"China already has its first official F1 driver, and we Chinese F1 esports drivers also need to go to the world stage!" After 8 months, 12 rounds of professional leagues and 23 tracks, the 2021 season of the F1 Esports China Championship finally came to an end. Xing Sicheng, 24, who won the drivers' championship this season with a staggering 14-point championship, said excitedly when he learned that he was about to represent China in the global f1 esports team draft.
Xing Sicheng in 2009 was just a big fan of ordinary F1 competitions, and the F1 esports China Championship born in 2018 allowed him to find a platform to contact his dreams. The form of the online competition gave him the opportunity to participate in the competition when studying abroad, but also needed to let him overcome the problem of network and jet lag, after 8 months of self-improvement, Xing Sicheng finally won the coveted championship trophy, as China's F1 e-sports driver to the world stage.
Evolve from reality to virtual
The FIA Formula 1 World Championship (F1) is the highest level of annual series of field racing competitions organized by the International Automobile Sports Federation (FIA), which is the highest level of racing competition in the world today, and is called "the world's three major sports events" together with the Olympic Games and the World Cup.
Since 2016, in order to attract a wider range of young fans, F1 has begun to make digital changes: the establishment of a new F1 official website, the establishment of F1 esports series, etc., and gradually, F1 has also begun to develop esports projects. In November 2017, the final battle between F1 esports and real F1 began at the same time, and the moment when esports global championship driver Brandon Lee and F1 championship driver Hamilton were crowned together made many viewers unforgettable, and also attracted the attention of long-term smart sports. After more than a year of hard work, in 2019, Jiushi Smart Sports successfully introduced F1 e-sports into China, making China the first country to hold F1 e-sports events.
Since 2020, the epidemic that has swept the world has hit the F1 Chinese Grand Prix hard and has not been able to hold it for two consecutive years. The F1 Esports China Championships are full of scenery – Nielsen research data shows that the brands and sponsors of the 2020 F1 Esports China Championships have created more than 418 million yuan of all-media value, and the annual number of viewers has exceeded 50 million.
Unlike mainstream esports events, F1 esports games seek to maximize the experience of real F1 competitions, and the technology mastered by players is also very close to the technology of physical competitions, holding not keyboards and mice in their hands, but steering wheels, while stepping on the accelerator and brakes under their feet. How much force the player uses, the steering wheel will give back how much force. Both the track and the scene are modeled through field tests, and various conditions during the driving process of the car are transmitted to the body through the vibration of the simulated cabin, and even the friction feeling of different tires brought by the weather transition. When a professional simulator sits in a special "driver's seat", it is almost indistinguishable from the experience of sitting in a real car.
Virtual returns to reality
Although F1 e-sports is a virtualized e-sports competition, it is different from the general e-sports project, and it can be said that F1 e-sports has opened up the channel from virtual space to the real world. CSGO pros can't really pick up guns and go to war, but F1 esports players can become real F1 drivers. Brandon Lee, the first world champion of the first F1 esports mentioned earlier, is more than just a professional esports driver, in 2019 he raced as a real racer in Formula Ford. It's worth mentioning that Brandon Lee, 20, was a chef who didn't even have a driver's license at the time. This wonderful experience of "breaking the dimensional wall" is also the charm of F1 esports events.
As the official originally envisioned, the esports event can truly feed back F1, from simulation to reality. While lowering the threshold for participation in F1 sports, it can also attract more young people to become F1 fans with the huge flow of e-sports, and radiate huge market vitality, so as to achieve a complementary win-win situation between e-sports and real motorsports.
In the past three years, the domestic F1 e-sports competition has grown steadily, while promoting the F1 sport while also supporting the development of F1 e-sports talents, and now it has become the highest standard and largest digital sports event in China, which has been praised by the Shanghai Youth League Municipal Committee as "green e-sports" and "best sports e-sports e-sports event" by the industry.
At present, the F1 e-sports China Championship has three levels of professional leagues, national competitions and individual challenges, which have initially formed a pyramid system, the event management is more standardized, and the upward channel of players is more clear. Judging from the scale and influence of the competition in recent years, F1 e-sports still has a large market in China. Xue Jingjing, director and general manager of Jiushi Smart Sports, said in an interview with the media, "The F1 e-sports simulator with tens of thousands of yuan sold out this year, the farthest sold to Xinjiang, and the F1 e-sports Chinese champion has driven the hot sales of peripheral products." ”
A "Sports Metacosm" that Combines Virtual and Reality
This summer, the IOC hosted the inaugural Olympic Virtual Series, the first virtual sporting event ever authorized by the Olympics, featuring cycling, racing, baseball, sailing and rowing, to attract more young people's participation and attention in a virtual form. The combination of sports and e-sports is the trend of the times.
With the successful experience of F1 e-sports, Jiushi Smart Sports will further plan its e-sports business. On November 25, Jiushi Smart Sports Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Science and Technology Sports Management Center jointly announced that in 2022, the first virtual sports comprehensive event in China will be launched, the "Shanghai Virtual Sports Open". The Virtual Sports Open will combine traditional sports with digital life, not only limited to F1 e-sports-style racing competitions, but also virtual sports such as skiing, rowing, and cycling, expanding participation and attracting more audiences for outdoor sports through e-sports.
In recent years, it is often possible to see netizens arguing on the hot search that "e-sports can replace traditional sports", some people think that e-sports is only a flash in the pan, and it cannot be jumped for a few years, and some people think that e-sports have nothing to do with traditional sports, and it is not possible to replace or replace. Before the competition for one, two or three, F1 e-sports, the representative of the combination of traditional sports and e-sports, has already shined in China.
Under the dual influence of the epidemic and technology, virtual sports will have unlimited room for development in the future. Reality develops into virtual, virtual feeds back reality, the two influence and penetrate each other, this new "sports meta-universe" contains great potential.