McLaren-Honda is looking for the World's Fastest Gamer

A few days ago, McLaren-Honda announced that they have partnered up with Logitech as the F1 team's official technology peripherals partner. That announcement however had little details in it, leaving many to speculate as to what might result from the said partnership.

After all the speculation, McLaren-Honda has announced their team will be entering the eSports arena by announcing World's Fastest Gamer. The team says it will be one of the most intense and demanding competition for virtual racers, wherein the winner will be offered a one-year contract to work with F1 team as one of its official simulator drivers.

In getting the program started, McLaren got help from the man behind GT Academy, Darren Cox. For those that do not know, GT Academy is a similar program to the World's Fastest Gamer, that puts the top virtual racers from Gran Turismo into actual racing series. Given the importance of simulators as of late, especially to F1 teams, data gathered from the practice could be sent back to the drivers to be improved in the simulator, then sent back again to the cars.

“Gaming and eSports are growing at an astonishing rate. The football industry has recognised this, with the result that activity has exploded between the real world and the virtual world in the last 18 months. Now, World’s Fastest Gamer will provide the focus for motorsport to talk directly to the huge numbers of passionate and dedicated gamers racing online – engaging and immersing them in the real world of racing,” says Cox.

The contest pits 10 people against each other this coming third quarter at McLaren's Technology Center. The contestants will participate in number of virtual races on different platforms. Apart from being fast in the simulator, the driver must also show engineering expertise, as they will be working with the team to further improve the setup of both Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne's Formula 1 cars.