I very much agree with this:
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Chainbear has a high hit-rate for raising interesting topics about Formula 1.
This article is nominally about Mercedes sharing tech between their Formula E team and their Formula 1 team. Also Stoffel Vandoorn, currently top of the FE standings, is going to be their F1 reserve driver.
What I think is actually going on is that Mercedes is finding an interesting way around some of the budget-cap restrictions coming into play next year. They are going to have money left over, with less development work possible in F1. Having a second team in a different series can be a good release valve for that spending power.
McLaren seem to be doing something similar, starting up an Indy team this year. There’s probably interesting ways they can spend money in America which will benefit the main team, and use up any budget excess they might have in 2021.
Fifteen characters of hype!!
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This is a no-brainer for F1, who already have an official esport scene on the go. Formula E has had esport events too, including an e-race before every normal race, featuring one or two of the professional racers along with some invited guests and the fans at the event who set the best lap times on the simulators.
I’m not sure other sports can be replicated quite so easily though.
A pre-e-e-race.
Yeah, it gets confusing. They call the race with electric cars an E-Prix, and before an E-Prix they have an electronic sports version…
Both electric and electronic start with e. 
Lando Norris entered the Indycar iRacing series for the last two races. He won his first race pretty easily, and was leading at Indianapolis before being taken out by a salty indycar driver:
This video shows that while some racers take esports seriously, others only see it as a game, not an actual competition in its own right.
Lando Norris had the backing of both the McLaren F1 and Indy teams, with engineers and strategists helping him out during his races. The race was being broadcast on TV in the UK, purely off the back of his participation.
I watched the race myself, and there was some great action! But all let down by an few idiots who were just griefing or overly salty.
To make the iRacing series more realistic, anyone who crashes should be beaten severely. That’ll prevent greifing.
In all seriousness, there’s no reason for iRacing to have crashes at all. It’s not Mario Kart. Just change the game.
In other games, lapped traffic doesn’t crash with those on the lead lap. Just that would have fixed this issue, but iRacing goes for “realism”. If you want to take out the leader, you have to catch them first, not grief from the pit lane exit two laps down.
One solution is to sacrifice realism in one area to gain it in another area. Now that you’re in the digital realm, embrace the fact that the impossible is now possible!
Keep all other things as realistic as possible, but make an impossible track! The Indy 500 is 500 miles, right? Make a track that is 500 miles long! Sure, it would be testing different skills and be a different type of racing, but it would be a lot more interesting and entertaining. Bonus, no griefing! It would have the same kind of feel as Wacky Races, Redline, or Cannonball Run. I might actually watch it.
The unique thing about sim racing is that it’s testing a very similar set of skills to real racing. That’s why these stand-in esports events have been able to attract the best drivers in the world, as well as some of the top sim racers, along with some of the most popular streamers. Everyone is racing equally… and the real F1 racers pretty much dominate! That’s also because a lot of them are sim racers and popular streamers as well as F1 drivers, but you’re really seeing the best.
This is unlike other esports. Aside from twitch aiming, CS:GO tests tactics and strategies, but completely unlike those by actual SWAT teams. There isn’t a ticking clock in real counter-terrorist situations, nor do both sides know every single inch of the building and its surrounding area. If one side kills all the others in real life, there isn’t a do-over until they do that 16 times.
But with racing, the drivers DO know every inch of the track. And they DO repeat the same thing over and over.
Seeing the best racers in the world sim racing is only interesting because it is on tracks they already know perfectly. Having a track they can’t learn in advance wouldn’t make it more entertaining if F1 drivers were involved.
Instead you’ve just re-invented a Dakar Rally stage.
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Vettel is out of Ferrari at the end of the year.
Let the game of musical chairs begin!
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The only season we are getting this year is silly season
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Okay that was all sorted quickly. Does anyone care who will be at Renault next year?