Kind of surreal to be back at the airport heading to another sim racing finals. This time it’s the Red Bull Virtual Race which I qualified for at Armageddon Chch just last weekend.
Across the Armageddon weekend there was a time trail competition on the Red Bull sim rigs. After seeing the setup using the F1 games I’m unfamiliar with on Saturday I went home and did some practice to come back and set the fastest time Sunday morning. It was really close in the end but super happy that my time was enough to walk away with the win and a ridiculous amount of Red Bull for my efforts 
Now I’m being flown to Auckland for the final later today. A 15 lap race will decide the champion who wins a trip to the Melbourne GP next year! An epic prize for sure so I’ll be giving it everything. Rumour is it will be streamed/broadcast but they haven’t given us details of that 
(I’ll post a link when I get one)
Pretty cool to be featured on the Red Bull website: https://www.redbull.com/nz-en/meet-the-drivers-racing-in-the-red-bull-virtual-race-finals
The finalists the qualified from across the country were: Matthew McEwen (Palmerston North Arma), Tom England (Wellington Arma), Mathew Smith (Chch Arma), Drew French (Red Bull Flugtag), Ivy Williams (Tauranga Arma), Jaden Hardy (Auckland Arma).
But when we got to the final it was a complete disaster. I was/am very mad at how badly the finals were run. Game wasn’t even installed when we arrived. Using wifi not lan. The promised stream didn’t exist. We weren’t given practice time. Used the crap red bull rigs. Last sec format change from a 15 lap race to a 3 lap 1v1 even though the curtain raiser got the full 15 laps 🤦
I unfortunately was up against my friend Tom for the 1v1, made a mistake and it was all over in under 5 mins.
Congratulations to Matt McEwen. Despite it all he is definitely a deserving winner after coming back from an early spin in his race. It was cool to see him beat Liam Lawson after the final too. Enjoy the Melbourne Gran Prix.
Thank you Red Bull for flying me up. At least it was cool to see lots of familiar faces at the event and hang out with the regular sim racing crew. Also neat to see Liam Lawson make an appearance.
My Redbull twitter thread: https://twitter.com/MonkeyMatt_/status/1603283244098912258
