At a look
- Le Mans winner Nick Tandy and three-time iRacing world champion Joshua Rogers talk about crossing between actual and digital racing.
- Tandy introduced his expertise on observe into the sim; Rogers is taking his digital racing experience onto the observe.
- Regardless of the bodily dangers of real-world racing, each agree on which is extra traumatic – and that successful feels simply nearly as good in both atmosphere.
Australian Joshua Rogers is a three-time iRacing world champion, who races for each the digital Porsche Coanda Esports Racing crew and for Staff Parker Racing within the real-life Porsche Carwow Dash Problem GB, within the UK. In 2020, the 26-year-old raced alongside Britain’s Nick Tandy within the digital 24 Hours of Le Mans, the place they received the GTE class alongside Turkey’s Ayhancan Güven and Norway’s Tommy Østgaard.
Tandy, 41, is a racing driver who’s spent his racing profession in top-flight sportscar and endurance racing, with wins together with the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans, piloting the Porsche 919 Hybrid. In the present day, each drivers are at Silverstone, and, shortly after Rogers has taken pole in qualifying within the Porsche Dash Problem, they replicate on how the 2 racing worlds collide.
Extra sim racers may quickly comply with Rogers from display to trace by the Porsche Esports Supercup’s expertise shoot-out. As much as 5 rivals will likely be chosen for evaluation in Cologne, with as much as two progressing to an on-track check and the eventual winner receiving Porsche Motorsport assist to compete in a Porsche one-make sequence in 2027.
Can sim racers succeed on observe?
There’s no assure, say Rogers and Tandy – however somebody with uncooked expertise and dedication is extra more likely to do effectively in each. “The perfect simulation drivers will all the time be good in a automotive,” says Tandy. “The principle purpose you get into sim racing is since you love the game. And when you’ve got an absolute, single-minded dedication to being the quickest, you may apply it to sim or actual racing. Evaluating my expertise and skills in sim racing versus Josh’s after we began digital racing collectively, he was at a totally totally different degree. And it will take me years and years and years to develop into an elite in that totally different sport.”
Rogers says there are massive variations between enjoying an arcade sport – like Forza Motorsport – with a controller versus utilizing a steering wheel and pedals, and an even bigger shift once more to utilizing iRacing, the principle platform for the world’s sim-racing sequence. The most important leap is, unsurprisingly, the one from digital racing to real-life racing. “After I first jumped within the automotive, all the things I felt from the sim translated, however I used to be coping with new senses that I needed to adapt to and tie to one thing and I had to determine learn how to use them to my profit,” he explains. “I feel it is simpler so as to add a way than taking one away. Going from an actual automotive to a sim, you’re stripping senses away. Sounds and tactile emotions that you simply usually use to ‘really feel’ the automotive, are gone.”
For Tandy, it was a sensory rewire. “I’ve all the time felt tyre degradation by how the automotive feels, however within the sim I needed to pay attention as a substitute. Josh taught me quite a bit about that.”
However Tandy’s real-world abilities transferred into digital racing, too. “I learnt quite a bit from him about site visitors administration,” says Rogers. “After we did the 24 Hours of Le Mans collectively, we had been within the GTE class, and he knew learn how to management the sooner LMP vehicles – like positioning the automotive to allow them to get by, however with out compromising our personal line and race.”
Coaching the physique to assist the thoughts
For Rogers, bodily health issues in each disciplines, mainly as a result of it helps him handle psychological fatigue – particularly within the warmth of the automotive. He spends 4 to 6 hours within the sim, 5 days per week, plus races, typically following a session with an outside run. Relaxation, he stresses, is simply as necessary.
“Competing on the highest degree within the sim prepares you in ways in which atypical racing video games cannot,” he says. “Staying calm below strain leaves extra psychological capability to watch all the things else, from the vehicles round me to altering climate situations.” This potential to stay comparatively calm doesn’t essentially imply a gradual pulse, although: his coronary heart price can attain 140–160 bpm within the sim and infrequently climbs to 180 within the automotive.
“Sim racing will be extra traumatic”
For all of the potential threat in real-life racing, each drivers say they expertise extra strain in sim racing. “Driving real-world vehicles is essentially the most snug factor in my life. It’s my pure atmosphere,” says Tandy, who raced within the 2020 digital 24 Hours of Le Mans when the real-life race was postponed. “Whereas sim racing was completely out of my consolation zone. Regardless that I used to be at an affordable degree doing it, it all the time put me below a lot extra strain. I’d sweat extra sitting in an air-conditioned room, not transferring, than I ever would driving round in a 60-degree-Celsius racing automotive.”
It’s the identical for Rogers. “I discover it simpler right here,” he says, trying round at Silverstone, “since you’re within the automotive and you have got so many extra issues to concentrate on. You are in your individual little atmosphere. There’s extra at stake, so that you naturally focus extra. After I’m within the zone, I don’t really feel the strain. If you’re racing in a sim at an occasion, you’ll have a crowd, folks speaking, photographers taking images – it will probably all break your focus.”
Profitable feels the identical – celebrating doesn’t
Tandy says successful a race is as stuffed with pleasure in each the sim and actual world. “The quantity of focus is similar. After which, should you get to the top and also you win, it is the identical sort of peak of euphoria.” However the interval following the win will be unusual, with out real-life’s shared celebrations, and the post-race wind-down that’s as a lot course of as it’s a shared ritual.
“When you win a race at evening in sim racing, you are feeling the euphoria – however then you definitely say goodbye, and that’s it. You turn off your display and everybody else is asleep,” says Tandy. When Rogers loved his first real-life win, he acquired to expertise the alternative: “With out the crew behind me, with their preparation and assist, I wouldn’t be capable of compete in any respect,” he says. “They provide the confidence to go on the market and push it the toughest. It was an enormous factor to have the crew proper there and be capable of share the celebration. It’s as a lot their victory as it’s mine.”
How Rogers is combining sim and real-life racing
Rogers makes use of his sim setup for getting ready for real-life races, however to a degree: “My strategy isn’t making an attempt to go the quickest on the sim within the lead-up to a real-life race – I don’t need to study muscle reminiscence that solely works for sim racing – however making an attempt to do what I can and drive the automotive in a manner that I do know the precise automotive will need to be pushed. I’ll strive a bunch of stuff – like totally different strains – that I would not usually be capable of strive for actual. So I would strive 15 variations of 1 nook within the sim, and 5 may be viable, after which I can convey the ultimate three to the observe. So it is a totally different strategy to regular sim racing.”
Later that day, Rogers would win all three of his races at Silverstone. Simply two weeks later, a victory within the ultimate spherical of the 2026 Porsche Carwow Dash Problem GB noticed him narrowly miss out on the championship title by simply 5 factors. A powerful finish to a debut season – and this time, his crew was proper there to share the celebrations.