an online session with Sébastien Buemi, one-time Formula One racer, former Formula E champion and the electric series' most successful driver. He met me on Zoom for a quick chat before diving onto the track and summarily showing me the quick way around.
Sebastien Buemi, IRL.
The Race at Home Challenge pits the series' best drivers against some of the best from the sim racing world. To get this rolling, Formula E shipped each driver their own home sim rig, including a PlaySeat, a Fanatec CSL Elite steering wheel and an Intel Core i7 9700K PC with an RTX 2070 Super graphics card.
Read more: How to build the best iRacing PC
For the simulation itself, Formula E turned to rFactor 2, one of my favorite all-time sims, to replicate some of the key tracks and cars from the series. But while the cars look like the current spate of open-wheeled, all-electric racers, under the skin they're still the first-gen cars, two-speed transmissions and all.
Buemi warned me about this during our first laps, saying that you almost have to wait until the apex before downshifting, else you risk spinning the car. He also advised upshifting early, relying on the torque of the motor rather than trying to rev it all the way out. And, finally, he said to avoid the temptation of sliding the car around -- something I failed to do. (It's just so easy!)
Buemi was quickly up to speed in our session, despite saying he'd only had a few hours of practice and very little time in home-based simulators like rFactor 2. "I do a lot of simulators for the teams for Le Mans," he told me, referring to the massive rigs used by professional teams. "But at home, to be honest, I didn't do anything before. Now I got the sim from Formula E, so I'm trying to do a bit ... I try to have something like an hour or two a day."
And how does rFactor 2 compare to those professional setups? "It's still quite far," he said, "but it's a nice game. Because, compared to other sports, you still more or less get to drive like you do in reality, where in other sport, whether football or tennis, you're not going to have a racquet or a ball inside your office. Honestly it's not bad, it's improving a lot. The graphics are pretty impressive. But the feedback of the wheel and the simulator is not moving, those kind of things you will never really get."
Well, not unless you spend a lot more on a full-motion rig, anyway.
I, too, was running without much practice, having spent more time dealing with system issues trying to connect to our server than actually running laps. So, when Buemi posted a 53.2-second time in single-lap qualifying, I wasn't too disappointed to come in with a 54.7. One and a half seconds off a former F1 ace? I'll take that.
Posture is everything in sim racing.
The race wouldn't go so well. I got the launch on Buemi off the standing start, but he had the inside line and, with an unfortunate combination of over-exuberance and cold tires on my part, I immediately ran wide. From there it was just a matter of watching Buemi's rear wing get smaller and smaller over the course of the (thankfully) short race.
Needless to say I won't be challenging Buemi for the championship, and that's despite my experience behind the wheel of the real thing. It was a great privilege to meet him on the track, however, to see just what a real pro can do.
