Look it’s probably something to do with the way I was brought up; you know, by a solo mother who used to wash plastic bags – and even Glad-Wrap – because she couldn’t bear the thought of throwing stuff away after a single use.
Now, my old Mum’s parsimony in the face of what I saw as simple labour-liberating progress would be lauded by a new-generation of harping Greta Thunberg-supporting greenies.
But back when I was growing up all I can remember was how much effort (not to mention water, power and Persil) my mother put into saving a cent or two here and cent or two there.
You don’t have the cost of even the smallest thing stuffed down your throat from a young age without something eventually rubbing off, of course.
In my case it’s been my attitude, believe it or not, to play. Even now, in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown I’m working… not just knocking out my weekly column for Talk Motorsport, either. Oh no.
I’m still putting in 50+ hours a week on the ‘proper job’ – despite having to take a 20% bloody Coronavirus-inspired pay cut – not to mention knocking out stories for long-term PR client KartSport NZ on the organisation’s latest ‘Virtual Club Day’ sim racing initiative.
Up until recently I’ve willingly taken on all this paying work because I was earning enough to feed and clothe the family and have ‘a little bit’ over for fun stuff…like building, maintaining and running my drift car and paying more for my current full suspension Mountain Bike (and doing it willingly as well) than I did for my last car!!!!!!)
Though, with any sort of motorised motorsport off the table for at least another month and the same timeframe (or so it seems) before the Woodhill MTB Park can re-open, I’ve actually got some time on my hands for once.
The cruel irony of course is that because the industry I work in (publishing) is in such dire straits at the moment (at least 500 of my fellow editors, journos and subs have already been made redundant in the past month with more predicted to follow) I have neither the money or the heart to spend anything on so frivolous an activity as motor racing at the moment!
Which, again, is a crying bloody shame, because, like a lot of you out there in lockdown land (and I see we’ve got another week of Level 4 to go then another two on the equally socially restrictive Level 3) I have finally been given a reason to get into ‘sim’ racing,; KartSport New Zealand’s wildly successful new ‘Virtual Club Day’ events on the US-based iRacing platform.
Sure, I’m no longer (quite) in the flush of youth. But since my belated start to an active motorsport career in my mid ‘30s I’ve always subscribed to the ‘two arms, two legs’ theory. You know, the one that postulates that even Ayrton Senna had to get up in the morning and put his trousers on one leg at a time (in other words) just like you and I.
A quick check on the iRacing website and the downloadable app confirmed that my current desktop computer (bought for the princely sum of $100 from a publisher’s garage sale) still had enough spare grunt to allow me to at least get in the gate at the virtual track.
All I needed to line up at the second KartSport NZ Virtual Club Day event last Saturday night was a steering wheel/gear lever/foot pedal package…like the one my son Andrew bought 18 or so months ago when he discovered an Ebisu (drift) complex game online!
“Andrewwwwww!” I remember bellowing from my home office (in what was our spare bedroom) to his in his own bedroom down the passage. ‘Are you still using that steering wheel and pedal package you bought for that bloody drift game?”
“Duuuh,’ came the eventual reply, once I had actually got up and wandered down to his room. ‘You made me sell it when we got the S14.”
At which point the memory snapped back into the front of my mind and I thought ‘bugger!’
Though Andrew managed to drift his virtual Toyota AE86 around the various Ebisu courses, the lack of any sort of real-world feel saw me fumble like the sim noob I obviously am when he offered me a ‘drive.’
So, when #1 son was short a couple of hundie when the time came to settle up with the bloke selling him the ‘drift-ready’ de-registered S14 it was me, apparently, who suggested he put the sim wheel and control package on Facebook marketplace.
Where, needless to say, it sold straightway for not much less than he had paid for it on the .co.nz-fronted but mainland China-based computer peripherals website he originally acquired it from 8 or so months before.
“Bugger indeed,” I thought as I remembered the time – less than a year ago now – when I still thought of sims as toys; rather than a step on the ladder to ‘the real thing.’
Obviously that opinion has changed, albeit really only significantly in the past month.
It seems silly too, having been exposed to the very real value of sim work by the likes of Shane Van Gisbergen, Brendon Hartley for years.
With limited funds however, I’ve never really been able to justify setting up a sim rig of my own; thinking that I’d much rather channel what funds I have been able to raise into ‘the real thing,’ rather than a home-based facsimile.
When the ability to go out and drive ‘the real thing’ is taken away from you though; well that’s when I started pricking my ears up.
Stimulus has come from several directions, as well. Following the first two KartSport New Zealand Virtual Club Days has helped break down some of the barriers that have stopped me stepping up to the plate in the past.
As has watching gamer videos on YouTube. In a recent one I enjoyed, top young UK-based gamer Steve ‘SuperGT’ Brown joined a star-studded cast of pro-level gamers at a black tie-style gig in the UK where he and a mate lined up in a GT3 Mercedes-Benz alongside none other than Lewis Hamilton and his gaming teammate, Brazilian Igor Fraga (whose name might ring a bell here) in a high-profile round of some international sim series on a virtual Spa-Francorchamps circuit.
Young Steve was doing alright, too, until Lewis served him up like dinner at a Texas steak house, shouldering him off the track and down the order.
When he is not ‘gaming’ Steve competes in the UK’s arrive-and-drive Formula 100 kart series and it was some stirring ‘come-from-behind’ and ‘through-the-field’ charges (which he mixes and mingles with his racing sim ones) that first hooked me on his channel.
Like Fraga, obviously, the bugger can drive, and in lieu of any family money or hustled sponsorship loot obviously decided that if he could develop a profile and big enough following on YouTube then the teams themselves would come ‘a knocking on his door.’
Which is what happened recently when none other than McLaren invited him and another YouTube gamer to the Top Gear test track to sample the latest McLaren GT3 sports car.
In theory I don’t have the $450-$550 for a decent steering wheel/foot control package. But if you know me, I’ve never let the lack of readies stop me when it has come to going racing.
I’m owed more than that for some driver PR/Promo work I haven’t got round to billing out yet.
The ultimate irony right now is in landing a suitable sim ‘interface.’ For a start, I can’t leave my bubble to buy one. And because – for some strange reason – a Logitech G29 sim steering wheel and pedal combination is not considered an ‘essential appliance’ under the Government’s COVID-19 lockdown regulations even if I could buy one on-line it wouldn’t be delivered by courier until we are on Level 2….at which point I will no doubt be back working every possible hour trying to keep the wolf from the door!
Or putting another load of plastic bags through the wash……
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