Race car, pit crew, demanding sponsors? Forget all that. Race against the world's best drivers from the comfort of your bedroom

摘要

Nearly ten years ago, in these pages, I pontificated that online racing - that is, virtual racing, over the Internet, against other human beings - was about to become The Next Big Thing in motorsports. As predictions go, this one rates up there with howlers such as "Personal computers? Who needs 'em?" and "That Jobs kid won't ever amount to anything." Turns out my forecast was based on some flawed assumptions. In 1999, personal computer racing games were a mere ten years old, and the software wasn't clever enough, the hardware wasn't robust enough, and the gaming community wasn't mature enough to support a paradigm shift. More to the point, there was no organization with the clout, credibility, and vision to transform an obscure computer game cult into a legitimate mainstream sport.