AS IF IT WASN’T ENOUGH THAT WE ALREADY HAD RACING LEAGUES ON F1 2022 NOW BEING HIT BY CHEATING AS WE HAD PREVIOUSLY REPORTED, FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS HAVE NOW HAPPENED WITH THIS TIME SEEING THAT ASSETTO CORSA COMPETIZIONE IS ALSO BEING AFFECTED.
It all stemmed from a tweet from Williams Esports’ Dáire McCormack, who showed a video comparison of a lap of Watkins Glen between himself and Simware.PRO by VDES’ Kirill Sadyrov, who openly admitted to cheating, having already competed in other leagues including SRO Esports.
His thread also incorporated an in-depth investigation done by recent new ITB Esports signing Mikhail Statsenko, which also showcased Sadyrov’s MOTEC telemetry. You can find further information on this via the Google Drive link below:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ztgqIcEc9TNi3AM1yzV8BrzjAuC2XbDB
It basically talks about the different setups used by each driver, and also notes about Sadyrov using less rear wing, less steering correction, not using the whole of the track as McCormack was and even miss-shifting during the lap. McCormack even went on to say that it was down to more grip in favour of Sadyrov through the cheat that was used.
Just by initially watching the onboard from Sadyrov, the steering appeared to look a lot more unnatural from his onboard, whereas McCormack was making multiple steering corrections through corners on his.
It has also seen responses from both Jardier and James Baldwin on Twitter as a direct result of this information coming to light.
Jardier has been a major advocate of ACC over his streams, but has been very vocal in open letters to Kunos Simulazioni and being upfront about what does need to happen for the game itself.
Baldwin was very direct in his statement, considering that he has worked hard to be where he is in sim racing, having won the Motorsport Games Esports Cup Gold Medal, and is also the 2021 ADAC SimRacing Expo Professional Trophy winner and two-time SRO Esports champion amongst his accolades thus far.
Twitter user Balboa88 also chimed in with a potential that someone higher up the food chain could be exposed, which in turn could further cause major dramas for another major platform in the sim racing space.
Drivers like McCormack, Baldwin, Jardier, Luke Whitehead, George Boothby and so many others have put a lot of hours of work behind the wheel, only to see their efforts, unfortunately, being tainted by this. Cheats are quite clearly not welcome in sim racing, and it really does not help the reputation that sim racing had built up with the momentum from when it was prominent in the first half of 2020.
From our perspective, it is truly a sad sight to see and it further drags sim racing through the mud again, as if 2023 hasn’t been difficult enough so far with the number of bad situations being front and centre above some of the more positive news that has also come about.
But there has been further input from VCO CEO Florian Haasper, who has given constructive feedback on what could be the next steps that need to be taken in this instance via a thread he posted on Twitter:
What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments below.
Image Credit: Assetto Corsa Competizione – Kunos Simulazioni