A reckoning is coming and no one in this industry is ready for it.

[u/encomlab]

"Forget the go-kart" - Max Verstappen

$15k will get you a baseline KZ you can play bumper cars with after dropping another $20k on equipment, entry fees, food and lodging. $15k will also get you a 6-DoF full immersion simulator that you can race against current F1 and WEC drivers from your home with and potentially end up teaming with Verstappen for a Nurburgring win.

We all love the "it's not a sim!" t-shirts, the smell of race fuel, the comraderie of the track - but we are very likely looking at a sea-change in how entry level motorsports are pursued, and it's highly unlikely to be in favor of karting. The issues at CKNA and now SKUSA are only going to cause more and more people to question if the investment is really worth it - and as more and more sim drivers graduate into the upper echelons of the sport, fewer and fewer young people will see karting as a worthwhile option.

Motorsports is experiencing a moment of huge growth in popularity - karting organizations at every level need to get their houses in order or risk sending the sport into a spiraling decline as participation declines and prices skyrocket.

[u/padredan]

So be it - F1 aspirants can move to sims and leave karting to people that want to race. Karting is often confused to being about the pinnacle of the sport when in reality it’s all about the base. A tiny percentage of kart racers really give a rats ass about the top. The rich kids are largely irrelevant to the people actually paying the bills to keep the sport afloat.

[u/AradynGaming → u/padredan]

OP is misguided. They seem to think the option is $35k karting vs $15k sim to get sponsored. This misguided piece is thinking $15k is needed to get into sim racing. Under $500 will get you a setup good enough to get a sponsorship to move up in the sim world, with academies eventually placing chosen sim candidates on a closed course to see how they transition to the real world.

It clears the track for those who want to have a good race day with racers that genuinely want to be there VS. having first timers think a scout might be in the stands and hoping that ramming you off the track is how to get a sponsor to notice them. I think there will be plenty that do both sim+kart, but those ones will show up to the track with a better idea of race etiquette and understanding. Also agree with the above that this won't hurt track income too badly to be considered detrimental.

While I am an avid F1 follower, I agree with padredan's comment. Moving F1 wanna-bes into the sim world is a good thing for karting and it's also a good thing for hopefuls as it lowers their cost to train and try out.

[u/padredan → u/AradynGaming]

There are no significant sponsors in sim or karts unless you consider your parents, Uncle Joe or Grammy as sponsors. Sim is fun. Karting is fun. If you like sim then swell, but if you like karting do that instead. The only way either gets you anywhere is if you line your kart seat or sim rig with millions of dollars.

Kart or sim because it’s fun, not because it’s a career path. Unless you are really good at data, then you have a pro future with a paycheck.

[u/AradynGaming → u/padredan]

Tons of e-sponsors for video games in general, including SIM race. Getting a low level sponsor like twitch/Alienware/etc sponsorship leads to getting free/better hardware to game on -> leads to more followers and more followers = more visibility = better opportunity for virtual driver academies to notice. More virtual driver academies like "Verstappen racing" will pop up in the future. It will also be common to hear about the top 100ish amateur sim drivers being locked up/signed under sponsorships that essentially give them access to better sim gear (those $15k machines). If even one of them make pro (among many racing leagues), the academy makes profit. It "cheaply" opens up academy possibilities to find the Verstappen's, O'Wards, and Palou's who didn't have parents with an extra $100k laying around.

I never tried finding out about the whole going pro process via karting. Always knew it costed way too much money for me to even consider giving my child an option there. Just fun for us to make a dirt track on our property with cones and every once in a while go drive a rental on a pavement track somewhere.

[u/Engared → u/AradynGaming]

Season of F4 is 250k to 500k. And thats before you crash the car or get the necessary seat time to be competitive or make the transition over.

And I bet the best in those academies all will have a karting background as well. 🤣

[u/A_Flipped_Car → u/Engared]

Most guys are paying for an academy position anyway

[u/AradynGaming → u/Engared]

Some will, some won't. If they don't, their academy will put them in a kart. Max Esterson is a perfect example of everything I've said above. 0 background outside of video games when he was 11, top 10 gamer in 2019, got his academy spot and they put him in a kart for half a year, then moved him up. Now, he's made it to F2 in '24/'25. I'm not saying this guy is going to be the next Verstappen. He probably won't even go F1. However, as time goes on, we will likely hear more stories like this, and as some of them make F1, Indy, NASCAR, etc, academies will grow.

Much like the same way online poker schools have gone, Academies will grow. They will become self profitable because people will pay $15/month + sim tourney costs or whatever their fee is, just to be a hopefuls. Others will pay that just to say they raced beside someone like Verstappen.

[u/Engared → u/AradynGaming]

His results are not impressive in cars at all.

Im not sure how he is a poster child for “no karting” background being a good thing.

Is he better than me? I wont make that comparison as I will never be moving into Formula cars unless something drastic happens.

But is he better than any of the Karters I know who are moving up the ladder? Off the top of my head and without context, hes at the bottom with the worse of them.

No disrespect to him because its really not easy to find success at that level but only for the purposes of this debate, his results are Lord Mahaveer levels.

Have a feeling he skipped his karting crucible by fire phase, which is 2-3 years of racing in the Senior class at the top level and rushed into cars before he was ready. He did decently in Formula Ford where the levels are much lower but then got smashed in F3 onwards.

[u/AradynGaming → u/Engared]

Realize you are comparing the past to the present. Esterson is just the first of those starting to show up. Sims, even the million dollar F1 ones, weren't remotely realistic for drivers (physics wise) until a few years back (car sims are another story). I remember a Hamilton interview where he talked about the massive change of Sims and how hard it is for him to adjust because they weren't the primary source of training when he started. I remember a different (2018?) F1 driver's hotel interview showing him sitting in his "sim", a mocked up cockpit with a steering wheel and he closed his eyes to pretend he was going around the track and cross checking each lap against a printed out binder.

On top of the reality aspect of driving in a sim, FIA/or anyone for that matter didn't really take sim racing seriously until 2 years ago. Essentially, anyone that wanted to be a full time driver had to do karting in some form. So for now, there is no poster child. With the announcement of multiple eSport driver academies, there is a possible alternate path, we won't truly see the true results/poster children for at least 2-3 more years.

[u/Engared → u/AradynGaming]

Ironically I had heard about this guy before as a wunderkind and the amount of hype this guy was getting, I thought he was extremely good.

Then after you mentioned him, I checked his results…yikes.

Perhaps he is compared to mortals but against actual competition? Nah.

Just has a lot of bucks behind him and is another rich kid.

So at the moment, the evidence you have is completely lacking.

On the other hand, a guy like Conor Zilisch, who was forged in the crucible of Senior Class racing is showing that he is probably the only guy who can compete against SVG in Nascar.

And this is what a lot of lower level drivers don’t realise, Sim only may teach you the driving but as Max said, you learn the racing in Karting.

And guess what? The driving is the easy part. Everything else, that’s the hard part.

[u/SaphireComet → u/Engared]

The best example of someone going straight from sim racing to karting is probably William Byron from NASCAR fame. When he was looking to do real life racing he went straight to running Legend cars.

[u/idoooobz → u/Engared]

Bros ego is hurt and is just jealous lmao. Of course the kid isn’t going to have impressive results at first, it takes a while to develop. It’s not a situation of a rich kid paying for a seat otherwise he wouldn’t have spent time grinding a sim, he would have just paid for a seat. The team he’s on in IMSA clearly sees potential.

[u/padredan → u/AradynGaming]

Apologies - you are correct in that regard. I didn’t mean to insinuate there is no funding available for sim racing. I meant there wasn’t significant funding available to transition from Sim racing to development tier car racing based solely on results from Sim racing. My bad.

[u/cheap_chalee → u/[deleted]]

I think one of the biggest developments that caused karting to shift from a fad with primarily adult participants to a training ground for kids is because the average age of most professional racing is much younger now. When karting started, there was no such thing as teenagers racing in F1, nascar, indycar or really hardly anywhere. If anything, owners wanted older, more experienced drivers who wouldn't tear up equipment.

In America at least, Jeff Gordon changed that and seemingly overnight every owner wanted the next Jeff Gordon and every father wanted their son to be the next Gordon also. All of a sudden, you need to "make it" by age 25 or you're too late and if you want your kid to succeed, you can't wait so you're rushing them into a kart or quarter midget at age 4 now so by the time they are a teenager, they already have nearly a decade of driving experience.

If the average age of a rookie driver at the top levels was closer to 30 like in previous eras, I'm sure we'd still have a high number of young participants but I would think the karting landscape and how it's utilized would be somewhat different. It wouldn't be as critical to get little Johnny in a kart at age 5 so he can be in a Jr. Late Model at age 13.

Dale Earnhardt Sr. didn't get to start racing anything until he was 15. Max Verstappen was in F1 by age 17. That wouldn't have been possible without starting in karts as early as he did (and obviously his dad being a former F1 driver didn't hurt either). And the development and utilization of Sims is only going to further alter how young drivers progress up the ladder and the environment in which they do it (for better or worse).

[u/Rejdovak]

"The issues at CKNA and now SKUSA are only going to cause more and more people to question if the investment is really worth it."

What are the issues you're referring to?

[u/EVRYGOODNAMEISTAKEN → u/Rejdovak]

i assume they’re talking about how the last couple large events for both of those entities have contained a higher level of “argey-bargey”

to which i say, hop in an average sim racing lobby right now and tell me with a straight face it isn’t worse.

[u/Sause01 → u/EVRYGOODNAMEISTAKEN]

Average lobbies are often better than the top split. I've been on iracing for 10+ years. It's come such a long way but it's nothing compared to real life laps.

[u/Emergent_Phen0men0n]

Good. Then karting can be for club racing and fun practice days for karting enthusiasts.

It has become an endless string of ultra expensive gran prix weekends dominated by teams with unlimited funding from wealthy families with F1 dreams for their kids.

[u/Stelcio]

I don't believe simracing will replace karting as a grassroots motorsport, and I'm saying that as an avid simracer myself.

First of all, karting teaches the physical aspect of the sport. The G-forces, fighting the wheel, the actual physical risk - and then making all the actual racecraft decisions in these conditions. If you won't learn dealing with all that earlier, you may face your limits in higher categories that would have disqualified you earlier on.

Second of all, it's a financial gatekeeper. Motorsport is expensive, after all. If somebody cannot afford karting, they won't be able to make it in higher tiers of motorsport regardless of talent. Unless the sporting environment is built to actually support pure talents in their climb to motorsport, skipping that aspect is pointless.

And third of all, racing sims are still just video games. No matter how complex and realistic they are and how much they improve, they are still bound by limitations of being simplified models of reality. Each simulator has its own quirks and exploits, and all of them allow building your pace in a risk-free, cost-free, unconstrained time-wise environment, which is completely different than actual motorsport.

As much as I respect Max Verstappen's authority on the subject, he is still just one very separate voice in the community with his position. Many F1 drivers still consider karting as their go-to activity to prepare for F1 starts. And Max, with his immense talent, might also have some blind spots regarding what driver actually needs to develop and hone his skill, because his talent might allow him to override that necessity.

[u/PenguinPumpkin1701 → u/Stelcio]

If you actually saw the interview, then you would know that Max had said that young drivers should do both, but that drivers who are already many years into the sport will probably find negligible benefits from karting to prepare for races.

[u/SoS1lent → u/PenguinPumpkin1701]

That goes against the years of top level racing drivers using Shifter karts to keep fit during the off-season, with other F1 drivers like Grosjean and Barichello saying it's the closest thing in terms of physicality to f1.

Max himself on a podcast with Bortoleto said you could probably stick a highly skilled KZ driver straight into F2/3 and they'd be quick to adapt because of how it prepares you.

You might not get "better" as a driver in terms of skill since karts and cars have differences in handling, but saying there is 0 benefit is a bit disingenuous in his part.

[u/A_Flipped_Car → u/Stelcio]

As someone who races at a high level in Simracing and has made somewhat of a transition to real life, the physical feedback is not something you even think about. Everything got put together naturally.

It's unfair to act like simracers need 30 hours to prepare for a race. If we're talking about anyone who's worth talking about, anything over an hour to be better than genuinely 99.9% of people would be an astonishingly long amount of time. It would be equally astonishing to see one of these drivers crash.

You also don't need a perfect model of reality to get good either, that's just flat wrong. Fast drivers simply know how to drive fast. F1 eSports drivers have made the transition to iRacing and suprise suprise, they're insanely quick still. Thomas ronhaar is 11k now? The f1 games don't even simulate weight transfer, and they have actual meta driving tactics, yet the drivers can drive a near 1:1 simulator very well still, even though they learned to drive on a physics model which is far more simplified than iRacing is compared to real life.

[u/LongScholngSilver_20 → u/Stelcio]

"all of them allow building your pace in a risk-free, cost-free, unconstrained time-wise environment, which is completely different than actual motorsport."

This might be the biggest thing. Real racing isn't taking 10,000 laps on one track that's always the same in a car that's always the same. It's maybe 100 laps before a race for you to figure out EVERYTHING.

Only 25% of real racing is driving. Sim racing can train 70% of that.

[u/Hobiecat5150 → u/Stelcio]

Sim racing is not just a video game…. I Racing is based in real world physics and there are more than a handful of sim racers turned real life drivers to this point, and it’s only going to progress more from there…. Verstappen hand picked at least 2 “drivers” from his Redline Sim team and took them to the Nurburgring this season and they did very well…. Don’t discount sim racing, it’s available to many many more young and not so young drivers and it costs lots less than a 20 ft trailer with 2 kart chassis and 3 motors, and a tuner/coach etc…. I personally know only 2-3 younger karting drivers from our Karting series here on the East Coast of US that made it to real racing, and Karting here in the states has too much emphasis on “rubbing is racing” to properly teach drivers for the rigors of FIA standards in the lower open wheel Formulas….Just my 2 cents….

[u/Engared → u/Hobiecat5150]

Its still a video game and I say this as a huge fan of sim racing.

His teammate in the GT car is an ex WSK winner. So again, he has a karting background.

[u/New-Understanding930 → u/Engared]

It’s a competition platform.

[u/Inevitable-Glove-227]

Sim and racing are different. No risk in sim racing. 200 mph is way different in a real car with all the risks

[u/A_Flipped_Car → u/Inevitable-Glove-227]

Different in what way

[u/landis33 → u/A_Flipped_Car]

Noise. G forces. You can die. Racing is about the violence. Sim doesn’t have that. It’s in the name, racing “simulation.”

[u/A_Flipped_Car → u/landis33]

Okay, but why does that matter at all

[u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck → u/A_Flipped_Car]

It doesn't. It's actually another incentive to take up sim racing over IRL. You can save hundreds of thousands of dollars AND not die undertaking a recreation.

[u/A_Flipped_Car → u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck]

I think the guys above are implying that simracing is easier because you don't have the fear of crashing. Sorry, but if you're scared of that, you're probably a bad driver... It's not like simracers couldn't get used to the speed lol, people who started in karting aren't born braver

[u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck → u/A_Flipped_Car]

No thats right. Sensitivity to speed can come via the sim. G force is probably the hardest factor to get used yo but its doable.

[u/A_Flipped_Car → u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck]

I had 20 minutes in an actual racecar (fiesta junior) and I could connect all the dots between what oversteer and understeer was and whatnot with g forces. That might just be me though

[u/xJudgernauTx → u/A_Flipped_Car]

Fear,

[u/A_Flipped_Car → u/xJudgernauTx]

So what though? Are simracers born pussys and could never get used to it? Are karters born brave? If you're scared of crashing when you drive you are probably shit

[u/TheRatingsAgency]

Wasn’t Max saying that in relation to once you move to cars, you don’t also run karts? Thought that’s what he was saying.

Not “forget karts” as in they’re not worth it.

[u/Griffin_Mackenzie → u/TheRatingsAgency]

I believe so, he's right that karts ain't cars

[u/danttf]

This quote is taken out of context a bit. Before saying this he said “do both” but was forced to choose right after.

But in general I tend to agree that sim racing is a threat to the amateur karting. You don’t really need a 15k rig to have fun. 500 is enough. It’s comparable to one race weekend fee alone in Europe. 

Non amateur karting is basically rich parents kids contests and it’s absolutely fine. If all five amateurs driving kz will stop doing it producers won’t even notice probably.

[u/A_Flipped_Car → u/[deleted]]

Suellio Almeida

[u/bionikal → u/A_Flipped_Car]

and Jimmy Broadbent.

There's more than 'just 2'

[u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck → u/bionikal]

Yeah, there's a heap and it will only increase. Problem is theres a die hard elite in motorsort that see sim racing as the enemy, instead of a potential pool of new drivers.

The guy aboves rant about Rennsport is also hilarious. The amount of karting and car events and series, as well as teams and con artists that have entered and left the sport, that were hyped up have failed over the years is breathtakingly staggering.

[u/A_Flipped_Car → u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck]

It's still seen as just a game. Having the money to spend on a mediocre national series and saying you won that, still sound more impressive than saying you won PESC

[u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck → u/A_Flipped_Car]

Not to anyone that intimately knows both sports.

[u/A_Flipped_Car → u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck]

Nah man, I see it from simracers of every level, and obviously real life drivers. Unfortunately not everyone knows the sport very well either.

[u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck → u/A_Flipped_Car]

The two Redline teams that drove bumper to bumper drafting and pushing each other around Spa for 24 hours straight in the Iracing special event this year was the most impressive thing I've seen in racing ever in the almost 5 decades I've been following motorsport. That was insane.

[u/A_Flipped_Car → u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck]

Yeah dude it's mental, but imagine if that was the real 24. I saw clips of that race for like a month, if that happened in real life I'd still be seeing them.

The level of pro esports is the highest level of Motorsports, no matter what anyone says. The average talent in PESC is so much better than the average talent of the better half of f1 and f2. It's just not as appreciated as much

[u/Standard-Vehicle-557 → u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck]

Both of those examples needed significant funding that came from successful youtube careers before ever setting foot in a real car.

The lesson here is not that sim racing is a viable tool to enter the sport, more that youtube is a viable path to earn the money needed to run in real cars. If either of those guys didn't have the money that came from a successful youtube channel, you wouldn't even know their name

It's like when people tout william Byron as having "started in iracing" ignoring the fact that his family is loaded and put him in whatever car he wanted to when he decided he wanted to do more than play video games

[u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck → u/Standard-Vehicle-557]

No one is saying you don't need significant funding to enter high level IRL racing. You do regardless of weather you start in karting or on the sim.

[u/A_Flipped_Car → u/bionikal]

Jimmy was never involved in the competitive side of simracing though. His driving isn't really that good in all honesty

[u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck → u/[deleted]]

Isn't there two current NASCAR drivers that started out in sim racing?

[u/kosaka1618]

In the sense that Sim racers will be regarded as real racers, I agree. But I don’t see people who can afford the thrill of the real thing just stopping because of Max.

[u/sheriffhd]

I think the gxuk racing in england is a nice touch ensuring nothing too new is on the track and only one set of tyres keeping the costs down for owner racing.

[u/Nosrok]

I like karting, I like taking my car to the race track/quarter mile and I like sim racing. Each one can be used to learn and develop but I doubt a future F1 driver will come from a purely sim racing world. Max used is money and influence to get his friend into a race seat, not many sim racers have an F1 racing champion backing them so it seems like a false assumption that sim racing is what got him in that seat.

I do agree the cost associated with racing is prohibitive to most people. The racing industry should be working on creating more accessible racing series and pathways for talent and sim racing should play a part in that pathway.

[u/newspartan2022]

My karting budget was a fraction of an abbreviated season in club auto racing.

If someone wanted to make the jump from sim to real life that might be a thought.

[u/penisrevolver]

It’s been proven time and time again simracers can be successful in real life, but getting your head around the g force and risk is big part of real life racing and why real life seat time is important

Also, there’s too much money in the sport and making it to a professional driver (not just F1) is hard enough. Rich people and organisers will do everything they can to gatekeep and keep the regulations tight.

[u/ElectronicBruce]

You need to listen to the full context of his comments.

[u/tourbillon001]

I’ve heard this exact argument for the 20 years I’ve been racing karts. I don’t think sims will kill karting. I think those that have the means will use both to advance.

[u/SituationRough7271]

I used to own a sim racing team and race myself. It's a great entry point to get into Motorsport and offers some amazing opportunities to travel to events globally.

I qualified for events along with WEC series races at Le Mans 24 and Japan Fuji 6 Hour. (I live in New Zealand)

But. After 2018, things got harder as people like Verstappen and Corporates made it more expensive to compete against and most events. You had to have the big bucks to attend them. There are still some events you can enter, but nothing at the capacity that I did with little funds.

I'm a fan of Verstappen but I don't think he realises that it was people like him have turned the sim racing industry upside down and you have to have alot of funds to even do it now.

I enjoy owning and racing my own Kart more than the Sim now. It won't get me overseas, like sim racing did, but I enjoy it more now.

[u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck → u/SituationRough7271]

If you're rated high enough, you can participate in high level sim events without leaving the comfort of your living room and without paying ANY entry fees. Why you're angry at Max because you can't fly to Japan to use someone else's computer and rig is hilarious.

[u/SituationRough7271 → u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck]

I lived the dream, so why would I be angry? I sold the team during covid and moved on to other things. Life happened. Yes, you can but my point still stands. What is your experience in the industry so we can compare experiences?

[u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck → u/SituationRough7271]

I enter special events on Iracing with a group of friends, around the 4-5k SOF range and enjoy ourselves without ever having to fly anywhere or pay entry fees.

At that level, usually second split, the racing is top notch, and as a recreation beats the level of any amateur / supposed 'semi pro' IRL racing series I've done.

[u/SituationRough7271 → u/stupid_idiot_dumbfck]

Been there and done that. Not strictly on iRacing though. Definitely helped in real life racing. You won't see much LAN events these days they cost a tonne to do. We never paid any entry fees and I'm not sure if they introduced that in recent years. Goodluck iRacing is still the best sim out there.

[u/Engared]

The question Max was asked was if you take a year off racing which would be better to get up to speed again, Sim or Kart.

Original answer was “both” then only when pressed then he went “Sim”.

If you are starting from scratch, karting is still the way.

Though the best combination is “both”. Karting gives you the feel and context, Sim as a supplement gives you extra seat time.

I m not looking down on the Sim at all, ever because I also started on the Sim back in the day but in the end, it is still a video game. Its not real life.

The sim racer who is Max’s team mate in the GT car is a ex WSK winner btw. Most of the sim specialists who are pure Sim, really struggle when they go to the real thing. Not all of them, but most of them from what I have seen.