Can video games save motorsport?
When I was a kid, I was lucky enough to enjoy a handful of seasons racing karts. For a short while, I thought it might even lead somewhere: my first race, around a featureless corner of a disused air station in Cambridgeshire, saw a class victory (in a class of two, mind, my sole competitor an 8-year-old who, his dad told me, still thought he was Batman in his Batmobile chasing down the Joker when he was behind the wheel).
Even then, by the time my next race came around at Hertfordshire's Rye House I thought I was the real deal, and well on my way to future glory. And I did alright, leading the first half dozen laps of the final until a little kid on his debut sporting a bright red helmet dived past going into the final esses.
Afterwards I went to offer my congratulations on his success, just as his dad was packing up the kart into their beaten-up trailer. I think I might have been slightly patronising. "You'll do okay," I, a veteran of two whole races, said. At least I got that part right.
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