The race is on and it really is on, as despite the cancellation of the Australian Grand Prix,

Max Verstappen took on rivals from Real World Motorsport and the cream of sim racing in the

Race All-Star Esport Battle. It was described as the greatest

sim racing field ever seen, and across the three qualifying races and grand final, it certainly

lived up to that with some gripping racing. I'm Ed Sturon discussing this seminal

e-sports event with me is Scott Mitchell, and we'll also have Mark Hughes joining us later on

to talk Real World F1. Well, Scott, we've just finished

watching the event. Excellent commentary from Jack Nicholson, Julian Palmer, just like a Grand Prix

through their BBC radio commentary. And yeah, it was really gripping, even though we've watched

it between midnight and 2am here in Melbourne, where we still are. It's, yeah, it's been

absolutely thrilling, hasn't it? Yeah, I'm feeling it now because we're in the early uh yeah it's been absolutely thrilling hasn't it yeah i'm

feeling it now because we're in the early hours of the morning but i didn't come all the way to

Australia not to see a race so i'm glad that the race our the race was able to pull this off in

in association with our factor two and got just such an amazing cast of drivers there's no way i wasn't

going to stay up and watch it.

And I was, I wasn't really sure sort of what to expect exactly from the crop of

sim racing talent.

I know that the, the very best of online races, that they are, they are esports athletes

for want of a better way of putting it.

I know that they operate at a really high level, but you didn't, I just didn't know really what to expect from them in this format. I didn't

know how the sort of, because there are so many different factions of sim racing. Just the,

the prospect of it all coming together was fascinating. And I do have a lot of, I have a lot of time for

...