How Our Staff Got Into Sim Racing

AT TracksVR it is no secret that everyone here loves motorsports, some of us love Formula 1, some of us love WRC, we follow WEC and Emerson likes Indycar. Not only do we enjoy watching a good race on the weekends but we also enjoy racing ourselves! But how did each team member get into the sport that is virtual racing? In this blog we will tell you how everyone in our team got started into what is now a very important part of our lives.

Howard has been fascinated with racing ever since he was very young. Racing was not his only passion, he was also an avid gamer (still is to this day).

Once VR started being more easily accessible, Howard leveraged his expertise as a race car driver to combine two of his greatest passions and thus, TracksVR was born.

TracksVR opened in 2018 and ever since then TracksVR has brought joy, excitement and a way for novice drivers to experience the thrill of racing.

For Emerson, it all began when he was just five years old. His dad came home one day with a Thrustmaster GP1 steering wheel and a copy of IndyCar Racing II for their DOS computer. The moment he took the virtual wheel, he was instantly hooked.

As technology evolved, so did his passion for sim racing. A Logitech Driving Force wheel and GTR2 soon followed, bringing more realism and competition into the mix.

When Emerson eventually started racing in real life, sim racing became more of a tool to hone his senses than a hobby he did in his downtime. During the long winter months when outdoor racing wasn’t possible, he spent hours fine tuning his skills in the simulator learning tracks, practicing setups, and staying sharp. What started as a childhood curiosity turned into a lifelong passion for racing, both virtual and real and he shares that passion in our Youth Racing Academy as our head coach.

Alfonso got into sim racing through console gaming, his father got him the F1 1999 game for PS1 and after multiple grueling sessions and hours trying to get his "virtual super license" he was hooked.

An ocassional F1 viewer, it all changed after he went to the Mexican Grand Prix in 2015, witnessing F1 return to his home country after a 20 year absence made him a super fan, so much so that he has not missed watching a single race since 2018. Games like Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon kept the passion for sim racing alive. It all changed when he arrived to Calgary and started working at TracksVR.

Experiencing first hand the immersion of a full motion VR racing setup completely changed the way he looked at Virtual Racing, while he still races using only a controller, his passion for sim racing has never been greater.

Jack's first sim racing experience was with Gran Turismo 3 and 4 on his family’s Playstation 2 at home.

He had watched my brother spend hours trying to get Gold on all the license tests and was inspired to try it when he wasn’t home. He did awful on his first try; having had little gaming experience and zero driving knowledge.

Despite his pitiful performance, he thought it was one of the coolest games and it started a lifelong interest in cars & motorsport. Throughout his formative years Jack continued to play Gran Turismo and other arcade racers like Need for Speed, Forza Horizon/Motorsport, often beating the games and getting 100% completion.

Jack would only played on a controller up to this point, as a wheel and pedal bundle seemed like an expensive investment at the time, especially for a teenager. The first time Jack sim raced using a steering wheel and pedals was at TracksVR.

With the addition of a virtual reality headset and motion seat it was a mind-blowing experience for him and opened his eyes to just how good sim racing can be with the proper equipment. Since then, Jack has acquired a simulator for himself that he races at home for hours on end. In his words "There’s always new tracks, cars and games to have fun with making sim racing an experience that keeps on giving".

Salvador's (or like we like to call him, Sal or Chava) journey into sim racing began shortly after he arrived in Calgary in January 2021. Coming from a go karting background in Mexico, he has always been drawn to speed and competition. Upon arrival Sal immediately started looking for places to satisfy his passion for go-karts. The only option he found was Speeders in the airport, but it was too far away. That’s when he discovered TracksVR.

The first time he tried our simulators, he was blown away by how immersive and realistic the experience was. He found a place where he could race go-karts in January.

Sal became a regular customer, spending more and more time racing different tracks and different cars. Before long, he joined the TracksVR team.

Now, when he’s not helping others experience the thrill of virtual racing, he’s continuing to improve his own skills. Chava races with an Moza R3 at home, where he practices and competes whenever he’s off-shift.

Vishal got his start into sim racing when he was just a kid on the first Forza games. He played using a controller on the original Xbox to begin with, but with the release of the Xbox 360, his family picked up a Thrustmaster GT 458 Cockpit racing wheel, and have been hooked on it ever since.

At the time the technology was not nearly as advanced as it is now, with Vishal's wheel only having vibration and no real force feedback, but it was enough to ignite what is no doubt a life-long passion. His family has always been very much into racing, specifically supporting Ferrari in Formula 1, which meant that when the F1 2009 game was released, everyone in Vishal's family was quickly engulfed in their love for sim racing.

The Thrustmaster wheel eventually did break, and so he left the competitive focus behind for a time, but Vishal kept his love of racing alive through the controller on the other F1 games, as well as in Forza Horizon and even Trackmania. Since joining the TracksVR family though, Vishal has acquired and raced with a Moza R12 & CRP Pedals mounted on an AS3 chassis, and has not looked back since.

The connection Vishal gets with the more advanced motor and feedback have completely revolutionized his understanding of driving, and would find it hard to return back to a controller. Vishal's main sims nowadays are RFactor2 and Assetto Corsa Competizione, but he is very much looking forward to begin climbing the ranks of iRacing soon!

He got into sim racing through the help of his roommate in university and his parents in late 2020, early 2021. Braden's roommate had grown up around motorsports, helping one of his friends around an oval track in New Brunswick. Braden and his roommate would play a variety of games once their classes were done, and still do every week almost 6 years later. Braden's course load was often a bit heavier, and he can remember popping into his room to take a break from studying and he would be playing a variety of racing games, but mainly F1 2018 on the controller.  

In the midst of all this, with not much to do during lockdowns and quarantines, Braden's parents suggested he watch Drive to Survive on Netflix. His dad had been a lifelong fan of F1, and both Braden's parents went to Montreal in 2018 to watch the Canadian Grand Prix. Braden was instantly hooked by the show and couldn't wait to watch his first race once the season got started. 

The combination of these two things led Braden to installing one of the F1 titles on PS4 as well, Braden & his roommate would play endlessly against each other, not being any good, but having more fun than anyone else was! It only took a few months of racing on a controller until Braden decided he wanted more, the only problem was New Brunswick was not the biggest place, especially at the university-town where he lived at the time that had merely 5000 residents. By some stroke of luck, Braden managed to track down a used Thrustmaster T150 in another adjacent small town in rural Nova Scotia that he picked up for $125, and that was the start of his new obsession.

Woof Woof Woof!