While sim racing is still a fairly nascent esport it grew considerably during the pandemic when many sim racers holed up and invested heavily in their at-home sim rigs. Sim racing’s communities have grown so vibrant and competition so fierce that even many drivers in the F1 grid compete regularly online in public lobbies.
A few days ago, iRacing hosted their annual Daytona 24H race where teams compete around the clock in what is essentially a motorsports relay where the victor is the team that completes the most number of laps during the 24 hour period. The event has a qualifying round where each team lays down their hottest lap to determine the starting order. While the grid order isn’t so important over the course of a 24 hour race, this running of the virtual Daytona 24 hour qualifying was extremely controversial.
Youtuber and sim racer @PabloGz documented blatant cheating by none other than the Williams Esports team, where their pole position (first place) qualifying lap was completed by using an exploit of driving on the Apron of the oval section of the track. This is an advantageous racing line given the combination of the shortened track distance and the prototype cars high downforce but is clearly against the rules. In the video it seems like this was a premeditated action and it perhaps the Williams team even went as far as to conceal their actions. Williams went on to win the prototype category and placing third in the GT category.
To further exacerbate the situation, it seems like one of Williams GT cars’ main role was purposefully throw it’s race to focus on towing their lead car as often as possible through slips-streaming as well as blocking other opponents and putting other vehicles into precarious situations by ignoring blue flags and ‘closing the door’ during cornering.
Since the event, Williams Esports has made an official statement stating “we find that that the actions of some members of the Williams Esports team breached our standard for acceptable team conduct.”
While the actions were clearly in violation of the regulations, the results for the race are finalized and cannot be reversed.
Sim Racing has really taken the racing world by storm — fueled by the lockdown era of COVID, many professional racers have taken to setting up some serious rigs at home. Direct drive technologies on wheelbases and racing steering wheels that look more advanced at times than the real thing are now commercially available to anyone who has the coin.
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