Stay at Home, Don't Be Left Without a Steering Wheel

Since Covid-19, known as coronavirus, entered our lives, the planet has been going through changes straight out of a science fiction film. Streets that make us feel like Will Smith in "I Am Legend", dolphins leaping off the waterfront at Ortaköy square – we are witnessing an extraordinary period. Meanwhile, many of us are following the #evdekal (#stayathome) hashtag, while some are heading out onto the streets out of necessity and others because they cannot hold back the rebel within.

Naturally, this situation has hit many sports hard. Like many federations, the Turkish Automobile Sports Federation (TOSFED) was forced to suspend the season. But during this period, events bringing together athletes and fans stuck at home began to be organised officially.

Many motorsport fans are trying to console themselves at home with simulation games, using whatever means they have. When people think of e-sports, strategy games, fighting games and first-person shooters generally come to mind. In our country, there are even teams with very large budgets, and their players, under the roof of the newly established e-sports federation. Our focus, however, is on motorsport simulations in the virtual world.

The history of motorsport in the virtual world in Turkey actually goes back 12 years. In 2008, Rallivideo, a popular forum and video site at the time, organised a rally championship run over a season on RBR (Richard Burns Rally), with Castrol and Ford as sponsors. The prize for the champion was to compete in the Istanbul Rally Championship at the end of the season in a Ford Fiesta N/3 rally car, under the Ford team banner and wearing Ford overalls.

The game used by the TIRC – the "Turkish Internet Rally Championship", as we called it – Richard Burns Rally, was written in 2004 by a software company called Warthog. In the IT world, where developments are measured in months or even weeks, it is an incredible achievement that software sold as a game more than ten years ago remains relevant and, thanks to its open-source code, still gets new cars and stages. Unfortunately, that success did not help Warthog. In the arcade years dominated by NFS, such a good simulation did not receive the attention it deserved, and the company went bankrupt.

Of course, the TIRC lasted only one season in our country, but there is a far more popular worldwide counterpart: GT Academy. Launched jointly by Sony and Nissan in 2008, the programme was based at Silverstone in England. Beyond driving ability, the candidates went through every stage in the selection process, from physical training with commandos to how they behaved when giving interviews to the specialist press. The finalists joined the Nissan racing driver programme and, after the necessary steps, started races in Nissan's official racing team. Over its six seasons, GT Academy attracted five million participants and was also a celebrity-hosted competition show broadcast in 160 countries and reaching 100 million viewers.

Incidentally, it is worth adding that our successful driver Ayhancan Güven was one of the top three drivers in the world rankings at GT Academy, but missed out on going to GT Academy Silverstone at the last minute because he had previously raced in karting with a licence.

Right now we have another simulation racer to be proud of: Cem Bölükbaşı. The 22-year-old, an official e-sports driver in the Formula 1 World Championship, can be watched with pleasure as he battles it out virtually with Ferrari works drivers such as Leclerc. In 2019, Cem also started races in a real GT car with Borusan Motorsport. The team that organised a virtual tournament as an official works team in our country was also Borusan Motorsport. Seen from that angle, Borusan's interest in and support for Cem is hardly surprising.

After the pandemic, TOSFED prepared a new regulation to put virtual tournaments on an organised footing. By obtaining a licence, you can now compete on the same stages as Turkish champions in tournaments organised by official organiser clubs. From Burak Çukurova to Orhan Avcıoğlu, from Murat Bostancı to Yağız Avcı, you have the chance to compete in the same classification and on the same stages as drivers who have represented our country abroad. Something that might be "a bit" difficult in real life is now within your means thanks to the virtual championship.

TOSFED, for its part, has gone beyond being merely an authority that drafts regulations on this subject. At the end of the Digital Championship it organises, sponsored by Red Bull, it is awarding 10,000 TL to the winner, 6,000 TL to second place and 4,000 TL to third, heating up the competition even further.

As a result, a serious market has emerged for the people and organisations that have for many years been providing training, organising events, and manufacturing and importing equipment in this field. Today, a simple Google search for e-sports simulations turns up plenty of alternatives, and you can buy virtually every piece of equipment that exists anywhere in the world.

All the links to enter and watch the events can be found on TOSFED's official website.

Stay at home, but don't go without racing…