Qualifying for the F1 Esports Pro Draft.
The F1 Esports Pro Draft is a yearly live event where the fastest drivers on the Formula 1 game take each other on to impress the real life F1 teams to claim a seat at a team for the official F1 Esports Series. In 2020 the prizepool for the series was $750.000. For the 2020 F1 Esports Pro Draft, 155.000 people have tried to qualify and only the 30 fastest drivers actually make it through to the liveshow. This is my story of qualifying for the draft as a complete outsider.
It all started at the end of 2019 when I was casually racing with viewers live on Twitch. Out of nowhere, the official Formula 1 twitch channel came in my chat, and I absolutely lost my mind. How insane was it that the actual F1 account was in my own twitch chat, I could not believe it at first. After trying to put on a good liveshow for the viewers including F1, I was told by the official F1 account to check my mailbox. After checking my inbox I could not put into words what I had just seen: I was invited to try and qualify for the F1 Esports Pro Draft in a time trial event around the Abu Dhabi track where the top 2 would make it through!
When I got the email hearing I acquired a place in the qualification event, I was extremely proud and grateful to have been given the chance to try and qualify in this time trial event. I decided to try and give it my all to get top 2 in the event and try to qualify. Compared to the other drivers that were invited for the event, I only had half the time to put in a laptime, as I got invited a week after the event had started. At the moment of getting the invite, there were 7 days remaining to upload our laps to the leaderboard. I don’t think I have ever played games for as long as I did in those 7 days. The goal I set myself was to get a laptime in the 1:33:5s around the Yas Marina circuit. Shaving time off in every single one of those 7 days, the times didn’t tumble without effort. Having done multiple shifts into the middle of the night at 2:00 AM, a day before the submissions closed; I managed to do it. I hit my personal goal of a 1:33:5s laptime. Knowing I had done the best I could with the time I had available to me, I knew it was gonna be very tough to be top 2 of everyone.
At the start of February, an email from F1 Esports was received; I QUALIFIED FOR THE F1 ESPORTS PRO DRAFT 2020! It ended up being VERY close, but the time I set on the leaderboard was just enough to make it through as the second fastest driver which meant I was going to get flown out to the Gfinity esports arena in London to fight it out with the fastest 29 drivers of that year, absolutely mind BLOWN!
Unfortunately, a couple months later, the COVID pandemic started. The physical event in London got blown off and was replaced with a virtual event. The concept of the pro draft was shook around a little bit, because the drivers could not race each other physically anymore. Doing it online wasn’t fair to drivers having better equipment or internet connection. Due to this, there was no longer going to be raced within the 2020 pro draft event. Instead, there would be a straight up interview process with the Formula 1 teams that desired to talk to you.
One of the F1 teams reached out to me with whom I did a couple of interviews. Being part of these interview processes was my first taster with the F1 world and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. As is my trademark, I tried to share my passion and enthusiasm for what I do with said F1 team. I made it through the first couple of rounds of interviews and was ready for the final test: the on track driving evaluation. It was a face off together with a small group of drivers who made it through to the end of the examination. I knew my strong points where the interviews, but those were already done. I needed to prove myself on track. So I practiced, practiced, practiced and you can guess it already: practiced. In my mind, I already knew this test was going to be tough as I was brand new to professional simracing and I did not have the experience yet. Come D-day, I was very nervous. However, thanks to my parents I was convinced to just have fun, give it my all and enjoy the experience, because that’s the most important thing. In the end, I got last place by 10 seconds in the evaluation race. But I gave it my all, and that’s what mattered.
In the run up to getting to hear the official Pro Draft picks, I still had some faith. If the teams would pick their drivers purely based on the interviews, there was still a small chance I could get picked. Keeping hope, that was all I could do, while not being able to tell what was going on to anybody but my parents.
On 13th of august, the day had come. It was time for the announcements of the driver picks for the F1 Esports Pro Draft. A one-in-three chance to get picked up by an F1 team as there were 10 drivers getting picked out of the 30 total qualifiers. But it wasn’t meant to be. At around 6 PM, I received the email from F1 Esports that I was not picked by an F1 team.
Being so close to my dream, hurts a lot. But this disappointment is only going to make me want to work harder to achieve my dream. The dream of becoming part of an official Formula 1 team. And I am not giving up until this dream is no longer.
