McLaren Shadow Project: The search to find the world's best esports racer

Ever dreamed of becoming a Formula One racer? After the end of tonight’s McLaren Shadow Project finals, one lucky person will be, though maybe not in the way you think.

Tonight’s final marks a month-long search by McLaren to find the next person to join its esports team. Esports, if you’ve never come across it before, is a form of competitions using video games and it’s a growing movement across the world.

The FIFA eWorld Cup final took place in the O2 in August last year, and also taking place this weekend is the final of the Clash Royale at The EE Mobile Series.

The McLaren Shadow Projects final is a gruelling one. On Monday, the participants underwent human performance testing, before trying out McLaren’s simulator driving. On Tuesday, they went to a top gear track and raced top of the range McLaren sports cars.

Yesterday, they competed across all the different gaming platforms, PC, console (including Xbox and PlayStation) and mobile.

Tonight, they will do this all again in the Final Race Off, which you can tune into from 7pm on YouTube, and the person who performs best overall becomes the winner and gets to call themselves a McLaren driver.

Ben Payne, director of esports at McLaren, says getting into esports is about broadening McLaren’s appeal. “The increasingly growing world of esports is something that’s unique, dynamic and appeals to the younger audience,” he tells the Standard.

“And [it] gives out fans another chance to cheer McLaren around the track on a virtual scale.”

World’s Fastest Gamer becomes Shadow Project

This is the second time McLaren has held an esports competition, with an earlier iteration named World’s Fastest Gamer taking place in 2017. The winner, Rudy van Buren from the Netherlands, was crowned champion and became part of the inaugural esports team, as well as racing in McLaren cars in competitions across the globe.

“Five years ago I was just a home F1 supporter with an online racing hobby,” van Buren tells the Standard. “I never thought I would be working for an F1 team.

“In November I won a gaming competition and in the first weekend of February, I was in a real racing car against Le Mans winners. Things went really rapidly,” he adds.

The different between World’s Fastest Gamer and Shadow Project is that the scale of the competition has increased ten-fold. For the first iteration, there were 31,000 entrants across 78 countries.

For Shadow Project, there have been over half a million entrants, and McLaren has held qualifying rounds in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, as well as Europe.

“We wanted to broaden the scope of the project around the world, so there’s more of a global looking feel to it and we’ve been able to diversify,” explains Payne.

There are more brands on board, too. This season, McLaren is working with HTC Vive, Logitech, and OnePlus amongst others, showing that appetite is growing for all sectors to get in on the esports hype.

Joining up F1 and esports

The reason for McLaren to get into esports is more than breaking new competition ground; it’s also a way to find new drivers. Current McLaren star Lando Norris says esports proved invaluable to developing his skills as a racer, because of all the driving accessories that go along with it including, breaks, pedals and wheels.

“Racing games as a genre are unique compared to their competitors. You can play FIFA but that doesn’t mean you’re going to play in a FA Cup final,” says Payne. “But with racing, because of the peripherals, figuring out your strategy, breakpoints and how you shift through gears, it’s all the same in a real car.

“All that talent and skill is 100 per cent, really transferrable into the real world.”

As well, given that motor racing is notoriously expensive to get into, Payne says esports is a way of democratising entry into the sport. “If you have a PlayStation, Xbox, PC, or mobile game, there’s nothing to say you can’t fulfil your dreams of being the next Lando Norris.”

This is something Formula One has taken note of. Whilst McLaren was the first F1 team to have an esports team, there are now eight others following suit. F1 held the first esports competition, at the Gfinity Esports Arena in London, last year and it looks like this trend is only going to continue.

Payne says this is only the start for McLaren. “We’re in this for the long haul. It was a huge bet for McLaren to give away a job to Rudy as an F1 simulator driver as a prize but it shows the intent that people can have for esports. And, a way of allowing our fans and partners to embrace and engage with us in a different way.”

Whoever wins tonight’s final will go on to join van Buren and the rest of the esports team, representing McLaren across the globe. “I think we surprised the whole world with everything I’ve done,” says van Buren. “The icing on the cake is that people are still going to see my face inside this building in 2019, which shows that hard work pays off. We’re not finished yet, there’s a lot more to come.”