Gamechanger! X1 Racing eSports Review
The video game culture is nothing new in India, and as the
world is moving towards a variety of eSports, India too has seen some share of
eSport Events ranging from Battle Royales like PUBG to Fighting Games like
Tekken and Mortal Kombat. However, amidst of all the eSports there is an eSport
that is more real than any other eSports out there. Which is (there are no
points to guess) Sim Racing.
Sim Racing is an eSport that brings the player closer to the
sport of car racing by placing the player in the cockpit of one of the fastest cars and gives him the thrill of a high speed racing and at the same time
ensuring that the player has to put same efforts to win as he would put in the
real racing. The player has to know the car, learn the track with all its
technicalities like the braking zones, kerbs, high speed and low speed
corners. The player has to master real skills like cornering, attacking,
overtaking, defending, using slip stream, trail braking, rev matching, the list
goes on. After all this the player has to put hundreds of hours of practice to
prepare for that one race. There is no concession, the player has to do all
that is expected from a real racer. Sim racing just makes the racing
accessible by being budget friendly than the real sport.
Despite costing just a fraction compared to real thing, it is
still costly than any conventional video game and due to lack of understanding
of sim racing, these are often compared to the arcade racing games
like Need For Speed. Which bring us to the topic of this review: X1 Racing eSports.
The first question I had to the creators of X1RES was, why? And
in chorus they explained their two objectives behind it. One was to bring the
Sim Racing to large masses of India and contribute to the eSports growth in
India and second was to find talent for the real sport.
In order to grasp the second objective, we have to learn
about the background of the two creators of X1RE.
One is Armaan Ebrahim and
here are his career highlights as per their website:
 |
| Armaan Ebrahim |
“Armaan Ebrahim has been a professional racing driver for
the past 15 years. A former National Champion at the age of 14, he went on to
represent India in The A1 Grand Prix and stand amongst the top 3 in the FIA F2
Championship (Valencia) back in 2010. From there on he diverted to Sports cars,
racing manufacturers like BMW. Over the past 5 years, he has been associated
with Lamborghini India. He has also been racing for them around Asia even
winning the Championship in 2016. On the other side of the pit wall, Armaan
coaches and manages young drivers coming up through the ranks and has set up a
professional race team competing in the Formula 3 Asian Championship.”
 |
| Aditya Patel |
“Aditya Patel began his motorsport career as a hobby in
the year 2000. Over the decade, he gradually climbed up the motorsport ladder
and began racing internationally after winning the National Racing Championship
in 2007. Aditya has competed and won races in multiple Asian and European
championships that included the Volkswagen Scirocco R-Cup, VW Polo Cup, Formula
BMW Pacific and the 24 hours of Nurburgring, GT Masters in Europe,
International GT Open, Audi Cup Asia and Blancpain GT Series Asia.
His biggest achievement came in the year 2017 where he finished as the Vice-Champion in the 2017 Blancpain GT Series Asia.”
So, with this illustrious career and experience at their hands, when they say that they
are seeking new talent for real racing from Sim Racing then I have to believe
them and it reinforced my belief of how real Sim Racing can get.
Now back to their first objective, to bring the Sim Racing
to the masses of India, they have been visiting various cities in India. The
plan is to visit 6 cities: Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and New
Delhi. They setup the stage for Sim Racing in various colleges and several
malls and other venues including two large containers containing several full-fledged
Sim Racing Rigs capable of having a full eSports Event in those containers. This kind of setup is
unheard of and full points to them for preparation.
They are armed with a dozen of racing rigs and each one is equipped with a Logitech G29 Steering Wheel and Pedals, PS4, High End Gaming PC for broadcasting and LED TV.
The format of the competition is welcoming at start however gets challenging as it goes on, which considers that fact that there are very few Sim Racing players however there can be people who have a knack for it anyway. The game chosen for the event was "Project Cars 2". The players are registered free for the event and they are given a session to set up a lap time. With cities having over 5000 registered players and equally good footfall for this event, the first four days in every city is to collect the lap times. On the 5th day the top 30 players as per the lap times are invited for the final showdown. The finals are broken into multiple elimination races and the final race is held between the top 10. The difference in lap times for the final 10 in their qualifiers was close to 3 seconds. While top 3 are merely few milliseconds apart from each other. This is how close it gets.
I myself participated in Pune city and barely made to second elimination round where I was eventually eliminated by the fierce competition. We saw the best of battles, defence and attacking from the final 10. The broadcast quality was top notch as commentary was done by the duo of Armaan and Aditya themselves, taking us through as the race unfolded in front of us. It was a spectacle which kept the audience on their toes and 16 year old Sim Racer defeated a real racer in the final race by an amazing move in final lap and final sector of the track.
The participants had come from other cities, towns and even countries.The participants included veteran sim racers, few GT Academy finalists, real racers and of course first timers. I was not surprised to find that a few in the top 30 had never played a sim racing game, which proves that the hidden talent seeking ability of such an event.
The event was organized with finesse and expertise of real racers and by real racers. There were certainly some things that can be improved like more communication about the format on the website so that people could come prepared. Armaan and Aditya were however engaging with the participants, taking feedback and interviewing the attendees as one of them will be the next racer from India.
The players who got to podium won cash prizes and OnePlus 7T Pro from the sponsors. However this did not end there. As the event will cover 6 cities, a total of 18 podium winners will compete for the grand prize of coaching for real racing at real circuits in India.
The event is well thought of, extremely well prepared and conducted and also is certainly moving ahead to accomplish its two goals of enriching Sim Racing as eSports and finding talent for real racing.
This event is welcomed by the Sim Racing community in India and it has given hopes and dreams to many. In times where Polyphony Digital(Gran Turismo Sport) does not recognize India for their World Events, it is time that India has its own events and the future will certainly look back at this event as a "Gamechanger" .
 |
| The Rig |
The format of the competition is welcoming at start however gets challenging as it goes on, which considers that fact that there are very few Sim Racing players however there can be people who have a knack for it anyway. The game chosen for the event was "Project Cars 2". The players are registered free for the event and they are given a session to set up a lap time. With cities having over 5000 registered players and equally good footfall for this event, the first four days in every city is to collect the lap times. On the 5th day the top 30 players as per the lap times are invited for the final showdown. The finals are broken into multiple elimination races and the final race is held between the top 10. The difference in lap times for the final 10 in their qualifiers was close to 3 seconds. While top 3 are merely few milliseconds apart from each other. This is how close it gets.
 |
| The Finalists |
I myself participated in Pune city and barely made to second elimination round where I was eventually eliminated by the fierce competition. We saw the best of battles, defence and attacking from the final 10. The broadcast quality was top notch as commentary was done by the duo of Armaan and Aditya themselves, taking us through as the race unfolded in front of us. It was a spectacle which kept the audience on their toes and 16 year old Sim Racer defeated a real racer in the final race by an amazing move in final lap and final sector of the track.
The participants had come from other cities, towns and even countries.The participants included veteran sim racers, few GT Academy finalists, real racers and of course first timers. I was not surprised to find that a few in the top 30 had never played a sim racing game, which proves that the hidden talent seeking ability of such an event.
The event was organized with finesse and expertise of real racers and by real racers. There were certainly some things that can be improved like more communication about the format on the website so that people could come prepared. Armaan and Aditya were however engaging with the participants, taking feedback and interviewing the attendees as one of them will be the next racer from India.
 |
| Armaan interviewing the participants |
 |
| The Podium of X1 Racing eSports - Pune |
The event is well thought of, extremely well prepared and conducted and also is certainly moving ahead to accomplish its two goals of enriching Sim Racing as eSports and finding talent for real racing.
This event is welcomed by the Sim Racing community in India and it has given hopes and dreams to many. In times where Polyphony Digital(Gran Turismo Sport) does not recognize India for their World Events, it is time that India has its own events and the future will certainly look back at this event as a "Gamechanger" .
Comments
Post a Comment