From Online Sim Racing To Professional GT3 Driver, One Racer’s Story
What does it take to make the leap into world-class wheel-to-wheel racing? A lot more than you’d think.
Many of us have spent countless hours driving our favorite cars around our favorite tracks…online. Driving F40’s around Monza, LMP1 cars around LeMans, F1 cars at Monaco. We seek the opportunity to drive these vehicles that for most of us, will just simply always be out of reach. Not all of us have the resources, opportunity, skill, or determination to pursue a professional racing career. However, there are always exceptions, breaks in the rules that allow some of us to pursue our racing dreams. David Perel, professional GT3 driver, explains to us in the above video how he used his experience in sim racing, karting, and amateur GT racing to make his way to a professional-level seat in a Ferrari 488 GT3 car.
First, a little backstory about Perel. He started as 15 year old kid racing go-karts like many upstart professional racing drivers. By 24, he had won several national championships in his native South Africa and moved on to single seater racing, until he didn’t have enough money to continue forward. His addiction to the sport wasn’t about to falter, so he trusted his talent and waited patiently to save enough money to pay his way into a single GT race. He ended up doing very well and as a result was offered a seat in the 2015 Italian GT series, ending with him in 2nd place overall. From there he was offered a seat in a GT3 team known as Kessel Racing Ferrari. He’s been racing in GT3 ever since.
In the video, Perel explains how the first race of the 2018 Open GT at Paul Richard Circuit (his first as professional Silver FIA driver) was a definitive moment in his racing career. The previous season, he was ranked as a Bronze FIA driver, which technically is still amateur. What proceeds is him walking us through his opening laps of the race in the 488 GT3. He explains how his experience in sim racing allows him to avoid a crash due to pure track awareness and a variety of other motorsport techniques he utilizes during the race.
While we would like to explain each of the details he goes over in the race analysis, there is simply too much information for us to go over. If you have a genuine interest in a proper analysis of the beginning of a GT3 from the perspective of the actual driver, we encourage you to watch the full video. If you want to learn more about Perel’s surprisingly simple sim racing setup or his racing accolades, feel free to explore his website.
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