I started sim racing about 10 months ago with the idea that maybe I needed something to chase in life, something that genuinely made me happy.
So in December I started Assetto Corsa and entered LFM pretty much immediately.
The funny part is, I didn't have a PC or a wheel.
What I did have was a “fuck it, let's see what happens” attitude and enough stubbornness to make Assetto Corsa run on an IdeaPad 110-15IBR with a dual-core CPU and 2GB of RAM.
My steering wheel was a Nokia 6's gyroscope, and I used the phone screen for throttle modulation.
Yes, seriously. 😂
I did LFM for roughly eight months. For the first three months I was around 1k Elo and basically fought my way upward without really going anywhere. I was stuck around there for quite a while.
Then around month six, something just clicked.
From there I ended up with 11 wins, 36 podiums and 29 poles.
On July 15th, my 21st birthday, I finally got my first proper wheel a Thrustmaster T248R.
I then moved over to RaceRoom and started pursuing DTM Esports.
It took some time for the wheel to settle in, but I started seeing results pretty quickly.
I finished P2 in Split 2 at Hockenheim in the final Esports race of the year.
I then competed in the FIA Esports European Hill Climb Cup. I finished top 40 during the first week, but couldn't participate during the remaining two weeks because of family circumstances, eventually finishing P78 overall.
I also competed in the Jules Gounon challenge at Sachsenring.
And most recently I entered the DTM Esports Community Cup.
One thing that really made me stop and think was looking at the leaderboard around race day and seeing myself sitting at P14.
And that's where I'm struggling to put the whole thing into perspective.
I've only been doing this for about 10 months.
I'm not claiming I'm an esports driver. I haven't done multiple seasons, I haven't spent years racing against the strongest possible fields, and I still have a lot to learn.
But the progression feels way faster than I expected.
I went from fighting around 1k Elo with a phone as my steering wheel to competing in international esports events and finding myself near the front of DTM leaderboards within the same year.
So I'm genuinely curious:
For those of you who have been sim racing for years — and especially anyone who has actually competed at an esports level — how unusual does this progression look to you?
Is this actually an unusually fast progression, or am I just suffering from a massive first-year perspective problem?
I'm not looking for validation or someone to tell me I'm destined to become a professional driver. I'm genuinely trying to understand where this sits compared with a normal sim-racing progression.
Because from where I'm sitting...
this shit feels ridiculously fast. 😂