Sun, Jun 17, 2018 page10

• Gamers can play a part in driving F1’s future

  • Reuters, LONDON
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  Some of the world’s fastest gamers could soon be driving Formula One’s future, literally, by testing ideas on virtual racetracks.

  The sport is facing major change after 2020, when current agreements expire, and owners Liberty Media along with the governing body are looking into how to make racing more competitive and exciting.

  Pat Symonds, who is on a panel of experts set up last year under motorsport managing director Ross Brawn, said that e-sport could help provide the answers.

  The engineer cited the starting grid, with the cars lined up in a staggered two by two formation, as an example.

  “In the old days you had four, three [cars abreast], all sorts of things,” Symonds said. “What we want to know is: If we do that [with modern cars and tires], what’s likely to happen? Are you going to get a much more exciting first lap or are you just going to get a lot of accidents on the first corner and therefore a boring race afterward?”

  “And although you could develop AI [artificial intelligence] to do that, it’s actually better to do it using elite gamers. Those guys are pretty damn good at what they do. Can we use them to inform us as to how proposed regulations might work out?” he added.

  F1 last year established an e-sport championship and has refined it further.

  All the F1 teams, apart from Ferrari, are competing and are due to select drivers next month from a pro draft of 40, with the finals during the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in November.

  “What we can do is say: ‘Right, all you guys are in the final. Come in for two days and we’re going to do 100 races’ — of course we don’t need to do the whole race, we can do the first two laps or whatever we decide,” Symonds said. “We’ll try and use different layouts and we’ll see what happens. We can then do a statistical analysis and we can decide whether overall it’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

  Codemasters, partners in the e-sports championship along with Gfinity, had been working on the technology, Symonds added.

  “We have got the ability now to alter grid layouts and all we need to do is add the statistical analysis and a few other things, but I’m certainly hoping that this year we’ll be able to do that sort of thing,” he said.

  F1 has had plenty of knee-jerk reactions in the past to dull races, with qualifying undergoing numerous formats and sometimes at short notice, and Liberty wants future changes to be fully assessed.

  AI simulations mean cars could race each other hundreds of times with changing tire characteristics and conditions, Symonds said, adding that circuit configurations could also be modified virtually to see how that affects the racing.

  “We need to evolve the simulation a bit further. I think people fail to realize what an incredibly important part tires play in close racing. We’ve got work to do on our tire model yet,” Symonds said.

  Funding constraints are also something of a brake on the pace of progress.

  “It’s a huge amount of work to do on a minute budget compared to a Formula One team, and with a miniscule number of people ... so it’s tough,” Symonds said.

  “The artificial intelligence bit of it we are very close to running now,” he added. “The e-game is part of it. I mentioned the grid simulation, we’ve done all the graphics and the coding necessary to alter grid layouts.”

  “All of that exists, all of that is running. We haven’t done the bit that pulls all the statistics out yet, nor have we actually engaged the e-gamers. We need to develop the product first, but it’s all doable,” he said.
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