Misha Charoudin says Max Verstappen’s Nürburgring GT3 win with sim-racing ace Chris Lulham, on top of Jann Mardenborough’s P2, shows sim racing is a credible, cost-effective pathway to real-world racing success and should kill the “just gamers” stigma
Max Verstappen's GT3 debut at the Nürburgring has once again asked the question of whether elite sim racers can move successfully into real-world motorsport. We know the four-time champion is a strong advocate for such a transition, but the recent race at the Green Hell has confirmed that sim racing could indeed be a fully fledged way of gaining a seat in racing.
The Dutchman partnered with British driver Chris Lulham, with the pair winning the NLS9 - the 57th ADAC Barbarossa Prize - in Emil Frey Racing’s No. 31 Ferrari 296 GT3. After Verstappen took the lead ahead of Turn 1 after an excellent race start, he and his team-mate created and maintained a substantial lead over the pack. The pair won by 24.496 seconds, scoring the first Ferrari win in the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie since 2017.
Second place went to Haupt Racing Team’s No. 9 Ford Mustang GT3, driven by the trio of Fabian Scherer, Dennis Fetzer and Jann Mardenborough - the latter of whom is a former Gran Turismo Academy winner, proof that a racing career launched by sim racing can certainly be a success, but Lulham also adds to this.
Lulham has been a team member of Verstappen's sim racing team, Team Redline, for a long time now after being hand-picked by the Formula 1 driver. He has scored major victories, including the iRacing Nürburgring 24 Hours and the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual. Now, with Verstappen.com, he's stepped into the world of GT3 competition after a successful 2024.
YouTuber and Nürburgring content creator Misha Charoudin has argued that this recent result points to sim racing becoming a major stepping stone into motorsport and should end any lingering stigma around sim racers "just being gamers".
"First of all, P1 and P2 - something very impressive. P2 was actually driven by another very interesting person, if I might say so. Jann Mardenborough, who you might know as the hero from the Gran Turismo franchise, who won the Gran Turismo Academy, became a race car driver himself, and ever since has lots of great and inspirational achievements as a real-world race car driver.
"But what I want to get at is this is actually extremely interesting," he continued. "We have Jann on P2, who managed to close the gap to the Verstappen.com race car from 1 minute 10 to just 24 seconds, together of course with their team-mates and traffic and etc.
"We have Chris Lulham, who started - of course he had some karting experience - but he went more professionally in iRacing as a sim racer back in 2019 up until now. And he was so good that Max Verstappen chose him among also other drivers to participate in his Verstappen.com race team where he wants to give opportunities to drivers who come from sim racing and put them in the real race car driver seat.
"Right now, Chris Lulham is extremely successful in the Fanatec World GT Esports Sprint Series. He also had many other successes.
"But we have Jann, we have Chris, we have Max Verstappen, who is also a highly successful sim racer. We have Jimmy Broadbent, Steve Alvarez Brown, my team-mates. We have Tim Heinemann, who is extremely successful now coming from KW to Falken Race Team - of course highly successful sim racers who are becoming dominating real-life racers."
The Nürburgring specialist believes sim racing could now become a necessary step in a driver's career.
"So the result of last weekend and all the other achievements of other drivers that I mentioned should definitely by now kill the stigma of the fact 'oh, sim racers are just some gamers'.
#31 Emil Fray Racing Ferrari 296 GT3: Max Verstappen, Christopher Lulham
"I believe as a matter of fact that in between now to the next 10 years, it's going to be mandatory to be a sim racer before you're going to be considered a professional race car driver I would say by teams so you can start competing in real-life racing and people would not really look at it, 'oh sim racing is just a game,' because let's face it: the reality is you only need a sim hardware - electricity bill of course - and you can drive as much as you want.
"If you crash you just hit the restart button and you go again. The reason why it is so hard to become a professional race car driver and to make it up to Formula 1 is because the running costs and travel costs. If you go into karting championship, I believe the first racing years cost you already quarter of a million euro to the world karting championship.
"You might be spending up to a million euro a year because you have the team cost, travel cost, the running cost of a kart purchase, tyres, brakes, fuel, you name it. And in case of a sim, again, just electricity and the purchase price of the sim."
The result of this recent race is further evidence that the future of sim racing is bright. If this trend continues, which it likely will, Charoudin's prediction may not be so far-fetched.
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Category: General Sports
