On the 17th of September, 2023, I was asked to join a call on Discord with my then team manager and with another driver. On this call and through messages, I was informed that our esports team is in early talks with the Maserati MSG Racing Formula E team, where we would enter a collaboration with them to offer the service of one of our drivers to be their simulator driver. I was told that I would be one of the two drivers who would be in the proposal for the team.
To be honest, at first I wasn’t expecting much to come out of this opportunity. Not because I didn’t trust my team to create something like this. Not because I didn’t think I could do it. I always felt I could do a similar role like this and I have heard about other drivers who were already in this role at different teams. I felt this way because in esports and anything motorsport related, I’ve heard a potential amazing opportunity come up many-many times and we always discussed how great that collaboration or chance could be and then it ended up not going forward at all from that point. I wasn’t going to get ahead of myself with this one…
A few days later, I was told that the presentation my team did for Maserati went great and that they were impressed with our level. Then they told us that they will come back to us to see whether they want to do interviews or an on-site test day. Finally, in the first days of October, I got the message that we would be going to Monaco and do our test day on the 3rd of November with the team. Now things started to feel more real and I was aware there is an opportunity here. And I also realized that I will be visiting one of my dream travel destinations and that I will be able to walk on the streets of Monaco. I have been watching the Grand Prix on TV for over twenty years and for me it’s one of the greatest challenges in racing that I wanted to learn more about.
About the testing, I was told that we would be doing the Berlin track from the previous season. I thought this was nice because I knew the track is available for rFactor2 so I started doing practice for it. I heard from some contacts previously that the Formula E model in this sim is not very realistic, with that in mind, I was focusing on just learning the racing lines for the track, mankind my notes and trying to emulate the energy saving of Formula E that I could figure out from the broadcasts and onboards. I watched the race from this track from the last season to see how things go in the series.
Then, the day of travel arrived quickly, and it had its own adventures. First, I had to take the shortest flight I have ever been on, flying from Budapest to Vienna. That is about a 30 minute flight altogether, which all went smoothly. Vienna is a nice airport, with an almost pub feel in some places as lots of people were gathering to enjoy a beer before their flights. However, on my second flight, which was taking me to Nice, I had the chance to experience Storm Ciarán that was heavily affecting Europe at the time. I have been flying before that several times and I experienced turbulence before but that was something new to me. I was being thrown around for about 45 minutes to an hour, left to right, up and down so funnily enough, that could be looked at as somewhat getting the feeling of being in a race car, except you are not in control.
With the travel portion of the day done, I met up with my teammates and we headed to the hotel next to the airport there in Nice. The plan was to go to Monaco by train in the morning. Between the flights, I also received a message that we were not only going to drive the Berlin track on the sim day but we were also going to be having a test with a random track that we were not told previously. This made me feel unprepared and I was determined to fix this. I was very confident that this unknown track would be also from the previous season as I have a general idea how these track models work and my thinking was that they would only have a relevant track model and data from something recent. Therefore, I spent my evening until later than I should have, to watch onboard videos of every track from the previous season and crucially, to make track notes about the general characteristics of these tracks. Once I was done with this, I went to bed to get some sleep before the big test.
Finally, the day of testing was here and after a quick breakfast at the hotel, we headed to the train station to catch a train to Monaco. The journey is pretty short, about half an hour maybe, but the view is worth it completely. As the train goes along the coastline, we could look over the sea with the rising sun, a truly beautiful sight. Then shortly after, we arrived at the train station, climbed about 15 flights of stairs as the lift wasn’t working and we arrived at the office of the team.
When we arrived, we had a short introduction to everyone at the office and we learned about the program for the day. In the morning session, the plan was for us to do hotlaps around the Berlin track, to work on one lap pace. I was going to start that and then we switched. In the afternoon, it was time for the race runs with energy management for both of us and then finally time for the random track.
Before driving starting in the sim, we had to learn about the controls of the car. We were taught the basic functions on the steering wheel and it was time to get started. After getting started, as usual with any new sim equipment or even a real car, my main goal was to get a feel for the car. Initially, I was testing the brakes that to my surprise were softer than I expected and I was trying to get a feel for the limit of braking into the braking zones. I was also learning the steering wheel dashboard and the feedback from the force feedback system that was initially lighter than what I use at home.
I finished my first run that was about 15-20 laps and then I was headed to the engineers for a short debrief and to analyse my driving. My laptimes at that point were 2-3 seconds slower than the reference from one of the team’s drivers so that felt quite disappointing as I didn’t feel I could go that much faster. Once I went back for my 2nd run, I started applying what we discussed with the engineers and I improved my times but I was still much further off in pace than expected. I didn’t really know how I could find that much more pace anymore. Then, the race engineer came on the radio to tell me there was a mistake when they were setting up the simulator and I have been driving with the wrong grip settings all along. Once this was changed, I immediately went more than a second faster and I was now on pace.
That was my run for the morning, altogether, I didn’t manage to set the fastest lap during this section as the other driver ended up with about a 2 tenth better lap on his best one but looking back at it, it was still a solid job, especially as I was the first one to go into the sim while he could watch all my laps. While he was driving, I was learning about the energy management from one of the engineers. He explained to me how they have beep sounds for when I need to lift and coast into the corners and in Formula E there is also a paddle on the steering wheel that is used for energy regeneration that I will need to use during the afternoon runs.
For lunch, we went to a fantastic Italian takeout restaurant and after eating some delicious carbonara, it was time for the afternoon runs. It was time to do the race lap simulations and this time I was the second one to run so I could see a little bit how it goes. I felt this was going to be the better part of the day for me as I thought the massive endurance racing experience will help me a lot. And I was right, in this part, I was the faster and more consistent driver as well. I could confidently do what the team was asking for energy management while still being faster.
Finally, it was time to drive the random track, which ended up being the Sao Paulo circuit (not Interlagos but the street circuit). Luckily, this was one of the tracks I made notes about the previous night and I could remember the layout from the onboards I watched. That made learning the track slightly easier. Unfortunately, for my part of the run, there was an issue with the track grip once again and so my laptimes ended up slower than I could’ve managed.
In the debrief, the race engineer told us that we both did well and that they will discuss internally the following days and one of us will be chosen as their simulator driver for the season. At this point, I didn’t feel confident at all as I thought I wasn’t happy about my performance on the hotlap sessions and thought the lack of that small time there would end up costing me this opportunity.
However, now it was time to clear our minds and go sightseeing. In the evening, we ended up walking around the whole track, seeing some of the most famous places in the city and we once again somehow had dinner in an Italian restaurant. Then the train ride back home and it was time for bed to get some rest to catch the flight home the day after.
I had a midday flight, so I decided to wake up early to be able to see the famous Nice coastline. I ended up having a long walk there and also a call with my mother to explain how things went on the day before. I told her my feelings and that I didn’t feel great about my chances but if they consider the race runs to be more important, it could work. Then my final thought about this was, that I could at least visit Monaco once…
And it turns out that they indeed considered the race runs to be more important in this session. On the 8th of November, I got a call from my team manager that I was chosen to be the simulator driver for the team and that I would be working with them for the whole season. I can’t even describe the feelings at the time, but maybe the best way I can say it is just a huge relief. Not just for everything I did there for the day of testing but everything leading up to that which put me in this position, it validated all the work that got me to this point.