Lando Norris has explained the appeal of sim racing and what makes it "so addictive".
With the start of the 2020 Formula 1 season delayed by the coronavirus, drivers have been turning to the virtual world to fill their racing needs with numerous events taking place on different platforms.
The shift has shed plenty of light onto a world Norris was already firmly part of, often competing in a range of disciplines from open-wheelers to GT's and sportscars and streaming via Twitch.
As a result, the McLaren driver has been one of the busier and more popular F1 figures over the past month, and he explained where his passion comes from.
“One of the more appealing things is the competitiveness,” he told Formula1.com
“We’re racing against other real drivers, such as Max [Verstappen], while some others are top in other categories like GT3 or DTM. The grids are so close, split by hundredths and thousandths.
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“We get the same buzz for that and trying to perfect a lap, trying to be P1 in a very competitive field, you still get just as much of a buzz and enjoy it as much as we do from doing it for real.
“It’s also good fun to race others. You always believe you can do better and you can beat them, so you keep playing more.
“That’s why it’s so addictive, for myself anyway, and why so many people love it and have started to do it.”
Of course those who follow Lando will know of his regular technical issues with the F1 2019 game in particular, having been unable to compete in any of the Virtual GP's so far due to server problems.
Still, the Briton says he often spends "four or five hours a day" playing and revealed his secrets to success.
“I spend hours on sim racing, but I do more on particular programmes than others,” he said.
“You get some drivers who, say, on the F1 game, are extremely quick. They know what corners you can push the track limits, what corners you can’t, kerbs you can take, kerbs you shouldn’t take. How to maximise the car’s potential, whether it’s gearshifts, or fuel usage, or DRS usage or ERS usage.
“All of these little things, which sound quite simple, add up to quite a bit of lap time," Norris admitted.
"A lot of it just begins with hours and hours and hours, days in fact, spent on the game and knowing these little things inside out and exploiting those little things. That’s just the edge they get.
“Some of these drivers, you see more now, have gone to playing one game, such as F1, onto iRacing or rFactor and they are not as special as they are on the other game, the one they play more often.
“For some of us, it’s just about going on and trying to have some fun racing, rather than always trying to figure out every single thing we can do. If there was more at stake, maybe we would try and exploit more, but now, we just want to do as well as we can.”
One driver to join the sim racing craze is Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, who has a 100 percent winning record in the Virtual GP after joining at the second event held on Australia's Albert Park.
But after his latest win on Sunday around China's Shanghai International Circuit, the Monegasque did admit to one downside.
“I'm actually enjoying very much playing and streaming [games] and I enjoy it even more when I win,” Leclerc wrote on Twitter.
“But the post-race celebrations are somehow feeling a bit different. Switching off the computer and going [to] cook white pasta is a bit less glamour than spraying champagne on the podium.”
