Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / The Business of Speed: Inside the Sim Racing Revolution

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The Business of Speed: Inside the Sim Racing Revolution · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
• 0:04
  all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
• 0:09
  designers, and everything in between.
• 0:11
  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder.
• 0:16
  How did they get that job or become that person?
• 0:19
  The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
• 0:27
  From Formula One to the gritty world of rally racing, tonight's guest's expertise
• 0:32
  in esports and motorsports is setting the pace for this dynamic industry.
• 0:37
  Trevor Marks is not just another gearhead.
• 0:40
  He's the founder of K53, a consulting firm with its sights set toward the convergence
• 0:45
  of sim racing, e sports, and motor sports.
• 0:48
  And he's here to tell us all about his road to success.
• 0:51
  His partnership with Torque Atlanta.
• 0:53
  One of the most thrilling racing simulation venues in the world and
• 0:57
  how this haven for racing enthusiast combines cutting edge technology
• 1:01
  and immersive experience that puts you in the driver's seat with that.
• 1:05
  Let's welcome Trevor to break fix.
• 1:07
  Hello.
• 1:07
  Hello.
• 1:07
  How are you guys doing?
• 1:08
  And joining me tonight is returning guest.
• 1:11
  Brock Packard, who you might remember from his double episode.
• 1:14
  He's part of the Niner Esports team at University of North Carolina.
• 1:18
  And since his last appearance on Break Fixed, he's now an engineer
• 1:23
  for Jordan Anderson Racing.
• 1:24
  So welcome back, Brock.
• 1:25
  Thanks, Eric.
• 1:26
  Thanks for having me and excited to be a co host this time and ask
• 1:29
  the questions instead of answering.
• 1:31
  Well, like all good break fix stories, there's a superhero origin.
• 1:36
  So Trevor, tell us about the who, what, when, and where of you, how you got
• 1:40
  into racing and especially the world of e sports and sim, you know, it's
• 1:44
  easier to explain getting into racing than is e sports, you know, e sports
• 1:48
  is such a small close knit community.
• 1:51
  There's very few people that have the professional pedigree to even
• 1:54
  say that they've been a part of this industry for 15 years or 20 years.
• 1:58
  And I was blessed enough.
• 2:00
  To have the opportunity to jump in with one of the biggest
• 2:03
  organizations in the world, which is DreamHack, which is now ESL Faceit
• 2:07
  group, which is a conglomeration of Faceit, ESL and DreamHack.
• 2:10
  I was working as a logistics manager for a large logistics company in Atlanta.
• 2:17
  By the airport, we were moving millions of pounds of freight a week.
• 2:21
  So I was responsible for the sort and I developed a lot of transferable
• 2:25
  skills in that role and DreamHack was just starting to launch in
• 2:30
  the United States in about 2016.
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  They had just had their first show in Austin in 2016, and they were
• 2:35
  looking for volunteer crew members for the rest of the DreamHack shows.
• 2:38
  And I applied for it like it was a job.
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  I got the crew lead position, which would have been DreamHack Atlanta 2017.
• 2:45
  And through my communications with the team.
• 2:48
  They started to fly me out to the other DreamHack shows.
• 2:50
  I went to DreamHack Austin 2017.
• 2:52
  I went to DreamHack Denver 2017, and I quickly learned that they did not
• 2:56
  have the logistics set up that they needed to expand in the United States.
• 2:59
  From that conversation, a contract was birthed and that's how I got my
• 3:03
  first start in eSports as the logistics coordinator for DreamHack North America.
• 3:08
  So I set the standards and the protocol to get millions of dollars of equipment
• 3:11
  across the country in a timely manner.
• 3:13
  I'm the reason why all the things you saw at a DreamHack show arrived on time.
• 3:16
  That was me.
• 3:16
  For two years to make sure that happened.
• 3:18
  And during that time, I shadowed the sales and partnership team, namely
• 3:23
  Magnus and Justin Burnham and Blaine.
• 3:25
  Those three guys took me under their wing, showed me the ropes, gave me the
• 3:29
  who's on first, he's on second for the industry, how things worked and Justin
• 3:33
  Burnham pulled me to the side one show.
• 3:35
  And he said, look, man, I know you're brilliant in logistics.
• 3:37
  You're a smart guy.
• 3:38
  You can figure this out.
• 3:38
  I know you can do logistics to no one else, but you've got an act
• 3:41
  for this business side of things.
• 3:42
  And you really ought to see that through.
• 3:44
  And from there, it's just been one step after another, got recruited to RTS.
• 3:48
  Then I went on to work for Nurtree for a while, came back to RTS.
• 3:51
  And now here I am starting my own firm, looking at the opportunities
• 3:54
  bubbling up here in the United States and taking advantage of it.
• 3:57
  That is how I got into e sports from logistics to managing one of the largest
• 4:01
  e sports festivals in the world, in the United States, creating a lot of
• 4:04
  relationships there and then bridging those relationships to start my own firm.
• 4:08
  See, if I had told that story, I would have said the year
• 4:10
  was 1984 and I had an Atari.
• 4:13
  And I was playing pole position.
• 4:16
  You had to have been a gamer before you became a logistics expert, right?
• 4:19
  I mean, were you in the world of cars?
• 4:22
  Did you come from a racing family?
• 4:23
  I mean, you're wearing a grid life sweatshirt right now.
• 4:25
  You have to have a passion for motor sports, right?
• 4:27
  Oh, absolutely.
• 4:28
  Absolutely.
• 4:29
  My father is.
• 4:30
  A lifelong motorcyclist.
• 4:31
  You know, he's in his mid seventies and he still rides when he gets a chance.
• 4:34
  So that was always a part of the pedigree.
• 4:36
  And then I grew up riding dirt bikes and I never got the chance to really participate
• 4:40
  in motor sports, which is a problem that everybody's trying to solve now, right?
• 4:42
  Accessibility is expensive.
• 4:44
  It's difficult.
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  And that's part of the reason why sim racing is blowing up
• 4:47
  so much because so many people interested did have an access point.
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  I was one of those kids that didn't have an access point.
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  I had Hot Wheels.
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  I had magazines.
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  I remember when Nikki Hayden, RIP, the Kentucky kid was kicking butt over at
• 4:58
  MotoGP and I was following his career in the early and mid 2000s, still want
• 5:02
  a Repsol CBR 1000RR because of him in that livery, I was watching from
• 5:06
  the sideline and I was an avid gamer.
• 5:08
  So I had always been a gamer since early ages.
• 5:11
  My first real racing game was Forza Motorsport 2.
• 5:14
  That started kind of like, Oh, this is tuning.
• 5:16
  This is learning what cars are fast.
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  Actually, no, I think the first racing game before that was Sega GT 2000,
• 5:22
  which came with the original Xbox.
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  And I played the heck out of that game and learned what cars were
• 5:26
  good, what cars were bad, never had a wheel, just always was participating
• 5:29
  in that and continued to game.
• 5:31
  It was a friend of mine, Calvin, that was living with me at the time.
• 5:35
  That was my roommate that while I was working for the freight industry
• 5:37
  was like, Hey, you're playing Counter Strike, you're jumping in tournaments.
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  You're competitive.
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  You play a lot.
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  You have a passion for e sports.
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  You should use that passion to go into the industry.
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  And that's what was the catalyst for me to start with DreamHack.
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  After getting on with DreamHack, I rediscovered my love for sim
• 5:53
  racing, coincidentally at CES 2020.
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  I was still following racing, I was following grid life, I was going to
• 5:59
  motorsport events in Atlanta, I was watching Isle of Man, I'd watch Formula
• 6:03
  One, still always watching consuming content, but not participating as much.
• 6:07
  Until CES 2020, I had a contract to do the Razor booth at CES.
• 6:13
  So I was part of the staff and helping out Razor with a couple of different things
• 6:16
  and brought a Visaro rig to the booth.
• 6:19
  Basically every morning, the booth has to be calibrated for like 20, 30 minutes.
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  So they would just let me hot lap for 20, 30 minutes in the Visaro
• 6:25
  booth, which that's a phenomenal rig.
• 6:26
  That experience, like a switch came on and I was like, Oh,
• 6:29
  I have to get more of this.
• 6:31
  Luckily enough, within a year of that happening, Torque
• 6:33
  Motorsports opened up in Atlanta.
• 6:35
  And then I jumped right in.
• 6:36
  And started sim racing at Torque Motorsports and competing and
• 6:39
  just driving from then on.
• 6:40
  And we're going to talk about that more as we go along.
• 6:42
  So you mentioned Forza Motorsport.
• 6:44
  It's kind of funny.
• 6:44
  A lot of people I meet are always like Gran Turismo, kind
• 6:47
  of the granddaddy of them all.
• 6:49
  But there are titles that predate Gran Turismo, right?
• 6:51
  If you think about Jeff Kramer's Formula One, Formula
• 6:53
  One GP2 and Papyrus's IndyCar.
• 6:56
  Those are some of the most tunable games that even predate Sony,
• 7:00
  predate Forza, things like that.
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  So this idea.
• 7:02
  Simulation in the video game world has been around for a long time.
• 7:07
  So as you look back over the history of the games you've played, kind
• 7:09
  of a pit stop question, what are some of your favorite titles?
• 7:12
  What are some of the worst?
• 7:13
  Well, first of all, I would like to shout out GP laps on YouTube.
• 7:16
  He does a lot of historic vintage racing and also like vintage.
• 7:20
  Esports and vintage sim racing games.
• 7:22
  So I've been discovering a lot of games that I missed through his channel.
• 7:24
  I just love to give him a shout out for that content and exploring
• 7:27
  some of these titles retroactively.
• 7:29
  As a child coming up, the crown jewel was Project Gotham Racing 2
• 7:33
  and Need for Speed Underground 2.
• 7:35
  Now, New Speed Underground 2 was peak Fast and Furious culture.
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  The movies had just come out.
• 7:40
  You could customize the car.
• 7:41
  And then also they were selling a dream because the cars in the game were
• 7:45
  regular tuner cars, like a 350Z, a Civic.
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  So you could, as a 13 year old kid, realistically look to potentially owning
• 7:52
  one of those, and that made it tangible.
• 7:53
  I think that there are some divides in the community, but.
• 7:56
  I had some friends that always used to ooh and ah over the Aston Martins.
• 8:00
  And I was part of the group of friends like, well, I could actually
• 8:03
  possibly one day own a C5 Corvette.
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  So that's what I'm going to make my dream car because it
• 8:07
  was something that was tangible.
• 8:08
  And then my friends would have them and this, that, and the third.
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  So, you know, USB Underground 2 was definitely the first
• 8:14
  time of like seeing yourself.
• 8:15
  Potentially being this type of racer and, and like participating in that.
• 8:18
  And then also kind of introducing a lot of us to the street culture for
• 8:23
  drifting, for driving, for street racing.
• 8:26
  And that was like the entry for you looking at motor sports.
• 8:28
  That was like, this is racing.
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  And then the other titles come along.
• 8:31
  Project Gotham Racing 2 was foundational because Project Gotham Racing
• 8:34
  actually encouraged you to race, learn how to race, learn racing lines.
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  It was a more Sim Katie experience than Need for Speed Underground Racing was.
• 8:42
  And in that it led you learning how to progressively break.
• 8:45
  And I actually started to develop a lot of friends.
• 8:47
  This is the onset of Xbox Live, when Halo 2 came out.
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  Project Gotham Racing 2 was me playing online with other people.
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  That was the first Sim Racing experience, playing online,
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  jumping leaderboards, custom games.
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  I remember playing cat and mouse.
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  You'd get two teams of eight.
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  One team member is the mouse, which they drive a mini Cooper and the
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  other three team members drive big, heavy GT cars, like the GT 40.
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  And then you try to get your mouse across the finish line first.
• 9:13
  And so you're defensively driving to protect your mouse, but then aggressively
• 9:15
  driving, trying to Ram and block the other mouth, which is a lot of fun in
• 9:18
  between moments of real motor sport and kind of learning how to drive.
• 9:22
  And I would say Forza.
• 9:23
  Three and four were when things started to kick into overdrive and
• 9:26
  you're really learning racing lines.
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  I think it was fourth, uh, three to introduce rivals mode, but rivals
• 9:32
  mode, man, that was like crack cocaine.
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  Like you get that.
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  I got my time on a leaderboard.
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  My friend beat it by 10 10th.
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  Oh, hell no.
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  You go back and it was fun.
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  Cause you get to see where they were bad at the track.
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  So I had a certain areas with my friend, Matt, where I was like,
• 9:46
  Oh, you suck at this tight section and I'm really good at this.
• 9:50
  But then on a longer sweeper section, you just have the throttle control better.
• 9:53
  So I'm really struggling there.
• 9:54
  So I need to make sure I'm as clean as I can through this section.
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  So that when I get to the section where I'm not good at, and that is a very real
• 10:02
  skill that you do when you're driving and preparing for a track, you have certain
• 10:04
  areas where, you know, you're not really fast there, you're a 10th or two off pace.
• 10:08
  And you have to be very protective of that.
• 10:10
  Or you have to work on that area during your quality time.
• 10:13
  And when you're racing at somebody else and you notice that they're
• 10:16
  struggling in one part of a track, that's where you attack.
• 10:18
  So it's, it's funny how rivals mode at Ford's a three or four kind of like
• 10:23
  encapsulated some of the actual racing techniques that I still employ today.
• 10:27
  When I'm sitting down for sim race.
• 10:29
  So 2020 did a lot for the world, but especially for the world of sim racing,
• 10:34
  every motorsports got shut down.
• 10:36
  We all had to transfer into something that we didn't have to be next to each other.
• 10:40
  We had to figure out a different way of life for however long we were shut down.
• 10:45
  I know NASCAR, we went to iRacing and a lot of other motorsports
• 10:48
  went to their own video games and started running their own things.
• 10:52
  So as an eRacer yourself, Did you kind of see a change or a shift in the motion
• 10:57
  of growth in SimRacing over the last five years and then 2020 and beyond?
• 11:02
  I didn't jump on the bandwagon because the CES 2020 was pre pandemic.
• 11:06
  That was right before it.
• 11:07
  So that's when I was getting involved.
• 11:08
  So I wasn't so much a SimRacer at the time, but I was an e sports professional.
• 11:12
  So as an e sports professional post COVID, I was like, yeah, finally,
• 11:16
  like I kind of had been feeling this way for a while, and I've been asking
• 11:18
  this question about SimRacing and why we don't see more of it and it's.
• 11:21
  Only sport that's transferable from the actual sport to the actual race.
• 11:25
  Like, I don't care how good you are at Madden, you're never going to be able to
• 11:27
  hit a gap like LaShawn McCoy or like any one of these Hall of Fame runner backs.
• 11:31
  Like, that doesn't transfer.
• 11:32
  You being good at 2k doesn't make you jump shot good in real life, but you
• 11:35
  being good in the sim can possibly mean that you're good in real life.
• 11:38
  And the Grudge Reason movie that just came out is basically
• 11:41
  the story that proved that.
• 11:43
  And I remember watching that live as a college student.
• 11:47
  When that happened, I actually participated in that
• 11:49
  competition and I knew that I couldn't do it with controller.
• 11:51
  I was like, I'm never going to be able to make it to the top of the leaderboards.
• 11:53
  But I threw my name in the hat and I remember watching that journey and
• 11:56
  just being amazed to sit around the TV in college, watching that, and then
• 11:59
  to be a professional in the space.
• 12:01
  Having watched the Nissan GranTurismo GT World Challenge come to fruition,
• 12:05
  and that driver actually still driving and testing today, and then to be an
• 12:08
  esports professional 10 years later and be like, why is this not a pipeline?
• 12:11
  Why are we not doing this?
• 12:12
  The pandemic was a catalyst to prove that this is a viable sport, that it does have
• 12:17
  an audience, and that it has legs on it.
• 12:20
  One of the biggest drawbacks to traditional sports games as an e
• 12:24
  sport, and this is something that I have a particular opinion of as a
• 12:27
  professional, is that the NFL will always be more exciting than that.
• 12:32
  NBA 2K will never be as exciting as Game 7 Finals.
• 12:35
  It never will be.
• 12:36
  It's never going to eclipse its real life counterpart.
• 12:39
  Gran Turismo
• 12:43
  World...
• 12:44
  Challenge, like when they have their competition, that's some damn good racing.
• 12:48
  It's fun to watch.
• 12:49
  It's exciting.
• 12:50
  And it has merit in and of itself.
• 12:52
  We all watched not Australian GP was form of the one NASCAR did 900, 000
• 12:57
  viewers on Twitch during the pandemic for the one reports that they have 30
• 13:01
  million total combined viewers across all their platforms, because they
• 13:04
  did F1 TV into the whole thing during the pandemic, that was obviously in
• 13:07
  lieu of the real form of the one.
• 13:08
  But the fact that that many people even care to watch shows
• 13:11
  that there is something there.
• 13:12
  There is a business principle there.
• 13:14
  The pandemic essentially created a test period.
• 13:17
  I don't think that it made an industry out of nothing, but I do think that
• 13:20
  it catalyzed things forward a couple of years so that this propagation that
• 13:25
  we see now with sim racing in lieu of the pandemic may not have naturally
• 13:29
  occurred this way until 2025 2026.
• 13:31
  Now that we have the pandemic, now people are jumping in line.
• 13:35
  Now you see Ford partnering with Next Level Racing, the branded SimRig,
• 13:39
  Pagani partnered with S Attack to get their branded wheels and pedals,
• 13:43
  and you're starting to see the manufacturers jump in and people
• 13:45
  starting to pay attention to it.
• 13:46
  Williams Esports, McLaren Esports, like all of the manufacturers from
• 13:50
  Formula One and from other racing are starting to pay attention.
• 13:53
  So what this has done is basically COVID has led to everybody turning
• 13:57
  their heads, maybe not their wallets.
• 13:59
  Maybe not their influence and maybe not being an emphasis, but at least
• 14:03
  turning their heads in that direction.
• 14:05
  And it's part of the reason why I started the firm and why I am getting
• 14:09
  into this now, because I see the opportunity and I see the holes and
• 14:12
  gaps that need to be filled in e sports.
• 14:15
  One of the issues.
• 14:16
  Is getting non endemics into the space, getting them comfortable with the
• 14:19
  brand, getting them comfortable with the product, getting them comfortable with
• 14:21
  the audience and comfortable spending.
• 14:23
  They'll go to Madison Avenue and spend seven, 8 million on a DreamHack production
• 14:30
  across seven countries and it's streaming in between DreamHack shows for half of
• 14:36
  that price with three times, four times the amount of interactivity, they're
• 14:38
  kind of scratching their heads, right?
• 14:40
  We're at a turning point on a couple of different levels.
• 14:42
  And it's going to take time for the rest of the industry to kind of start making
• 14:45
  moves, but we'll start to see different projects pop up and be explored to
• 14:49
  see what their financial stability is.
• 14:51
  And all of that has been accelerated due to COVID.
• 14:54
  So you're kind of in a different perspective than I am.
• 14:57
  I'm very.
• 14:57
  Behind the steering wheel.
• 14:59
  I'm a consumer, but you're a very innovative and trying to find those
• 15:03
  things that the consumer like myself, or somebody who's trying to sell this
• 15:07
  product to the school to give us more funding or things like that, what are
• 15:11
  developments in the SIM that you are seeing and, or what are you trying
• 15:14
  to do with K53 to fill those gaps?
• 15:17
  We are missing the core foundational infrastructure that they have in
• 15:24
  the EU at a fundamental level.
• 15:26
  What do I mean by that?
• 15:26
  If you look at Motorsport UK, Motorsport UK is an organization, I would say
• 15:31
  somewhat similar to NASA or SCCA in between different racing groups and
• 15:36
  they advocate for things and they like sponsor and work with sim facilities.
• 15:40
  There's networks of sim facilities working together and Motorsports
• 15:44
  UK is working with them to get sim racers into the seats.
• 15:47
  Like they understand the value proposition and how if we have kids racing in this.
• 15:53
  And participating in this, and adults racing, participating in
• 15:55
  this, this is more tickets for people to come to racing events.
• 15:58
  It's a healthy outlook for families.
• 15:59
  It's good for students.
• 16:00
  It's good for kids.
• 16:01
  And everybody's open to come and try it.
• 16:03
  It lends itself to more industry.
• 16:05
  So they look at this as building an industry, instead of just
• 16:08
  something that kids are playing, and we haven't quite gotten to that.
• 16:11
  I don't think motorsport teams in the United States understand the value
• 16:14
  proposition of having a sim racing team or even the value proposition of
• 16:17
  esports in general and how it can be an extension of your brand and even get to
• 16:21
  the point where it can live on in itself.
• 16:22
  Williams F1 esports doesn't have to have anything to do with the real team.
• 16:26
  It can exist and be profitable and be in a really successful, great
• 16:31
  community led team and organization.
• 16:33
  Independent of the form of one team independent of the F
• 16:37
  one team is doing good or bad.
• 16:38
  They haven't wrapped their heads around that yet.
• 16:40
  I don't think we're there.
• 16:41
  So what K 53 is doing is looking at the ecosystem that we have in
• 16:46
  the United States, looking at what we have in EU and working with
• 16:49
  partners to start to fill that gap.
• 16:52
  And either be the entity that needs to be there or find
• 16:55
  partnerships to make that happen.
• 16:57
  We don't have a sim racing expo.
• 16:59
  ADAC, the big sim racing expo in Europe just happened a couple weeks ago.
• 17:03
  I've been reading all about it and drooling from a distance
• 17:05
  because I can't go and see that.
• 17:06
  We need that here.
• 17:07
  That's something that I would love to talk to DreamHack and say,
• 17:10
  Hey, we have an existing show.
• 17:12
  Let's get a hundred thousand square feet, 50, 000 square feet and put a sim racing
• 17:16
  expo on the show floor at DreamHack.
• 17:18
  That's an easy ask.
• 17:19
  It's easy to sell into and we can get the brands involved.
• 17:22
  And I am going to push for that and advocate for that to make that
• 17:25
  happen because we need those brands.
• 17:27
  We need those people here seeing, touching, tasting, and seeing
• 17:31
  everything that's available.
• 17:31
  There's some people that don't even know AcidTech.
• 17:33
  Make sim racing equipment.
• 17:34
  Think about that for a second.
• 17:35
  They haven't did it.
• 17:35
  They're like, Oh yeah, the water cooling guys.
• 17:37
  No, bro.
• 17:37
  They've what there's a dearth of information and
• 17:41
  a dearth of infrastructure.
• 17:43
  So we need more organizations to galvanize the sim racing facilities
• 17:47
  that are around and to galvanize the sim racing facilities on campuses.
• 17:52
  It's really hard for an individual sim racing team, or
• 17:55
  let's say you have a 10 seat.
• 17:58
  Sim facility at UNC Charlotte or UNC Chapel Hill, and you're looking for
• 18:03
  sponsorship, that's a hard sell for Pennzoil to sponsor a university.
• 18:07
  But if it's sponsoring 15 sim centers up and down the East Coast, and it's
• 18:11
  a regional approach, now Pennzoil may be more applicable to that.
• 18:14
  I have been in the room under different eSports negotiations
• 18:17
  where I'm talking to a brand.
• 18:19
  For example, one specific monitor brand told me that if an event has
• 18:22
  less than 5, 000 people, they just don't have the bandwidth to do it.
• 18:26
  But if it was 10 events with 5, 000 people, they would totally do it.
• 18:29
  They have goals that they have to hit and confront.
• 18:31
  That ask from the sponsors, from the money coming in.
• 18:34
  And I feel right now that there's a lot of people in the Simracing
• 18:36
  community and everybody is individually saying, Oh, Hey, can you help me out?
• 18:39
  Hey, I have a great brand.
• 18:41
  And it's like together, weak, apes by themselves, weak, apes together, strong.
• 18:44
  Right.
• 18:45
  We have to band together.
• 18:46
  K53 is looking to band together, bridge relations amongst SimCenters,
• 18:50
  producers, people that produce events, people that manage and operate teams,
• 18:54
  and to take those relationships.
• 18:55
  And help bring some of the brands in and say, Hey, this is how we can do this.
• 18:59
  This is a starting place.
• 19:00
  Can we do activations across all the SIM facilities?
• 19:02
  One of the big goals is starting to work with SCCA and NASA to create seat
• 19:06
  time in their spec classes, spec Miata, spec E30, spec Porsche 944, spec E36.
• 19:11
  Cause those are slower cars, but very competitive.
• 19:14
  Something that I would totally be comfortable putting.
• 19:15
  Let's say a 16 year old girl is really fast on the sim
• 19:18
  and she's never had a chance.
• 19:19
  Let's put her in a spec Miata, see how she does.
• 19:21
  And that's something I feel very safe.
• 19:23
  We can put her in the right track and finding team slots that I had my first
• 19:26
  racing experience at 24 hours of lemons.
• 19:28
  It was fantastic.
• 19:29
  I highly think that would be a great way to get sim racers into seats.
• 19:32
  We are just missing so much infrastructure in so many different places.
• 19:36
  It's really hard to pick and choose what specifically we're missing.
• 19:39
  It's like all of it.
• 19:41
  We have no governing bodies.
• 19:42
  We have no advocacy.
• 19:44
  We have no lobbying.
• 19:44
  There's nothing here.
• 19:45
  There's just individual companies doing things and K 53 is going to solve that
• 19:49
  problem by start stitching some of this together and creating a little bit more
• 19:52
  organization out of this individuals looking to advocate for their industry.
• 19:55
  As part of a sim racing team and organization here at UNCC.
• 20:00
  We've definitely run into those issues of trying to sell an organization,
• 20:04
  not so much a product or whatever, but you've got to sell the organization.
• 20:08
  And this organization is a very young organization.
• 20:11
  If I'm talking to the Dean of the school, she's just going to look at me
• 20:15
  and go, it's just another video game.
• 20:17
  Why should I put any money into just another video game?
• 20:20
  And with your firm and how do you approach that?
• 20:23
  And when someone tells you that, what's your answer to that?
• 20:26
  And how do you bridge that gap between, oh, it's just some
• 20:29
  kids behind some monitors and this is applicable to real life?
• 20:33
  That is a question that's been the bane of everybody that's Worked in
• 20:37
  business development and sales in e sports has had to deal with again.
• 20:40
  I'm very blessed and fortunate to have learned from some of the best at EFG.
• 20:44
  If everybody's coming to them and saying, Hey, this isn't real, we'll
• 20:47
  speak out hard numbers like, Oh, this energy drink company just signed a
• 20:51
  seven figure deal to be the sponsor for this activation for one year.
• 20:55
  We're estimated to sell 500, 000 against this broadcast.
• 20:57
  Do you want a part of that?
• 20:58
  Or this is the total number of people that we, you know, if we're
• 21:00
  talking to a brand and we say, Oh, they start himming and hawing.
• 21:03
  It's like, well, this is the last broadcast that we did.
• 21:06
  This is the captive audience.
• 21:07
  This is the exact target demographic you're looking at.
• 21:09
  You make it very, just this broadcast, just this weekend, just today, just this
• 21:12
  show, they start to get the hard numbers.
• 21:15
  In a sales conversation, if somebody's that keen and hard against the product
• 21:19
  and in the mindset against it, you have to hit them with very linear numbers and
• 21:23
  explain to them what is, is not happening.
• 21:25
  So if I'm talking to a dean of students and they're like,
• 21:26
  look, I just don't get it, man.
• 21:27
  You want us to play video games?
• 21:29
  How is this a sport?
• 21:30
  And then I would probably break out a video of Max Verstappen talking about
• 21:33
  the importance of sim racing and be like, that's number one driver in
• 21:35
  the world right now at the number one sport with the best team behind them.
• 21:39
  And the best money behind him, he's saying that this is a valuable.
• 21:42
  So do you think your opinion is better than Max for Spad?
• 21:44
  The answer is definitely no.
• 21:45
  Though you have to find a corollary to either directly rebuke what they're
• 21:50
  saying, or do you use numbers and facts behind the industry to like
• 21:54
  spoon feed them and lead them in and go, okay, that's a lot of money.
• 21:57
  Well, is that realistic?
• 21:58
  Is that possible?
• 21:59
  Or, okay, well, that's a good viewership.
• 22:01
  If we could get that kind of viewership, that would lead to this.
• 22:03
  And a lot of times from a.
• 22:05
  From a business development standpoint, I'm definitely not a salesperson.
• 22:08
  I am not Mr.
• 22:09
  Cold Call.
• 22:09
  I look for solutions and I ask questions and I look to figure
• 22:12
  out what your problem is.
• 22:12
  I've talked to administrators at schools that are like, we want
• 22:15
  to increase our recidivism rate.
• 22:18
  Where we have students that come here, they go for two years and then leave.
• 22:20
  Or we need to increase our admissions numbers.
• 22:23
  So then the response would be tailored to that.
• 22:25
  It's like, okay, well, how many kids in this, in this area are into
• 22:28
  racing, into cars, things really big with people that are 13 to 23.
• 22:33
  If you had a virtual drift league, you'd be the only school that had that.
• 22:37
  The amount of students that went to UC Berkeley because
• 22:39
  they had an e sports program.
• 22:41
  Is growing every year, right?
• 22:42
  Because I even want to go to a school.
• 22:44
  I'm very passionate about League of Legends.
• 22:45
  I'm very passionate about Dota.
• 22:46
  I'm very passionate about Counter Strike.
• 22:47
  I don't want to go to a college where I can't play that with friends nearby
• 22:50
  or that I can't be a part of that.
• 22:52
  Right.
• 22:52
  Or there's an esports team I want to try out for.
• 22:54
  Are we a hundred percent there where that's going to
• 22:56
  be like the decision maker?
• 22:57
  I don't think that esports is going to be like Alabama football, where when Alabama
• 23:01
  wins, their recruitment goes up because everybody wants to be a part of Alabama
• 23:04
  winning pedigree this and the third.
• 23:06
  But we are in the space now where it's like, well, I'm serious about sim racing.
• 23:09
  I'm serious about esports.
• 23:10
  And I would like to go to a college that also places value
• 23:13
  on sim racing and esports.
• 23:14
  And I will pick a college that reflects that.
• 23:17
  And that will continue to grow until it gets to the point where college
• 23:20
  is winning will become something.
• 23:22
  That's the long short of it.
• 23:23
  You have to figure out what they're looking for.
• 23:26
  When you're selling eSports or selling sim racing, what problem are they
• 23:30
  trying to solve that you're trying to solve with eSports or with sim
• 23:33
  racing and work backwards from there?
• 23:35
  Or just hit them over the head with better knowledge, better numbers.
• 23:38
  There's an argument to be made that at certain universities
• 23:41
  where SAE programs, whether it's Formula SAE or Baja SAE exist.
• 23:46
  That sim racing could be used as a feeder or an augment to those programs.
• 23:51
  Like learn how to become a race engineer by doing the tuning, right.
• 23:54
  You could use the simulators to simulate that part of the responsibility
• 23:58
  of being on the race team.
• 23:59
  You know, now they're doing it, let's say pen and paper and TI graphing
• 24:02
  calculators, you know, that kind of thing.
• 24:04
  How do you break down that barrier?
• 24:06
  How are you working towards a better aligning?
• 24:09
  Let's say the e sports teams with the SAA teams at colleges that
• 24:12
  have those types of programs.
• 24:13
  So I recently started to partner with a group called Simcraft and
• 24:17
  Simcraft makes very exquisite high end rigs out of Atlanta.
• 24:22
  And the reason why I mentioned them is because they are a technology company.
• 24:26
  They are not a SIM manufacturer.
• 24:28
  They manufacture the hardware and write the software that
• 24:31
  dictates what moves on the rig.
• 24:34
  They are one of the partners that I would take and say, they do the math to
• 24:38
  figure out what you need to feel in the SIM that translates to the actual car.
• 24:43
  They have the pedigree to do that.
• 24:45
  They've done it with different racers.
• 24:46
  They've done it with different racing teams.
• 24:48
  So this particular problem for SAE has something that is an ongoing
• 24:52
  facet of the motorsport industry.
• 24:54
  Multiple racing teams, NASCAR teams, 401 teams, Indy teams are currently
• 24:59
  in the process of lowering their driver development costs, increasing
• 25:03
  their chances of being successful.
• 25:05
  And the big math problem is how in the hell do we figure out if we're
• 25:10
  fast on the sim and we're slow on the actual track, what's not translating?
• 25:14
  So there is a translator position.
• 25:16
  It's an engineering position to figure out.
• 25:18
  What do I need to do to calibrate the sim to better replicate the data we're getting
• 25:23
  from the track and then vice versa?
• 25:26
  And you just kind of rinse and repeat.
• 25:27
  You take data from the track, you apply it to the sim, you take data from the
• 25:29
  sim, you apply it to the car, you go into the track and you do that process.
• 25:32
  That is an existing process that's happening that's growing.
• 25:35
  So if I'm going to an SAE program, I'm saying if you want your students to be
• 25:39
  job ready in three years, you need a sim.
• 25:42
  You need a motion sim.
• 25:43
  You need a damn good motion sim.
• 25:46
  You need something that's very competent and very real to life because these teams
• 25:51
  are currently in the process of evaluating what sim they're going to use and this
• 25:56
  problem that they're solving is a unique problem and hasn't been around that long.
• 26:00
  Yes, teams have had simulators have been dialing it in, but not
• 26:02
  to the nature of doing it now.
• 26:03
  Before you needed a big multi million dollar sim.
• 26:05
  Now you spend 150, 000 on a SimCraft, Apex 6.
• 26:08
  And you can buy four or five of them, some price you were paying for one simulator.
• 26:12
  And you can start dialing that in per driver, per team, because every driver
• 26:15
  has a different calibration, that opportunity to do that, the cost of
• 26:18
  entry for SIM coaching for pro teams is dramatically falling every year.
• 26:23
  And the proliferation of it is growing every year.
• 26:25
  Former SAE teams, if they're trying to do their job, which prepare these
• 26:28
  students for real life activities and real life engineering, they
• 26:31
  have to get with the program.
• 26:33
  So I would use that to say your industry is already doing it.
• 26:36
  If you want to be state of the art industry, then you have to start to
• 26:38
  catch up and implement this process because this is something that's
• 26:41
  currently going on by not having it.
• 26:42
  You're doing a disservice to your students because they're missing
• 26:44
  out on this calibration period.
• 26:45
  You were talking earlier about being in the boardroom with folks
• 26:49
  and trying to convince them to spend money on sim programs.
• 26:51
  Now we're talking about SAE and how there's this constant
• 26:54
  feedback loop between the SIM and the teams and vice versa.
• 26:57
  You've done some racing.
• 26:58
  You mentioned you did 24 hours of lemons.
• 27:00
  What's the missing link between being behind the wheel of the car, being behind
• 27:05
  the wheel of the SIM, taking into account some high end equipment that you've been
• 27:09
  in as SIM rigs and then the car itself.
• 27:12
  First of all, I would like to shout out myself that I'm totally built for racing.
• 27:17
  One of the first things that the guys that I was learning from were saying
• 27:21
  when I was talking about getting into racing, they say, look, before you
• 27:23
  spend money, before you build your car, you got to go out there and see if you
• 27:25
  got the gumption to actually do it.
• 27:27
  A lot of people get out there and you see them all the time on
• 27:29
  the track days with their Porsche 911 GT3s, Porsche Cayman GT4 RS.
• 27:34
  And they drive like grandmas.
• 27:35
  They're giving a point by to a guy in a Miata, right?
• 27:38
  Yeah!
• 27:38
  I saw a dude at Hyperfest giving point bys to a Honda Odyssey.
• 27:42
  Like, dawg, what?
• 27:44
  But you're in a C6 Corvette.
• 27:45
  What are you talking about?
• 27:46
  But they're just not built for that.
• 27:48
  And so I am foolhardy.
• 27:50
  I think maybe because I also ride motorcycles.
• 27:52
  I don't know.
• 27:52
  There might be a couple screws loose there.
• 27:54
  I got in the car and it was road Atlanta and I was just immediately comfortable.
• 27:57
  And I was uncomfortable at first, but once that green flag and I knew
• 28:01
  the track, I just kind of started to dial in and I just became the race.
• 28:04
  I don't know.
• 28:04
  I, you know, Brock, you know, understand I'm talking about, you get that tunnel
• 28:07
  vision, you start listening to the engine of the car, you're constantly checking
• 28:10
  your rear view cause you're racing in traffic and you just start coming
• 28:12
  in the zone inflow state and drive.
• 28:14
  I do not want to come out of the car.
• 28:15
  I did my stint and I wanted to keep driving.
• 28:17
  But the biggest difference between real life activity and the sim racing
• 28:21
  is you're using all of your senses.
• 28:24
  You're using your sense of direction.
• 28:25
  You're using your sense of orientation.
• 28:27
  You're using your sense of balance.
• 28:29
  You're using your sense of smell.
• 28:30
  You're using your sense of friction, touch.
• 28:34
  When your rear end is starting to slide, not sliding, starting to slide,
• 28:39
  you're sensing through your hips and your butt and your legs what that
• 28:43
  friction translates to your body.
• 28:45
  What is that sense?
• 28:46
  Oh, it's just a touch.
• 28:46
  No, not really.
• 28:47
  Cause the car is not sliding.
• 28:48
  I'm not getting the feedback.
• 28:49
  Car sliding, starting to rotate, starting to rotate.
• 28:52
  There's a distinct feeling of like, Oh, it's a, Oh, it's sliding.
• 28:55
  Now the rear is gone.
• 28:56
  In that moment.
• 28:57
  I did not listen the first time I spun out.
• 28:58
  I listened the second time, but I had to learn what that feeling was.
• 29:01
  Those feelings and those sensations are, you know, in some instances,
• 29:05
  impossible to replicate and in other instances, very possible to replicate.
• 29:09
  Lewis Hamilton doesn't like the sim.
• 29:11
  Why?
• 29:12
  At his level of performance and at the G forces that those guys are going
• 29:16
  through, to him, it's not adding anything because I have so many other variables
• 29:20
  that deal with in real life that are not present in the sim, I cannot push.
• 29:23
  We're talking about probably one of the greatest drivers of
• 29:25
  all time, if not the greatest.
• 29:26
  In the premier sport, Zenith of Zenith of Zenith, 1 percent of 1%.
• 29:30
  But Max loves it.
• 29:31
  But what does Max love about it?
• 29:32
  Max loves the race craft.
• 29:34
  Max loved the decision making, the application of the brakes,
• 29:37
  when in traffic, what decisions do you make in the line?
• 29:41
  He's not hot lapping and working on timing.
• 29:43
  He's working on under race conditions.
• 29:45
  This guy is trying to overtake me in this position.
• 29:47
  I've only encountered this two times in real life, but in the sim I've
• 29:50
  encountered it 15 times this week, right?
• 29:52
  And so now I get to deal with that situation and dial it in.
• 29:55
  At the core of it, base level sim racing, learning the art of race
• 29:59
  crafts and learning the basics of racing lines or in drifts, learning
• 30:05
  how to drift and how to carry the car.
• 30:07
  You can learn almost everything you need motion to get you to that top 10
• 30:11
  percent and to the really dialing it in where you can drive the car just as
• 30:15
  hard on the sim as you can in real life.
• 30:18
  You need a well tuned motion sim to dial that in beyond
• 30:21
  that I'm in a sim craft rig.
• 30:22
  I can feel the rear end.
• 30:24
  I'm listening to the car.
• 30:25
  I'm listening to my body.
• 30:26
  When you're not doing motion, you're just focused on your hands and what's in
• 30:29
  front of you and what you can see with your eyes and getting into motion sims.
• 30:33
  And training lets you learn how to use the rest of your body to pay
• 30:36
  attention to the car because you're not driving with your hands and your feet.
• 30:39
  You're driving with your ears, your sense of balance and all
• 30:42
  those other senses in combination.
• 30:43
  So it's interesting about what you said is, and I agree with all of
• 30:46
  it, is that the Sims that you're describing basically replace what
• 30:50
  we used to tell people all the time.
• 30:51
  You know, you're talking about race craft and feeling the rotations.
• 30:55
  We still people all the time.
• 30:56
  Just go.
• 30:57
  Get started in go karts because go karts do exactly that.
• 31:01
  So what you've described is a virtual version because go karts
• 31:04
  were always used as a feeder and a trainer for other motor sports.
• 31:07
  You know, you went to autocross and then club racing.
• 31:09
  So on that line, what I've always found that never worked for me.
• 31:13
  And I love Sims and I love gaming and I will get on
• 31:16
  anybody's Sim and test out a rig.
• 31:17
  And I enjoy it, but the elevation is never parallel because you go to Rhode
• 31:24
  Atlanta in real life and you come out of turn 10 and it's not the same in the Sim.
• 31:29
  Yo, turn 10, Rhode Atlanta.
• 31:31
  I thought I was going to die every time that is a rollercoaster man coming up
• 31:34
  the hill out of 10 a 10 b and pointing the car to God because it's just the sky.
• 31:39
  You can't see anything and then cresting the hill, the
• 31:41
  weightlessness at the top of the hill.
• 31:43
  Then you're coming down.
• 31:44
  The car doesn't have grip until halfway down the hill.
• 31:47
  Cause the suspension is still unloaded as you're cresting over
• 31:50
  the hill, as you carry momentum.
• 31:51
  And then as you're getting on the power, it starts to squat.
• 31:54
  And then when it does squat, then you can really get on the power.
• 31:56
  Turn five, same thing coming through the S's and getting to the bottom of
• 31:59
  turn five, hitting on the brakes hard.
• 32:01
  You feel it in your gut.
• 32:02
  Yeah.
• 32:02
  Elevation.
• 32:03
  Jesus.
• 32:04
  Yeah.
• 32:04
  So there is an argument.
• 32:06
  It's almost like truncation error.
• 32:08
  You've ever done any type of physics programming.
• 32:10
  I was a physics major in college before I dropped out.
• 32:12
  You can never get a hundred percent to the number.
• 32:14
  So you can only carry the decimal place.
• 32:16
  Of how accurate your simulation is to so many decimal points.
• 32:20
  And at some point you have to truncate it and you'll have to
• 32:22
  account for truncation error.
• 32:23
  Right.
• 32:23
  And iRacing has this problem a lot where they try to like, according to the
• 32:26
  math, this is how the tire should react.
• 32:28
  And the driver gets in there and goes, absolutely not.
• 32:31
  So then you have to fudge the math to make it feel right to the person.
• 32:35
  But then the math is wrong.
• 32:36
  And it's like, well, how can the math be wrong?
• 32:37
  Well, the math is an approximation, right?
• 32:39
  There is a lot of sense of speed and sense of orientation that in order to.
• 32:44
  Really show that in the sim, you'd have to make the elevation way more distorted
• 32:48
  or like you see this in a lot of simcade and arcade racing games, you play Need for
• 32:52
  Speed, you hit the boost, it blurs, the sound gets quieter, the engines revving,
• 32:57
  you can hear the whooshing sound of the cars that creates a sense of speed.
• 33:01
  Sim racers may say, that's not really accurate.
• 33:03
  I'll be damned.
• 33:04
  Get in the car on the track and go fast.
• 33:05
  And you see, you get tunnel vision.
• 33:07
  You can't see things.
• 33:08
  Everything on the side becomes a blur your noise.
• 33:10
  Cause you're moving so fast.
• 33:11
  You don't hear the, hear the engine as much.
• 33:13
  So thinking about motorcycles, I'm on the bike.
• 33:14
  I can't really hear the Doppler effects behind me.
• 33:17
  There is a case to be made in an attempt to make Sims more realistic.
• 33:22
  They'd have to deviate from some of the realism that they're choosing to display.
• 33:25
  A lot of wind sounds.
• 33:27
  More blurring of the side.
• 33:28
  The car's moving to scale in the game accurately.
• 33:31
  I'm like, yeah, but I've been in the car at that speed.
• 33:34
  It feels a hell of a lot faster.
• 33:36
  You take an E30 around the track road Atlanta, a stock E30, you're
• 33:39
  gonna have a blast coming down 10 8.
• 33:40
  You take it in the sim, it looks like you're putting her about because
• 33:42
  if you're not going 41 speed in the sim, it doesn't feel like it.
• 33:45
  Everybody's chasing realism to a fidelity point that Almost
• 33:49
  circumvents the immersion of realism.
• 33:51
  And that's an interesting point because the big claim to fame
• 33:54
  with all the sims is, well, we laser scan the track down to 0.
• 33:57
  000 of a millimeter.
• 34:00
  And I'm like, first of all, it's like when you're trying to train
• 34:03
  for any track in real life and you watch somebody else's YouTube video.
• 34:06
  Everything looks flat.
• 34:08
  You don't realize how steep Road Atlanta, Lime Rock, Watkins Glen, any
• 34:11
  of these tracks are until you're there.
• 34:13
  And you're like, man, it's like falling off a building because
• 34:16
  the car compensates and then the camera becomes basically linear.
• 34:20
  So yes, it is laser scan to the nth degree.
• 34:24
  But it's completely flat, just like it is in a video.
• 34:27
  So that's the problem.
• 34:28
  And to your point, you would have to severely distort the track.
• 34:31
  But what I've noticed is on a motion sim and the ones I've been on, what they
• 34:35
  try to do is compensate with more gross movement to give you that sensation that
• 34:40
  you're going downhill, but then it's like, but the car doesn't do that in real life.
• 34:43
  Because again, it's going with.
• 34:45
  The grade and the terrain, and you get a more subtle transition in the
• 34:50
  suspension, because if it unloaded that fast in real life, you'd be dead.
• 34:54
  Yeah.
• 34:54
  I was talking to Sean about that and Sean CEO of Simcraft.
• 34:58
  So what that comes down to is calibration.
• 34:59
  Some drivers like to have, like, they want it to be like a big impact.
• 35:04
  They want it to feel like, Oh my God.
• 35:06
  And that's to them what it feels like in the car.
• 35:08
  And then other drivers like, hell no, it doesn't move like that.
• 35:10
  Like I just a little bump.
• 35:11
  The point is.
• 35:12
  You get it to where it feels good to you.
• 35:14
  Like for example, road Atlanta, turn five coming up the hill.
• 35:17
  There's a dip after the end of the track edge and you can watch the
• 35:21
  GT three and LMB cars hit the dip.
• 35:23
  How big is the dip?
• 35:24
  I don't know.
• 35:24
  I'd have to estimate probably with their suspension set up like four to six
• 35:27
  inches from the baseline of the track.
• 35:29
  It's probably a little bit less than that based on the way the cars move.
• 35:32
  But a driver might be like, no, I've hit it.
• 35:33
  Make it feel like it's a foot deep.
• 35:35
  You know what I'm saying?
• 35:36
  And they want a big reaction when they're in the rig and other drivers
• 35:39
  are like, Oh, it's not that big a deal.
• 35:40
  They want a lot, a lot of reaction.
• 35:41
  So part of the motion SIM experience is calibrating the motion SIM to react
• 35:46
  the way that you feel comfortable that translates to what you think makes sense.
• 35:50
  For your car and your driving experience instead of just taking a
• 35:53
  blanket calibration and going from there, dialing that calibration in,
• 35:57
  getting it tuned to what you feel is real and what will help you train
• 36:01
  is the most important part of that.
• 36:03
  We kind of talked about the Simcade and Arcade and the difference between that,
• 36:07
  but you mentioned you kind of started on the Forza Motorsports and that's
• 36:11
  kind of been your entry into sim racing.
• 36:14
  And it just so happens at the time of recording this, the new Forza
• 36:17
  Motorsports game just launched.
• 36:19
  Have you had a chance to mess around with that?
• 36:22
  And if so, what are your thoughts?
• 36:23
  All racing games are equally inferior and superior to each
• 36:27
  other in a multitude of ways.
• 36:29
  There is no superior sim.
• 36:31
  I don't care what anybody says.
• 36:32
  because they all do things so differently.
• 36:34
  Forza has been doing a lot of things really well over the years.
• 36:39
  Personally, I've transferred over to Gran Turismo because of the user experience.
• 36:44
  One of the things that's huge for me, and because of being brought
• 36:48
  up in eSports environment, brought up in the Dreamhack family, they're
• 36:51
  super big on user experience.
• 36:53
  They're super big on, when somebody comes to the show, when somebody's on the
• 36:55
  website, when somebody's watching, I've been groomed to pay attention to user
• 36:58
  experience, and I've been more keen to it.
• 37:00
  When you boot up GT seven and you're going in the menus, the music, the
• 37:04
  sounds from just clicking on things, the way that they have the menu set
• 37:08
  up, the way that they have the driver licenses set up the way that they have.
• 37:11
  You can learn tracks.
• 37:13
  I can pick a track and break it into three or four segments and learn each
• 37:16
  second, I can hot lap a segment at a time.
• 37:18
  Nobody else does that.
• 37:19
  Where else can I go hot lap a segment of the track?
• 37:22
  At a time there in totality and infrastructure grand turismo is the
• 37:26
  ultimate driving simulator in my opinion Grand turismo 7 had eclipsed that title
• 37:30
  from forza motorsport now the new forces out I have not got a chance to try it.
• 37:35
  I've seen some of the videos and it does look promising So i'm
• 37:38
  excited to see what that's like and to see what that looks like.
• 37:41
  How does it handle?
• 37:42
  How does it feel?
• 37:43
  And it's so interesting because If you ask somebody who does set of Corsa or
• 37:48
  R Factor or iRacing about GT7 or Forza, they'll say, Oh, it's an arcade game.
• 37:54
  But then like largely by most people, you know, understanding Gran Turismo
• 37:57
  is a simulator, Forza is a simulator.
• 37:59
  Now Forza Horizon, that's the arcade game.
• 38:01
  And Need for Speed, that's an arcade game.
• 38:03
  It's not a, uh, snobbish pedigree, but there is a delineation of
• 38:08
  realism based on where you stand.
• 38:10
  So if you have real life racing experience, then yeah, Gran Turismo 7 is
• 38:15
  gonna feel like an arcade game to you.
• 38:16
  But if you've never owned a wheel and you buy that game, it's gonna feel
• 38:20
  like the realest thing in the world.
• 38:21
  There's a time and a place for SimCades and for Sims, and I think that the
• 38:25
  ultimate game would be Gran Turismo 7.
• 38:27
  Experience with iRacing physics and simulation.
• 38:31
  But not their graphics.
• 38:32
  Not their graphics.
• 38:33
  Not their graphics and not their menus.
• 38:35
  I feel like I'm at the DMV.
• 38:36
  Like how in the hell you made a racing game?
• 38:38
  I feel like I'm filling out form.
• 38:39
  Looks like Windows 95.
• 38:40
  Awful.
• 38:41
  It's awful.
• 38:41
  They stand on the fact that they're...
• 38:43
  iRacing is the best racing simulator.
• 38:46
  It's not the best car simulator.
• 38:47
  It's not the best driving simulator.
• 38:49
  It's just best for racing.
• 38:50
  I would say the best driving simulator is Gran Turismo 7.
• 38:53
  And the best car simulator is obviously Assetto Corsa because of
• 38:57
  all the mods and all the flexibility.
• 38:59
  I grew up on mods, you know, Half Life and Counter Strike and Dota,
• 39:02
  all those games and mods, you know, League of Legends was originally a mod.
• 39:05
  So the fact that, that of all the games.
• 39:08
  A set of courses carrying forward that mod legacy.
• 39:11
  That's the number one, that's always going to be number one game.
• 39:13
  And then also accessibility.
• 39:14
  If I only have enough money for a console and a Logitech G29 wheel, I can have
• 39:18
  so much fun with Forza or Gran Turismo.
• 39:21
  The other issue that those games have is They're closed loop systems.
• 39:25
  So like if me and you wanted to create a league in Gran Turismo,
• 39:29
  it's a lot of work to set that up.
• 39:31
  It's a lot of work to organize that to get people in line.
• 39:33
  Like none of the infrastructure is set up for that.
• 39:35
  If we wanted to do a Gran Turismo 7 event and had to get 10 game, we had to
• 39:39
  have 10 licenses, 10 different account.
• 39:41
  Like it's a pain.
• 39:42
  If you want to do a settled course that we can do that tomorrow.
• 39:44
  Like it's so easy to do with the PCs.
• 39:46
  And this has been a problem that's been ongoing in eSports console versus PC for
• 39:51
  certain games, fighting games, consoles are relatively easy and very simple
• 39:54
  to set up for other more complicated games, Call of Duty or any type of
• 39:57
  game where you have multiple people in a lobby, then PC is where it's at.
• 40:01
  It's just way simpler format overall.
• 40:03
  But the accessibility point means that lower price sims matter, lower price
• 40:07
  games matter because they create the feeder network for everybody to get in.
• 40:10
  I've talked to some people at iRacing and they do see themselves at the pinnacle.
• 40:14
  They are happy that Forza is coming out.
• 40:15
  They're happy that PlayStation is coming out with Grand Theft Auto 7,
• 40:18
  because those games prop them up.
• 40:20
  If Grand Theft Auto 7 and Forza Motorsport weren't around, iRacing would
• 40:24
  nowhere near as much money, because they wouldn't have as many people
• 40:26
  getting into sim racing and getting into the sport and getting into that.
• 40:29
  All that comes from theater from the other games precluding
• 40:32
  them, and they recognize that.
• 40:34
  So I think that's important to understand that this is an industry and we're all
• 40:37
  in this together and we need multiple different components to feed into this.
• 40:40
  Like you need NASA and you need SCCA to create a driver pool.
• 40:45
  You need the smaller, the lower ranks of NASCAR to get a Chase Elliott,
• 40:49
  to get a Kyle Larson, those guys, they can't come up on circle track
• 40:51
  and funny car and the midget series.
• 40:53
  Like if they can't do that, then they can't become pro drivers.
• 40:55
  In that same way, you have to have sims and sim experiences, the racing
• 41:00
  experiences that afford everybody to have a chance to touch this and experience it.
• 41:04
  And then it'd be like, okay, I've been doing this for a while.
• 41:06
  Is there something else out there that's better?
• 41:08
  And then somebody opens the door and says, here's a set of course.
• 41:11
  I think something that people often forget about the sim world and you
• 41:15
  know, we throw title names out there and you've hit us with like 20 of
• 41:17
  them from Gran Turismo to R Factor to iRacing to everything in between.
• 41:22
  But really you have to boil it back to the physics engines
• 41:26
  that are running these titles.
• 41:27
  And there are family trees that they come from.
• 41:29
  R factor as an example, comes out of the GTR series, GTR two, there
• 41:34
  were a bunch of spinoffs of those.
• 41:35
  Then you've got Sim bin, which was a derivative of that too, which became
• 41:38
  project cars, cars two and three.
• 41:40
  And now all that stuff is dead.
• 41:41
  It got absorbed by code masters, which has the ego engine,
• 41:44
  which was lifted from dirt.
• 41:46
  Then you've got Forza's engine, the Gran Turismo engine,
• 41:48
  iRacing and stuff like that.
• 41:49
  So realistically, even with a set of Corsa in there, there's maybe
• 41:53
  10 different physics engines.
• 41:54
  And then there's a bunch of games that are eye candy on top of that.
• 41:57
  Who's menu system are you going to use?
• 41:59
  Even Forza Horizon was a joint venture between.
• 42:03
  Microsoft and Codemasters, they develop playground games, right?
• 42:07
  So they took all the Codemasters UI and then the force of physics and some of
• 42:11
  the ego engine and they made horizon.
• 42:13
  You're like, okay, which is really project Gotham.
• 42:15
  Let's be serious.
• 42:15
  But yeah, for sure.
• 42:16
  Or if we throw it back, it's test drive, right?
• 42:19
  From the old.
• 42:19
  Yeah.
• 42:19
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 42:20
  So that being said, one of the houses that you didn't mention.
• 42:25
  Was Codemasters.
• 42:26
  Yes.
• 42:27
  Have you always stuck to just road racing titles or have you ventured
• 42:30
  away maybe into rally and some of the other sims that are out there
• 42:35
  and what your thoughts are on that?
• 42:37
  I have not spent enough time in the dirt considering I grew up in it.
• 42:40
  I grew up riding dirt bikes and just kind of, that was my first really into
• 42:45
  anything motorsport and motoring as a kid.
• 42:48
  And always been, you know, in rapture with rally, you know, one
• 42:51
  of my goals as a human is to one day complete the Dakar rally on a
• 42:55
  motorbike, which is fricking insane.
• 42:56
  And that is a crazy thing to do.
• 42:58
  And I love it.
• 42:59
  I follow it every year when I get a chance, a couple other
• 43:01
  rallies that I'm interested in.
• 43:02
  There's a guy by the name of Eric Hubbard.
• 43:04
  He and he runs this group called the Backroads of Appalachia, and they're
• 43:07
  doing some really awesome things in that country, Kentucky and West Virginia and
• 43:12
  Virginia, and trying to build a ecosystem to attract more motorsports to the
• 43:16
  region to help the people that are there.
• 43:18
  Cause Appalachia has always been like an overlooked part of the country.
• 43:22
  All the way up from the South, all the way up to North.
• 43:24
  And so he's been creating some seedlings to bring FIA rally out
• 43:28
  there and to do more rallying events.
• 43:30
  So rally is something that I keep seeing it echoing again and again, and I've
• 43:33
  tried it, but it's something that I, it's like drifting, like you have to do it.
• 43:38
  And drive it consistently to get a feel for it.
• 43:40
  Just like F1.
• 43:41
  I'm a GT3 DTM guy.
• 43:43
  I like the classics.
• 43:43
  I like the old things.
• 43:44
  I do a lot of Touge driving.
• 43:46
  I love that.
• 43:47
  Chasing people down, uh, Mount Akagi, I think it is.
• 43:49
  Or Mount Kahina for sure.
• 43:51
  There's a couple other passes.
• 43:52
  But I'm pretty calibrated for door slammers.
• 43:55
  in sims up to gt3 cars the moment i deviate from that i have to like have
• 43:59
  a new calibration period i was just hot lapping from f1 earlier in the week and
• 44:02
  i was like dang i have to like get used to the car when i jump in the rally
• 44:06
  cars i love them but getting used to where grip is and listening to the car
• 44:10
  it's just a whole different experience i do like the idea of stage rally going
• 44:14
  against the clock and trying to Find your best line, listening to the notes.
• 44:18
  It is, it's exciting and enrapturing.
• 44:20
  The new WRC game is out or coming out too, right?
• 44:23
  Yeah.
• 44:23
  Which they've said is going to be the last one.
• 44:26
  I guess they're pulling out, which only leaves Codemasters with the dirt series
• 44:30
  to remain in the rally scene now that.
• 44:32
  Has gone back forever.
• 44:34
  I mean, if you look at Codemasters, they were one of the leaders starting
• 44:38
  way back when, and Dirk came from Colin McRae rally, and then there
• 44:42
  were some previous titles to that.
• 44:43
  I mean, I've been playing these since I was a little, little kid.
• 44:46
  So, you know, it's kind of funny to see the evolution of them all.
• 44:48
  But to your point, making the adjustment period, what I find is funny.
• 44:52
  I play a lot of ACC because I do like GT3 racing.
• 44:55
  And I think for me, I could never get the same feel of the real cars as I could
• 45:01
  with ACC when I compared it to iRacing, like the physics just didn't seem right.
• 45:06
  Cars weren't right.
• 45:06
  But oddly enough, because I grew up watching group B rally and I wanted
• 45:09
  to be a rally driver and whatever.
• 45:11
  When I prepare to go do a race on, let's say ACC, we're going to go
• 45:15
  to spa and go do an hour there.
• 45:16
  I don't do an hour of training at spa.
• 45:19
  I go do runs up Pikes Peak.
• 45:21
  Really?
• 45:21
  I know it sounds completely counterintuitive, but what it does for
• 45:24
  me is it gets me in a mindset of that catch release, feeling the car, even
• 45:29
  though the physics engines are different.
• 45:30
  Yeah.
• 45:31
  There's this.
• 45:31
  Translation that when you're driving a GT three car with no traction control
• 45:36
  and it snaps, you need to be ready to catch it and be able to power slide out.
• 45:40
  So I use that as a training tool.
• 45:42
  And then I jump over to the other title and it feels fine.
• 45:44
  That's brilliant.
• 45:45
  I've definitely noticed that when I'm learning how to drift.
• 45:47
  I've been able to catch more would have been a spin out, but I'm like, Oh,
• 45:50
  and I throw the wheel and I catch it.
• 45:52
  I'm like, Oh, I only got that from drifting.
• 45:54
  I couldn't have got that any other way.
• 45:55
  Funny.
• 45:55
  I had somebody actually critiqued me once I was on a SIM.
• 45:58
  We were doing some head to head stuff and he's like, why do
• 46:00
  you hold your hands like that?
• 46:02
  You know, you should be really.
• 46:03
  Gripping the wheel.
• 46:04
  And, you know, I had this conversation with him.
• 46:06
  I said, even in real life, it's a dance with the car.
• 46:09
  If you fight the car back and you're mid spin, you say,
• 46:12
  you're going to be stubborn.
• 46:14
  It's not going to work.
• 46:15
  You have to feel it.
• 46:16
  You have to work with it, which means you have to relax a little bit.
• 46:19
  And in the SIM, I do the same thing.
• 46:21
  Sometimes you just got to work with it.
• 46:22
  You just got to work the car, work the throttle.
• 46:24
  Sometimes it's more throttle than it is steering input.
• 46:26
  Right.
• 46:26
  Just like it is in real life.
• 46:28
  When I'm watching hot version on the Japanese drivers, it took a drivers.
• 46:31
  They kind of do the same thing with their hands.
• 46:32
  They're not really like gripping.
• 46:33
  They're kind of around the wheel.
• 46:35
  Sometimes they grip it in certain conditions, but in the most of the
• 46:38
  time it's dancing with the car.
• 46:39
  So they're not, they're like guiding the wheel instead of steering the car.
• 46:43
  Well, as we kind of switch gears in.
• 46:45
  To our last segment here, I want to kind of change the tone and get back into
• 46:49
  talking about e sports, which we started with at the top of the conversation as we
• 46:52
  were talking about these different titles.
• 46:54
  And you kind of made mention, and we talked about this on Brock's episode,
• 46:57
  you know, is iRacing still the king?
• 46:59
  And you sort of alluded to, they viewed themselves as the top of Mount Everest.
• 47:03
  But when you look at the top e sports titles, Even in 2023, and then obviously
• 47:09
  they're going to get updated in 2024.
• 47:11
  You don't see iRacing on the list.
• 47:14
  You see Fortnite, and you see League of Legends, and Counter
• 47:16
  Strike, and all these other games.
• 47:19
  They're not Sims.
• 47:20
  They're games on that list.
• 47:22
  How do we...
• 47:23
  Get iRacing or Assetto Corsa or ACC on that list.
• 47:27
  How do we get better acceptance in the eSports community for the
• 47:31
  motorsports and sim racing folks?
• 47:33
  And how does that tie into what you're doing at TOR?
• 47:35
  Well, first of all, iRacing gotta add rain.
• 47:37
  Like, come on guys, what the hell?
• 47:39
  Like, you can't be Top Dog, you don't have rain, you can't drift.
• 47:41
  They got some big problems to finish.
• 47:43
  Like, yeah, so if I want to go race at Laguna Seca in the middle
• 47:45
  of the summer and no precipitation on the ground, it's great.
• 47:48
  But if I'm doing Road Atlanta during the raining season in August,
• 47:51
  like, that ain't gonna happen.
• 47:53
  I'm not gonna be able to prepare for anything.
• 47:54
  This question is almost like a cultural question.
• 47:58
  And the reason why these titles are big is because they've entered
• 48:02
  the cultural zeitgeist of esports.
• 48:04
  The trick to all of these games is that the community comes first.
• 48:09
  So League of Legends and Dota love this conversation.
• 48:12
  We're talking about different sim racing companies that have, they're
• 48:15
  all forks of the same branch.
• 48:17
  League of Legends and Dota, much to League's chagrin because Riot likes
• 48:22
  to pretend like they invented this game and nobody ever, I don't know.
• 48:25
  Actually, I can't say that they feel like this, but they don't
• 48:27
  mention that they came from a mod.
• 48:29
  You had Warcraft 3 and then you had Defense of the
• 48:31
  Ancients, which was the mod.
• 48:33
  And you had Icefrog and some other team members, and they had a big schism.
• 48:37
  Just like in Dota 2, the schism between the Dire and the Radiant.
• 48:40
  You had a big schism between these two groups.
• 48:42
  And one group thought that Dota should be one way, and be more
• 48:45
  consistent with the original game.
• 48:46
  And the other group wanted to build and do something different.
• 48:49
  The team that wanted it to be more like the same became Riot
• 48:51
  and created League of Legends.
• 48:52
  The team that wanted to be different became Dota, got acquired by Valve,
• 48:55
  and continued to grow that way.
• 48:56
  The key factor that both those games have is that they built on the community.
• 48:59
  The Dota community is what built those games.
• 49:01
  Counter Strike was a Half Life mod, and built from there.
• 49:04
  You know, Fortnite became a Battle Royale, but the Battle Royale...
• 49:07
  Franchise started with PlayerUnknown's Battle Royale on Arma 2 servers
• 49:11
  back in 2009, 2010, 2011.
• 49:13
  And there was this growing community of people playing Battle Royale games.
• 49:17
  And then, obviously, the emergence of DayZ, which was the progenitor
• 49:20
  of all the Battle Royale games, created this big hype, and then
• 49:23
  Fortnite came to fill a void where...
• 49:26
  The Battle Royale community needed a home on console and on a different platform.
• 49:30
  And they were able to take that and run with it.
• 49:31
  Call of Duty with the MLG initiative back in the day, built a large community.
• 49:35
  FaZe Clan was born out of Call of Duty.
• 49:37
  Optic Gaming was born out of Call of Duty.
• 49:39
  The only game on here that I would say is kind of void of that is Overwatch,
• 49:43
  because that was more of a corporate push to like build like a community by force.
• 49:47
  And they still built a community, but it wasn't organic by any measure of the word.
• 49:50
  They kind of advanced things a lot.
• 49:51
  Valorant has a diehard community from League of Legends.
• 49:53
  So the League of Legends community fed the Valorant community.
• 49:55
  Rainbow Six Siege is the only title On here, that Ubisoft, you know,
• 50:00
  sweat and tears, built that game into an eSport over six years.
• 50:04
  My hat goes off to them because I remember watching that while I was
• 50:07
  there at Dreamhack and just like, damn, like, they're really gonna just make
• 50:11
  this, they're gonna make this eSport.
• 50:12
  You know what I'm saying?
• 50:13
  Like, they're gonna, and they did it over time.
• 50:15
  What catering to the community.
• 50:16
  So the point is that all of these games come from this feedback loop of community
• 50:20
  involvement, community engagement, and then, you know, reflecting that
• 50:24
  with the games, you know, with patches and with the different events and
• 50:28
  the battle paths and different skins.
• 50:30
  And just, there's a lot of community building.
• 50:33
  And then there's a lot of community overlap.
• 50:36
  When you go to esports conferences, one of the big charts they show you.
• 50:39
  That's super interesting to me is they'll show you a heat map of all of the
• 50:43
  people that are playing different games.
• 50:44
  So they'll say like, okay, of the people that play Call of Duty, less
• 50:49
  than 5 percent of that community plays any other shooting game.
• 50:53
  So on this list, let's say Fortnite, Valorant, Rainbow Six
• 50:57
  Siege, Overwatch, Call of Duty.
• 50:59
  Rocket League and Dota, a tiny percentage of Call of Duty will play any other
• 51:02
  shooting game, but then a large percentage will play Rocket League.
• 51:05
  So you might have 30 percent of Call of Duty players that play
• 51:07
  Rocket League every single day or play Rocket League once a week.
• 51:10
  Why is that?
• 51:10
  There's an overlap.
• 51:11
  The problem with iRacing and the other sims is that we're on an island.
• 51:15
  Where there's very little overlap between the hardcore sim racers and the community
• 51:20
  around them, because there are a lot of gear heads and motor sport guys in that
• 51:23
  community and people that play games.
• 51:25
  So there's this idea that because it's a video game, because you can play
• 51:29
  it, because it's streamed on Twitch that, Oh, it should be as big or the
• 51:32
  community over, I know it's an Island.
• 51:33
  It's on its own little cubicle.
• 51:35
  Sim racing, all of sim racing is here.
• 51:37
  And then you have like sim racing and then you have like motorsports
• 51:39
  and then you have driving like actual getting in the car.
• 51:43
  And they're all in a triangle and they're slowly coming together.
• 51:46
  And part of K 53 is to start to make that overlap more pronounced.
• 51:49
  But when you take all of the iRacing community and overlay it over the
• 51:52
  Rainbow Six Siege community, like what, that's probably a half a percent
• 51:55
  of people, I guarantee 10 percent of the iRacing community didn't
• 51:58
  even know what Rainbow Six Siege is.
• 52:01
  Let's be real.
• 52:02
  If 10 percent of iRacing community can recognize the logo for Rainbow Six
• 52:06
  Siege, I'll give you a hundred dollars.
• 52:07
  I don't think it's realistic.
• 52:08
  I don't think that's a realistic goal.
• 52:10
  But everybody in every one of those other communities, like everybody from League of
• 52:14
  Legends knows what Rainbow Six Siege is.
• 52:16
  Every single person that's in Fortnite knows what Hearthstone is.
• 52:18
  Every single person in Counter Strike knows what Rocket League is.
• 52:21
  Every single person, whether they play it or not, they know the game.
• 52:23
  Sim racing is more the car motorsport.
• 52:29
  Sim racing community than it is an actual active participant
• 52:32
  in the gaming community.
• 52:34
  And that's why it's not a top game.
• 52:36
  So therein lies the problem.
• 52:38
  The people that end up in the motorsports community are now much older.
• 52:42
  Maybe they're professionals of driving age or close to.
• 52:46
  Granted, you can get on any of these servers and be literally racing against
• 52:50
  a 12 year old and probably getting their podiums taken away from you.
• 52:53
  But the reality of the situation is how do you cater to People of our demographic
• 52:58
  of our age group, and that's where it goes back into that conversation we were
• 53:01
  having earlier about the realism and all those things, because we are spending
• 53:05
  time at the track, driving our cars.
• 53:07
  And we're going, man, this doesn't work.
• 53:09
  Trevor, you kind of talked about it a little bit earlier in the
• 53:12
  episode with your involvement with torque motorsports at Duluth,
• 53:16
  Georgia based sim racing facility.
• 53:18
  Talk to us about that because.
• 53:19
  I'm up in North Carolina.
• 53:21
  I have my sim racing stuff over here, but I've never really heard about Torque.
• 53:25
  What's it about?
• 53:26
  What do they offer?
• 53:27
  And then how can someone become a part of Torque maybe as a client or as a sponsor?
• 53:31
  Torque is the brainchild of Jamal and Will and a few other parties, but
• 53:37
  those are the two primary founders.
• 53:39
  And they recognized that during the pandemic, there was a
• 53:43
  big hype for sim racing and something that they wanted to do.
• 53:45
  For a long time, and they decided to put the money together and put
• 53:49
  their money where their mouth was and build a sim racing facility.
• 53:52
  And coincidentally, and I've been doing my research over the past, like five
• 53:56
  or six months, Torque Motorsports is one of, probably in the top 1 percent
• 53:59
  of sim racing facilities in the world because they have 15 motion rigs.
• 54:04
  Just like that.
• 54:04
  Most sim facilities have between six to eight rigs.
• 54:08
  If they do have motion, they usually have between three to four motion sims.
• 54:12
  A lot of facilities have one motion sim and then the rest are static.
• 54:15
  So by having 15 full motion rigs, there's two degrees of freedom.
• 54:19
  By having a motion rig with that much degrees of the movement
• 54:22
  puts them in the top 1%.
• 54:23
  The point of the facility is to allow an entry point where, Oh, I thought about sim
• 54:27
  racing, maybe I watched Jimmy Broadbent on YouTube or Twitch, or maybe I watched
• 54:32
  super GT, or maybe I heard about it, you know, here in Atlanta, we have a lot,
• 54:37
  it's a big motor sport culture here.
• 54:39
  So you have a lot of actual drifters and actual drivers.
• 54:41
  And some people ask them, how do you get better at that?
• 54:43
  Oh, I have a sim at home.
• 54:44
  What, what is that?
• 54:45
  There's such a big cost of entry to sim racing, right?
• 54:48
  I mean, racing is just experience in sim racing is, you know, you can spend 500
• 54:51
  on a budget set up and that's a console.
• 54:54
  So you're making a decision between a new console or a sim setup.
• 54:57
  So what this allows is allows you to come in and have a really robust, great
• 55:02
  sim racing experience for a fraction of what you paid to have a rig itself.
• 55:06
  And I got involved with them.
• 55:07
  I was a client at first.
• 55:09
  And I was one of their first clients.
• 55:10
  I got the notification.
• 55:11
  I think I saw it on Instagram, and it was like SimRacingFacility.
• 55:13
  I was like, oh, hell yeah.
• 55:15
  And I signed up.
• 55:16
  I was at the pre grand opening, pre pre grand opening, then grand opening.
• 55:19
  And I got a membership, and I was one of the first 50 people to get
• 55:22
  a membership, first 25, whatever.
• 55:24
  And I started to come and just compete and race and have a good time.
• 55:28
  And I, over time, I was like, man, I really believed in this.
• 55:30
  And I, I want to see this grow.
• 55:31
  I want to see this do more.
• 55:32
  And so I began to have a relationship with Jamal and Will, and that eventually,
• 55:37
  you know, when I started my company and they were, they're trying to get
• 55:41
  ready for the next version of this, the facilities will be moving here shortly
• 55:45
  and they'll be going to a bigger facility.
• 55:47
  And so they're like, Hey, we really need somebody to help deal with
• 55:49
  the partnerships and relationships and people hit them up and say,
• 55:51
  Hey, you know, I need to see.
• 55:53
  Sim rig.
• 55:53
  Hey, can I, you know, we do this and can we partner?
• 55:55
  And it's like, well, what does that mean?
• 55:57
  Well, that's where I come in to help facilitate those conversations and
• 56:00
  to bring those partnerships to either become a partner, become a vendor or
• 56:04
  something a hybrid of in between, and to help grow revenue through events
• 56:08
  and other activations that we can do by making best use of the space.
• 56:10
  Having a facility in your backyard is awesome.
• 56:12
  I mean, obviously Brock has the university at his disposal, but not
• 56:16
  all of us have sim centers close by.
• 56:18
  Correct.
• 56:19
  For those of us.
• 56:20
  That are wanting to evolve the gear that we bought during COVID.
• 56:23
  Cause now it's already three, almost four years old at this point, or
• 56:26
  we're still looking to get in any tips and tricks on what you should buy.
• 56:31
  Some recommendations, things to stay away from when's the right time to upgrade.
• 56:36
  You know, we have some philosophies when it comes to cars.
• 56:39
  When you do upgrades, I think the same applies to sim racing.
• 56:42
  Yeah.
• 56:42
  I look at getting your sim rig.
• 56:45
  Put together the same philosophy that I would use for building a gaming PC.
• 56:48
  You have good, better, and best, and you're going to hit that target
• 56:52
  and stay within that price range.
• 56:54
  I think setting a budget and what's most important to you is key.
• 56:58
  I like having a good chassis.
• 57:00
  So I would take a good chassis and a cheap wheel over a great
• 57:05
  wheel and no chassis all day.
• 57:07
  Just not having to have the seat roll back or the chair, like being able to
• 57:11
  keep in a solid seating position, be able to apply pressure to the brakes.
• 57:13
  And then it's easy to upgrade the chassis when you get into that personally,
• 57:16
  I feel like picking a chassis that you can start with and you can grow
• 57:20
  with that chassis and add and modify it as you over the years, as you
• 57:23
  own it, if you get a next level rig or one of these track racer rigs.
• 57:26
  Those rigs with the 8020 rail, highly customizable.
• 57:29
  They can be kind of pricey to get into around 400 to 600.
• 57:33
  But for that investment, you have something that you can keep for the
• 57:35
  next five to 10 years, and you can even add motion to it with the box.
• 57:39
  So there's a lot of options, a lot of verticals through that channel.
• 57:43
  If you don't have that capital or you're not willing to spend that, getting in
• 57:46
  where you fit in and getting an affordable wheel that lets you get time in, you
• 57:49
  know, I have an old Thrustmaster T300RS.
• 57:51
  That's a phenomenal wheel for 300 and that does everything you need it to do.
• 57:55
  I just can't stress it.
• 57:56
  It's a phenomenal wheel.
• 57:57
  You know, the old trusty Logitech G29.
• 58:00
  That's a great entry point wheel to get in for Forza or for Gran Turismo 7.
• 58:04
  So the point is it's a hierarchy of these.
• 58:07
  If you're building a PC, you're going to say, what game am I playing?
• 58:09
  What specs am I playing at?
• 58:10
  If you're doing a sim rig, it's what game am I playing
• 58:13
  and what level am I racing at?
• 58:14
  If you're just starting out and you're playing Ground Seasonal 7, you don't need
• 58:17
  a Fanatec DD1, DD2, 1, 800 wheelbase.
• 58:21
  You don't need these high end materials.
• 58:24
  You can get by with the regular.
• 58:25
  G29 or T300, T400 RS or something like that.
• 58:28
  One of the entry level Thrustmaster or Logitech wheels.
• 58:31
  So it's about knowing number one, where you're racing, what game
• 58:34
  you're racing on, and number two, how long have you been sim racing?
• 58:37
  What are you getting into?
• 58:38
  If you, we start with those two questions, you, Oh, I'm just starting out.
• 58:41
  And I want to do, you know, a set of course, well, a set of course, it has a
• 58:43
  lot of feedback and a lot of granularity.
• 58:45
  So you can go with a higher end wheel and you'll get a lot with
• 58:48
  that, and then you can add to it.
• 58:50
  You know, is it something you're trying or something you're
• 58:51
  making an investment into, right?
• 58:52
  So, Oh, I want to try it out.
• 58:54
  Go buy a cheap wheel office.
• 58:56
  Off your friend, off your buddies, off of eBay and try it out and see if you're
• 58:59
  interested in, if you're super serious and you're diehard, then I would take
• 59:02
  the time to get to a solid chassis and get a portable wheel to mount to
• 59:08
  that chassis and then go from there.
• 59:09
  Upgrading is tricky.
• 59:11
  I wouldn't be upgrading.
• 59:12
  If you're not within the top 5%.
• 59:15
  Of any leaderboard for whatever game you're in and you're trying to upgrade.
• 59:19
  It's not going to help you get up there.
• 59:20
  Let me put it that way.
• 59:21
  Like you should be able to take a G29 and get within top 10 percent of
• 59:26
  pretty much any leaderboard on Gran Turismo 7 or Forza Motorsport with
• 59:29
  a base wheel attached to a table.
• 59:32
  And you know, that's a big problem that a lot of people think is
• 59:34
  like, Oh, my gear holding me back.
• 59:36
  Like no dudes.
• 59:37
  This 1, 000 wheel is just going to make you feel bad in a 1, 000 wheel feel.
• 59:41
  You know, it's not going to make you a better driver or make you a
• 59:44
  better racer or better at race crap.
• 59:46
  There's a lot of other things to focus on until you're really pushing the cars
• 59:50
  and pushing the, pushing the limits of what the game is capable with.
• 59:53
  Right?
• 59:53
  So if you're in the top 5 percent of Grand Swizzle 7 and you're
• 59:56
  pushing, pushing, pushing, and you're, Oh man, I'm having trouble
• 59:58
  controlling the car at the limit here.
• 59:59
  When you're driving cars at the limit on Grand Swizzle 7 and you're
• 1:00:02
  complaining about funky physics.
• 1:00:04
  Maybe it's time to step up to a subtle Corso or to a real factor, because
• 1:00:07
  that's one of the places where Gran Turismo doesn't really shine as much
• 1:00:10
  as at the limit with the car, with the wheel, that package of having a low end
• 1:00:16
  entry level wheel with a entry level sim, and you're pushing at the limit.
• 1:00:19
  That's where things get funky.
• 1:00:20
  That's another thing that's like, when we're talking about sim racing fidelity
• 1:00:23
  and what's good, what's bad, and iRacing being the best, it's like, for 90 percent
• 1:00:27
  of driving, Gran Turismo 7 is phenomenal.
• 1:00:29
  It's when you get to that last 10 percent of at the limit,
• 1:00:32
  where it's like, okay, this is...
• 1:00:33
  Completely fabricated.
• 1:00:34
  We're jumping curbs and I jumped the curb 10 times and it was fine on 10th time.
• 1:00:38
  The car just did a backflip.
• 1:00:39
  Like, I don't understand why I did that.
• 1:00:41
  That's what makes it funky.
• 1:00:42
  If you get into the point where you're driving at the limit and that's
• 1:00:44
  continuing to become a nuisance, that's when it's time to upgrade
• 1:00:47
  your rig, upgrade your game, get to a different game platform and doing that.
• 1:00:50
  But for the vast majority of people.
• 1:00:52
  I would say starting out Grand Theft Auto 7 and Forza Motorsport with
• 1:00:55
  an entry level wheel and an entry level chassis is a phenomenal way
• 1:00:58
  to start or, you know, F1 2023.
• 1:01:01
  Those are great games to start with for somebody starting out that will give
• 1:01:04
  you enough of a feel to decide if you really want to make the investment.
• 1:01:08
  If you do, if you are ready to make that investment, I would get a solid cockpit
• 1:01:12
  and I would start to play a slightly more serious sim like Real Factor.
• 1:01:16
  A set of Corsa, ACC, or even potentially iRacing a race room.
• 1:01:21
  Let's say you just get done with your 24 hours of lemons and a young enthusiast
• 1:01:25
  comes up and says, why do you race?
• 1:01:27
  What would you say to them?
• 1:01:28
  And how do you help encourage more young people, especially
• 1:01:31
  women in motorsports, get into it?
• 1:01:34
  Because it's a very male dominated space right now.
• 1:01:37
  And sometimes that can be a little bit intimidating.
• 1:01:39
  You know, I think it's been described a lot.
• 1:01:41
  It's like a certain type of feeling that you really can't get anywhere else.
• 1:01:44
  And it's a little different from other types of competitive feelings.
• 1:01:48
  Like, I have been boxing on and off for the last 12 years or so.
• 1:01:52
  And I love fighting.
• 1:01:53
  And there's something special about boxing that you just, you can't get that.
• 1:01:58
  You can't really get that feeling anywhere else.
• 1:02:00
  And driving, particularly motorsports, is in that same field.
• 1:02:03
  There's something about it that's got a, you know, je ne sais
• 1:02:05
  quoi, there's something about it.
• 1:02:07
  There's a little bit that's like, I can compete.
• 1:02:09
  And I can be competitive and I can learn a skill, but competing and learning this
• 1:02:14
  skill is just a little bit different.
• 1:02:16
  And that little bit of sauce, that little bit of feeling is what you're chasing.
• 1:02:20
  It makes things a lot of fun.
• 1:02:22
  As far as how we can encourage more young people.
• 1:02:24
  I think it's very, very, very interesting.
• 1:02:26
  So as a black man in e sports in sim racing, it's been very interesting
• 1:02:31
  to hear the women problem come up.
• 1:02:33
  Cause there's been times where I've been in a room that's for
• 1:02:36
  women in e sports and I'm not.
• 1:02:38
  Only black person in the room that isn't cleaning up the room.
• 1:02:40
  That's happened to me on multiple occasions.
• 1:02:42
  So imagine how I feel a panel full of white Asian women, no black women
• 1:02:46
  on the panel talking about women, inclusion in e sports, and I'm looking
• 1:02:49
  around the room and the only little black people in the room are the
• 1:02:51
  janitors and nobody talks about that.
• 1:02:53
  It's difficult to get a race class breakdown of gamers, like you can't
• 1:02:58
  tell me how many Hispanic kids that come from a household makes less than
• 1:03:03
  50, 000 a year play Call of Duty, but you can tell me exactly how many
• 1:03:07
  women are playing Rainbow Six Siege.
• 1:03:10
  And I think that those are good questions to ask, but there is a racial component to
• 1:03:13
  things that I feel is just being ignored.
• 1:03:16
  Because it's like, Oh, it's hard for women to get in there.
• 1:03:18
  I've done activation with Steffi with, uh, in e sports.
• 1:03:21
  We did a really cool activation for, it was women only.
• 1:03:24
  It was a leaderboard challenge.
• 1:03:26
  It was 15, 000 cash prize.
• 1:03:27
  It was sponsored by Pennzoil.
• 1:03:28
  We did it at the NASCAR, Pennzoil 400.
• 1:03:31
  And I'll never forget, Steffi kept saying, if you can see it, you can be it.
• 1:03:35
  If you can see it, you can be it.
• 1:03:36
  And we're getting these young women into the space.
• 1:03:38
  I met Kelly Moss, racing CEO and the rest of the team.
• 1:03:42
  And again, I'm the only Black person in the room that isn't sweeping the floors.
• 1:03:46
  It's a crazy thing.
• 1:03:47
  So it's, I'm not saying that we shouldn't focus on women or things like that, but
• 1:03:50
  it's really interesting talking to someone who is a minority about another minority.
• 1:03:54
  I think the overarching theme that you're hitting on, Trevor, is we need more
• 1:03:58
  diversity in the paddock across the board.
• 1:04:01
  I think we need more opportunity and I think we need more points of ingress.
• 1:04:05
  How we encourage more people, I think it's just accessibility.
• 1:04:09
  It's just about giving them a chance to even see if they're interested.
• 1:04:12
  I'm not gonna take a young black kid that's dead set on being a veterinarian
• 1:04:16
  and be like, you need to do motorsports.
• 1:04:18
  Like, no dude, go fix dogs.
• 1:04:19
  But if it's a little white girl on the side of the road that's like,
• 1:04:21
  loves it when the cars rev it, like, let's give her a chance to see.
• 1:04:24
  Maybe she's an engineer one day.
• 1:04:25
  Maybe she's changing the engines for the top fuel drag racers, disassembling them.
• 1:04:29
  We just have to create more points of entry.
• 1:04:32
  At every level, but most importantly, creating more points of entry at
• 1:04:35
  the base level, I was doing an event at revolt fest and revolt is
• 1:04:39
  this, this hip hop music festival.
• 1:04:41
  And we did a gaming activation and the number of people, men and women in that
• 1:04:45
  festival is predominantly black people that didn't even understand what a gaming
• 1:04:49
  PC was like, they didn't understand.
• 1:04:52
  They were like sitting down, it was their first time ever on PC and
• 1:04:55
  learning how to look with the right hand and walk around with the left hand.
• 1:04:58
  Like.
• 1:04:59
  That's a infrastructure issue.
• 1:05:00
  Like we don't have enough PCs in these people's households that they
• 1:05:03
  have an opportunity to even try this.
• 1:05:05
  The number of women that don't even get the opportunity to see if they're
• 1:05:08
  interested in motorsports is the issue.
• 1:05:10
  The solution to this is something like Torque Motorsports
• 1:05:12
  is a great problem solve.
• 1:05:13
  We can do activations there to provide a point of ingress without
• 1:05:17
  this investment of having to buy this equipment and get invested in this and
• 1:05:20
  provide an opportunity for different communities to come find a home and
• 1:05:23
  learn how to race and learn how.
• 1:05:24
  to participate.
• 1:05:25
  So creating different points of ingress, particularly for sim racing,
• 1:05:28
  because e sports is a different problem because there's no barrier of entry.
• 1:05:31
  You sit down and you game with sim racing.
• 1:05:33
  There's a barrier of interest and then a barrier of entry.
• 1:05:36
  I view one of the biggest key factors to solving this is the
• 1:05:40
  proliferation of sim centers.
• 1:05:41
  The more sim centers that come online and the more we can link.
• 1:05:44
  The do good in the sim, get a chance to earn seat time.
• 1:05:48
  As long as we continue to build that pipeline, we will start to see this
• 1:05:52
  change and we'll start to see more and more people get opportunities.
• 1:05:54
  Well, I know you're in a period of transition and
• 1:05:57
  you're quickly ramping up K53.
• 1:06:00
  But I have to ask, what's next, Trevor?
• 1:06:02
  I'm excited to answer.
• 1:06:03
  I'll be at SEMA this year.
• 1:06:05
  And I'll be wheeling and dealing and talking to people and having a great time.
• 1:06:09
  I'll be at PRI as well.
• 1:06:11
  And the capstone at the end of the event is going to be DreamHack Atlanta.
• 1:06:14
  There's an e sports summit there, and that's the record
• 1:06:17
  for the rest of the year.
• 1:06:18
  And then for next year, I'll have a new litany of events and motorsport
• 1:06:22
  events that I'll be at and starting to chart that path forward.
• 1:06:25
  So going to these events first.
• 1:06:26
  Making the connections and then taking those connections into 2024.
• 1:06:30
  Well, Trevor, we've reached that part of the episode where I like
• 1:06:34
  to let my guests tell us about any shout outs, promotions, or anything
• 1:06:38
  else we haven't covered thus far.
• 1:06:40
  Yeah, I like to shout out DreamHack Atlanta.
• 1:06:43
  December 15th to 17th.
• 1:06:43
  Sim craft is a wonderful software development company, making some
• 1:06:47
  awesome Sims and I'm partnering with them and helping them out.
• 1:06:50
  And I also like to shout out MIE racing, which is a education based
• 1:06:54
  STEM training program to help bring kids into STEM via sim racing.
• 1:07:00
  They're doing some really awesome things and they might
• 1:07:02
  be doing some things at Torque.
• 1:07:03
  Who knows we're working on that.
• 1:07:05
  That's about it.
• 1:07:05
  Torque Motorsports Atlanta, which is the largest simulation racing
• 1:07:09
  center, delivering the thrill of automotive racing through advanced
• 1:07:13
  motion simulators and virtual reality.
• 1:07:15
  Enjoy a risk free environment where you can improve your performance
• 1:07:20
  driving techniques for much less than a typical track weekend.
• 1:07:23
  And you don't have a fear www.
• 1:07:25
  torqueadlanta.
• 1:07:30
  com.
• 1:07:31
  Or follow Trevor on social media at k53consulting on Instagram
• 1:07:36
  and at trevorlmart on LinkedIn.
• 1:07:39
  Check out his website www.
• 1:07:42
  k53.
• 1:07:43
  com or stop over and visit the Torque Atlanta's YouTube channel
• 1:07:47
  at Torque Atlanta as well.
• 1:07:49
  Well, Trevor, I can't thank you enough for coming on break fix and sharing
• 1:07:52
  your road to success story with us.
• 1:07:55
  And I want to congratulate you on your most recent successes and look forward
• 1:07:59
  to the future and probably seeing you again on the show and talking
• 1:08:02
  about more things in the sim world.
• 1:08:04
  But also I want to thank you for what you're doing in terms of giving
• 1:08:08
  that accessibility to young folks and to everyone that has an interest.
• 1:08:11
  In simulation and e sports.
• 1:08:14
  This is really, really awesome.
• 1:08:15
  And we look forward to seeing more sim centers throughout the United States that
• 1:08:19
  may be overseas with your name on them.
• 1:08:20
  So thank you again for what you're doing.
• 1:08:22
  Thank you so much for the opportunity to come here and speak.
• 1:08:24
  I definitely need to do this more often.
• 1:08:26
  And I love to advocate for the little guy that's trying to get started because.
• 1:08:29
  I once, and to some degree still am.
• 1:08:32
  So it's wonderful to be able to provide that, which I was lacking as a younger
• 1:08:36
  kid and being able to push that forward.
• 1:08:38
  I love groups such as this and having a platform to give people like
• 1:08:43
  me a voice as we're building out.
• 1:08:45
  And this is part of that sim racing, racing community that we definitely need
• 1:08:49
  to continue to build on here in the United States, so I'm just so happy to be here.
• 1:08:52
  And thank you for the opportunity to come and speak on your podcast.
• 1:08:55
  And Brock, thank you again for coming on and co hosting with me.
• 1:08:58
  My pleasure, Eric.
• 1:08:59
  And I'll do it anytime.
• 1:09:05
  We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of break fix podcasts brought
• 1:09:09
  to you by Grand Touring Motorsports.
• 1:09:11
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• 1:09:14
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• 1:09:22
  be sure to check out the follow on article at GTMotorsports.
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