Lately we see a lot of E-Sports on the tv set. Okay, better that than nothing, that is true. Indycar; 90% of the real drivers. V8 Supercar, 90% of the real drivers. Nascar, maybe even more. Now we have a sport where the drivers are highly payed, speak highly of their sport: "we must........for the GOOD of our sport", recognising the fans as very important (without them, they wouldn't make that much money) and so on; it is THE pinnacle of motorsports. They know, they say, they believe. So.......now they can help their very important sport. Four to six drivers show up......... They do want to show an F1 race on tv so the field is completed with DJ's, golf players and such; it just hurts your eyes. Why won't they show up? Why not help your sport out? Is it because you don't get payed for that? You don't get -what?- 50.000 dollars a point? Max Verstappen; does race a lot online, plays his own championships for fun, but can't be bothered to show up to help the sport out that made him big, rich! He's afraid he doesn't win because it's another game. Well, join the club with others; I'm pretty sure not all drivers are F1 2019 specialists. For the audience; it could be nice to see a virtual F1 race, but not with DJ's, hairdressers and golf players. I think it says a lot about these drivers; they are not -as they say- doing the best for their sports; they are doing the best to get good money and fame, but can't be bothered to sit in a rig for a few hours when there's no pay for that!
Lando is racing everywhere, LeClerc, Vettel, Albon. rF2 seems to be doing the best integrating sim-racers with real world, mostly retired, drivers. Remember, early on, some drivers were critiqued for striking out online alone and not consulting or following a team's lead.
Okay, but I mean the "real" virtual F1 races on real calendar racedays, running F1 2019; where are they? Second point; where are the teams than? I mean; about speaking of their sport, they are the same as drivers; important, biggest and so on. Why do the other important sports all have this pretty much together with a LOT of the original drivers and why can't F1?
Perhaps it didn't pencil out financially. NASCAR & IRL needed to gain market share after declines of the past couple years and have national politics pushing them. F1, on the other hand, is international, so national politics aren't going to enter the picture.
I can understand what you're saying, but I left politics out of it; I mean.......keeping the fans "happy", promoting your sport......that should be the main goal, right?
There has been a lot of F1 drivers in action if you look across all the Sim platforms. Quite a few have driven in the Codies game. However it doesn't have the credibility to run anything quite serious. Filling the grid with celebrities as little fun as long as they can drive is good entertainment (one musician was 35 sec off the pace) Bahrain was a bit of a giggle but some later races have been ok. Do you watch Jimmy Broadbent? The ACC race from Misano was a who's who. So lots of them are getting into it and entertaining us. The Legends race in RF2 is simply EPIC. Who could have predicted the world champions and race winners there. So a lot of F1 drivers are playing ball but it isn't their job. Verstappen has driven in several events across several platforms even phoning Van Gisbergen to get a wild card in the V-8 Supercars in iRacing F1 is stuck with Codies as it's "official" but it's not the Sim the pros like.