Gamers gearing up for high-intensity racing with ‘Speed Runs’
Sri Lanka’s first ever Esports Championship, Speed Runs, organized by Mandarin Reid (Pvt) Ltd in conjunction with Ceylon Motor Sports Club (CMSC) will give gamers an opportunity to compete on the global stage.
Racing gamers can look forward to four months of high intensity action in Matara, Colombo, Kandy and Jaffna with the grand finale to be held in Colombo in May.
The first qualifying round of Speed Runs will be held on January 11 at Sanaya Mansion Hotel in Matara. Two of the fastest qualifiers in each round will race against each other in the grand final.
A unique feature of this Esport competition is that gamers will be racing against each other on simulators which will replicate the Suzuka Formula One driving a Mercedes Benz GT3. It is not just about speed where they can go over 200 kilometres per hour but about getting the fastest lap timings racing around the 3.1 kilometre circuit with the world record being one minute 57 seconds. The world final has been held in Monaco though it is likely to change this year.
“Esports is very good opportunity and actually very good platform to start motor racing. You get the experience as if you are actually driving a racing car on the day. It’s just not a screen in front of you that you play on a computer. The whole terminal is structured to give you the experience of you being in a racing car as the race takes place. We are running a one-make series. It’s going to be the Mercedes Benz GT3 with V8 engines,” said Sheran Cooke, a representative of CMSC.
Speed Runs is a brain child of CMSC president Niroshan Pereira whose 14-year-old son Thiyago is one of the leading racing gamers in the country.
“CMSC is the oldest motor sports clubs in Sri Lanka with a history of 85 years. Our primary event is the Mahagostota Speed Hill Club which is the oldest hill climb in Asia. So this club has a lot of racing heritage. This club evolves and likes to try to new things. This is a brain child of our president Niroshan Pereira and the entire team. We want to try out a new venture and to move it to different aspects because some parents may be apprehensive of actually racing may because it is costly and a little dangerous. So this is a perfect opportunity to actually get their children into very intense competition such as with these Speed Runs,” said Cooke.
“It is a great story for Esports in terms of racing. If we can actually bring somebody at a young age to represent Sri Lanka and win this, it will really elevate Sri Lanka’s digital platform in terms of how the world sees Sri Lanka,” said Prashanth Subramanium, managing director of Mandarin Reid, explaining details of the event at a press conference on Friday.
The basic structure of the event is on every location the fastest two speeds will be selected for the finals in Colombo. They are allowed to race against each other. If in this race a Sri Lankan is able to actually come into the speeds of the world final and show they got the average, we will have a round for him to get his speed registered and then afterward if he is in that speed zone, he gets to do the world final.
“It like you are actually racing Mercedes Benz racing car. You will get the same feel. These seats are the identical seat that will be used in the world final as well. We have got the best possible equipment there is to get. We actually started this venture with four but Sheran told we should have ten seats by January 17. One of the reason CMSC feels confident to bring down 10 seats is the number of calls we have got. The number of people who are confirming to participate has been so phenomenal that we recognise that we need to give more people the chance and as a result we have to increase the number of seats that we have brought. We’ve also had to restrict to an extent the number of participants we can have in the race because otherwise we won’t be able to get through the preliminaries. So registration will be on first come-first serve basis,” said Subaramanium.
Ministry of Sports recently recognised Esport as a sport.
“That is how serious we see the transformation happening in society. Hopefully we will have a Sri Lankan champion up there. Who knows in the future where Esports will go even in terms of the Olympics,” said Subramanium reeling out statistics on the growth of Esports around the world and in Sri Lanka.
“We know that the next generation is spending more and more time getting onto the online world but moreso in terms of gaming. The numbers are phenomenal in terms of how people are actually transforming from the offline world to the online world. In the world there is over 7 billion people today as part of the gaming population. This population increases by about 15 to 16 percent year on year,” he said.
Esports has now become a skill and people are earning money and making a living out of gaming. In the process of e-gaming and e-racing, the skills have now actually enhanced to a level that it has become a world championship.
“But gaming has to serve a purpose. We actually recognise that the next generation sees this as a serious sport. The world has begun to see it as serious sport. It is time that Sri Lanka stepped up and came to that level playing field and took its shape on the local stage,” he added.