I came so close. So so close.
With a trip to the regional finals in Macua on the line I put everything into it. Practicing in every spare moment. Watching videos, trying setups, cancelling plans with friends. I was trying like I haven’t tried in years.
And I came so close.
But unfortunately I missed out. By only 0.2 seconds in the end. I kept fighting till the end. I was late to work desperate to find those 0.2 seconds in the dying hours of the competition. I knew it was possible, my optimal sectors proved I could do it. And I was so close.
But instead I walk away with nothing.
Just devastation.
The FIA Esports Global Rally Tour is a new competition announced a little over a month ago. Hosted on new title Assetto Corsa Rally it was exciting to see the worlds motorsport governing body continuing to push into esports, and in my favourite discipline no less.
Of course I was instantly interested but I didn’t really think I had it in me to be competitive. My competitive days are behind me. Plus I hadn’t got along with AC Rally the first time I’d tried.
AC Rally is a new game, so new they’re calling it a “beta”. It’s unfinished but available early while they work on it. As a new rally game with a lot of hype around it I’d gotten on board and tried it out when it was first released. The force feedback was almost non existent. I tried to fiddle with the settings but didn’t have much luck. Never the less I ran through a couple of stages and wasn’t excited enough to persist so left AC Rally to collect dust in my steam library.
Until the FIA Esports Global Rally Tour was announced. Initially I didn’t think too much of it. A cool new comp I could include in Hectic News. I didn’t like AC Rally much anyway so I’m not quick and unlikely to want to practice enough. I also knew the competition was open setups where I’m completely useless at making setups, I’d lose a lot of time to the top drivers who were able to get the most out of tuning the car. I’d probably give it a go just to get a bit of an idea who was running and how it worked but nothing more.
But then I got a message from an old friend, Paraglieber, I had competed against in the Esports WRC days. “Are you giving this a go? APAC should be an easier region, you’d have a good shot wouldn’t you?”. But I wasn’t buying it.
The Rally Tour was split into 6 regions. Asia-Pacific (APAC), Europe, North America, South America, Africa, and Middle East and South Africa. The top 8 drivers from each region would qualify for their regional final (top 16 in Europe as it’s the most competitive). It was already announced the regional finals for APAC would be in Macua. That would be an awesome trip. And the top 8, how many other top rally drivers are there in the region anyway, definitely a few in Australia, maybe a few in China and Singapore, so enough but maybe there aren’t too many. Maybe there is a chance.
And with that glimmer of hope I couldn’t help but load up the game and give it a try just to see.
The first day I loaded up the FIA mode I was gob smacked. A kiwi, James McIver had already set a great time at 6:20. Close to being in the top 8 in the region. I had only just finished writing about James McIvor and his real world rally efforts for my Hectic News piece “Top sim racers hitting the track“.
The competition was run on a single Wales stage in a fixed car, the Hyundai Rally 2. The stage was over 6 minutes long but the competition allowed unlimited attempts within a two week period, with your fastest time counting.
I set my first times and was miles away. Expected when I hadn’t practiced the stage. I knew from the Esports WRC days that in order to compete at the top you had to know the stage inside out, know exactly the right lines to take, know which corners you can cut and which bumps to avoid. It’s a controversy in sim rally that you end up memorizing and “hot lapping” the stage rather than relying on your co-driver for direction. But ultimately that is part of the game and something I was ready for. I knew I needed practice before I’d even have an idea of what pace was possible, so with the motivation of another kiwi up there I got to it, albeit not really expecting the motivation to last long enough for me to get close.
In rally games one of the parts that takes the longest to build is the stages. Designing an 11km long piece of road with all the surrounding scenery, trees, bumps, crowd, and everything else is a lot of work. So it’s common that games include parts of these stages multiple times, splitting them into smaller stages and offering reverse version to get the most return for all the work of designing the stage. AC Rally is no different. So with 11km of stage being too daunting a task to learn in one hit I got to practicing on the split in half version, focusing first on the 5km stage that was the first half of the full 11km FIA stage.
My goal initially was just to see if I thought I could be competitive, I wanted to get a feeling for if it would be worth investing proper practice hours.
Initially I was way off but I knew I could improve just by driving more and learning the stage.
Then as I improved my times started coming down but I knew I was far from taking the optimal line.
As I got faster I started looking at the sector times. If I was 2 seconds off in all 3 sectors + I imagine if I practice the second half of the stage I could repeat that in the three sectors of the second half, that would put me 12 seconds behind on the overall stage. If I could get my time down to that I’d be close to the top 8.
Now I was trying harder. Putting in more hours. Focusing solely on the first sector, being the easiest to practice (since I could restart after just 1 minute rather than 3 for the half stage or 6 for the full stage). If I could get that first sector within 2 seconds of the best it was proof that it would be worth putting in the hours to practice the full thing.
About a week in 2 seconds was looking very possible. I wasn’t quite there but I still hadn’t worked out the perfect sector either. It felt doable with more practice. But at the same time everyone else was improving too. Being 12 seconds off the top time wasn’t going to be good enough to qualify anymore, the gap had come down to 10. But James McIvor hadn’t improved. I was in this deep enough now that I needed some pay off. Maybe I wouldn’t catch McIvor but I needed to at least manage a respectable time across the whole stage to be satisfied.
So I kept practicing.
And I started rising up the leaderboards for the half stage.
Sure it wasn’t representative of the competition, most drivers would just practice the whole FIA stage and not do the halves like I was, but boy was it motivating.
When I cracked the top 20 in the world and was displayed on the front page of the leaderboard I was jumping for joy celebrating.
This was like the good old days of Esports WRC and Gran Turismo Sport. The disbelief at how fast the top times were then the gradual progress as I set targets on the leaderboard and beat them. The constant hunt for extra time. The incredible focus purely on racing, forgoing everything else that could wait. I was really enjoying it. I was also really fearful of the crash that comes when it doesn’t work out. I tried my best to keep my expectations in check but it had to be balanced with maintaining hope in order to motivate the dedication.
As I moved up the leaderboard of the half stage the FIA times had kept improving such that even that was marginal if it would be good enough for top 8 in APAC across the whole stage. But marginal was enough to keep me pushing. With an international trip on the line if it was close I had to commit everything to it or I would regret it later.
By now I was getting up before work to race. Coming home to jump straight on the sim for a few more hours in the evening. It was obsessive. But I was loving the hunt.
As I pushed on fatigue did set it.
As I was getting close to McIvors time Ewan Baker improved to become the top kiwi. Now it was really on. Ewan has taken an international sim racing trip from me in the past, qualifying for the Sim Racing World Cup in Monaco, there was no way I was letting that happen in a rally sim. So I pushed on.
To my surprise I surpassed James McIvor. Faster than a 6:20 that is awesome. Stocked that I achieved the original goal I thought was too much to ask.
I made it into the top 10 in the world on the first half stage and shouted and screamed in excitement. My flatmate questioning what the fuss was all about.
Then I made the top 10 in the second half of the stage. Incredible. I could theoretically be fast enough for the top 8 in APAC on the FIA stage.
I kept hunting for videos of other faster drivers attempts to learn from, hunting also for car setups to copy since I am useless at those. The top drivers all keeping their secrets to themselves.
I set my focus to the full stage and beat Ewan Baker to become the top kiwi. Woohoo let’s goooo. A 6:18 that was awesome. But now the top 8 were in the 6:16s.
By this point a few Australians had risen up the leaderboard, natural targets. Particularly one name I recognised from Hayden Paddons lockdown Dirt Rally events, Luca Giacomin.
It wasn’t much later that I managed to beat him too. But I knew he’d keep fighting to come back.
And then I did it. I made it into the top 8 drivers in the Asia Pacific region. 39th fastest in the world!
I kept pushing.
I got up to 4th place with a 6:14.105! That was just 5 seconds off the best in the world. I was down to less than 1 second per sector!
That was on Saturday afternoon and that’s where my progress stalled. I was exhausted by Saturday night but I knew full well that everyone else would be pushing to improve too. So I got up Sunday and kept going.
I raced for hours. I searched for better setups. I did all I could but just didn’t have the energy to compete. So I tried to rest.
But the competition wasn’t ending until midday Tuesday NZ time.
By Monday morning I was down to 6th. I told work I would be late in on Tuesday.
Monday evening I got home from work and tried again. I was down to 8th. I couldn’t improve.
Tuesday morning I got up early to get racing. I was 10th. A 6:13.9 was all it would take to qualify. I knew it was possible but it would take my best in every sector. I tried desperately to tweak the setup and find some trick for extra speed but nothing I did worked. I pushed to the max for hours. I was a sweating mess. By 10:30am I had been racing for hours, I was exhausted, I was late to work, and I was out of hope. I had done countless 6:14s and they felt so fast. I couldn’t see a way I could go faster.
So I finally sat there and admitted defeat.
So close.
So so close.
I put in 30 hours practicing that 6 minute stage. Dedicating my life outside of work to it for just under 2 weeks. But in the end I get nothing for my efforts. 8 other drivers get to head to Macau to race in the regional final. Luca is one of them, there is also a friend from the FIA Rally Star Gabriel Wee. But no MonkeyMatt. I didn’t even get to be first reserve, another driver missed the 8 by a single tenth of a second.
The APAC region was very close. In fact it was the second most competitive region behind Europe. I explored the results more in my Hectic News piece “Which region has the fastest sim racers?“
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