iRacing World Champion Gets a Shot At the Real Thing 168
jamie sent in a link to the story of iRacing World Champion Greger Huttu, who caught the attention of the Top Gear guys and got a chance to drive a real Star Mazda racer. iRacing is a realistic driving simulator that recreates the exact physics of race cars and tracks from around the world, and nobody is better than Greger. Top Gear wanted to see how the virtual champion would do with the real thing. Even though he was eventually unable to put up with the physical demands, Greger drove really well.
Marketing Wins Again (Score:0, Informative)
There are much better (in all facets, including realism) simulations than iRacing; iRacing's success relies on the company's ability to associate its product with actual racing.
Physically demanding (Score:4, Informative)
Did some racing at the local level where I live and can attest to the physical demands needed to race well. I had to do a lot of running and weight lifting to build up my endurance and strength to race well. There are time I came off the race track after a 45 minute race so spent that my arms and upper body would have exhaustion tremors, unable to even operate the release to get out of the seat.
Re:Irresponsible! (Score:4, Informative)
He definitely wasn't just given a car and told "have at it". If you RTFA, you'd see that he was put through a slower initial lap to ensure the car (and i presume he) was okay, and that he worked up to 100mph turns over the 15 laps. He was at a place that does 3-day courses in how to drive race cars, so he had professionals there to make sure everything was okay.