F1 has always been an exclusive club – a rich man’s sport where you need extreme financial backing just to kickstart your career. As of now, the figures needed to get into racing to realize an F1 dream can cross $7,000,000. However, Esteban Ocon, who himself came from a modest background, recently appeared in an AMA video on YouTube and explained how one can start their journey towards being an F1 driver even if they are from humble origins.
Motorsports is one of the costliest sports to get into right from the very beginning. The most common path of entry to a Motorsport career has been karting. As per Flow Racers, a season of karting in Europe can set one back by about $11,000. After that, the racers usually progress on to F4 racing which can cost up to $200,000 per season.
The next step up would be F3 which comes in at a whopping $400,000 a season if it’s a regional championship and around $600,000 if it’s FIA F3. Then the driver moves up to F2 which is around $2,500,00 a year. All in all, the expenses required for road to F1 racks up to about $7,000,000.
Esteban Ocon suggests a cheap way of getting into motorsports
Esteban Ocon recently appeared on Alpine’s YouTube channel, answering questions asked to him on a Reddit AMA. One of the questions asked to him was about him being from a modest background and still making it into F1. Therefore he was asked about suggestions regarding making racing accessible for everyone.
Ocon immediately replied that the one way that has become extremely popular now as a cheap and effective way to enter motorsports is Sim Racing. He said, “That’s definitely the best way to start into racing if you don’t have racing background or if you’re not able to go on a real karting track.”
Ocon put forward the example of British driver Jann Mardenborough and explained that many drivers have come up to the sport through sim racing. The technology behind sim racing is so advanced now, that it has almost become identical to real life racing and therefore is gaining popularity among young drivers extremely fast.
Numerous Sim Racers made their mark in real life racing.
In recent times, there have been many drivers who started out their racing journey through sim racing. The most prominent names include the likes of Turkish sim racer Cem Bölükbaşı, who recently took part in the F2 series and now plies his trade in Super Formula.
F1 eSports driver Igor Fraga also managed to make his way into F3 back in 2020. This year, in January, sim racer Lucas Blakeley made headlines when he managed to beat Valtteri Bottas in the Race of Champions. Bottas was not his only F1 victim, as the sim racer had managed to defeat Sebastian Vettel too, last year.
Even the likes of Max Verstappen believes that Sim Racing is getting increasingly closer and closer to real life racing and can be a good starting point for young drivers. He is also en route to setting up his own GT3 team which will give opportunities to sim racers to step into real world racing.
