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Although they are both in Formula 1, McLaren driver Lando Norris seldom if ever gets to race wheel-to-wheel in real life with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, but the rookie believes he knows a thing or two about the Dutchman’s unique style thanks to their duels in the virtual world of sim racing.
Norris is toiling in the heart of the midfield, while Verstappen crosses swords with the frontrunners thus the pair hardly go head-to-head during the course of a Grand Prix weekend.
But it’s a different story in the virtual world as Norris revealed during the launch of the second edition of the McLaren Shadow eSports contest, “Racing with other people, such as Max, I can already learn things coming into this season.”
“I am not really racing Max on track here [in F1], so maybe later on this season or next year we can have some more battles, but I already learned about him when I raced Max and we had some fun races together.
“I can learn how he would drive on the track. I already learned how he would defend, because he is very good at that, and he can be very aggressive at times with his overtakes, and everything.
“Maybe you push a bit more in the sim because you can get away with it, but there are a lot of things I take away from that which I then learned about and knew about Max coming into this season.
“So if I was to race him – and I am sure he learned things from me about what I am good and bad at – but if I was racing him, I would know how he would race, if I never saw him on TV before. I know how he would race me just from driving on the sim.”
It is no secret that the young guns on today’s F1 grid all have sim rigs which they use regularly when they are away from the glare of paddocks around the globe. They are also up against dedicated pro-sim-racers who challenge the likes of Verstappen and Norris during online races and have garnered respect from the F1 drivers who sim.
Norris pointed out, “All these guys are super quick. They spend not always hours every day practising, but they understand how to drive cars, how to setup cars, and a lot of these things. You even have engineers on sim-racing to help you go through proper data after each session and try to improve lap times.
“It is not just going around driving and learning how to drive a sim car. You learn about everything: how people drive, the obvious thing of places you can overtake and can’t overtake, and how to force people into mistakes and so on, plus where it is hard to follow and not.
“You learn a majority of things, which is pretty cool, and especially someone like Max, who is a real-life driver, you learn how he drives in the simulator and how similar it is compared to the track,” explained Norris.
Happy #SpanishGP week everyone! 🇪🇸🏁 @RvBuren is here to take us through a lap of @Circuitcat_eng ahead of this weekend’s racing action. #ShadowTuesdays
Full lap ➡️ https://t.co/TYAS1nCzCe pic.twitter.com/FdAViU6FGi
— McLaren Shadow (@McLarenShadow) May 7, 2019
