Part 2 – Why do you think you can do this?

Firstly, a quick thank you to those few of you who somehow keep coming back here to read my…various ramblings on this site. I occasionally receive the odd email message indicating views and visitors and I really appreciate all of you who populate the small readership of this inconsequential digital hermitage.

Since you few have been through all of my several posts, hopefully you left some of those entries believing you perused the thoughts of at least a somewhat enthusiastic, focused guy. Alas, focus is never really enough. So why aside from delusion does the author of such discursive jottings, focused as he may be, believe this whole endeavour to be possible?

Well, as alluded to in the last posting, this has been done before. Kind of, anyway.

Pathfinder – păth′fīn″dər

1. a pioneer
2. an explorer
3. one who discovers a way, through unexplored methods
4. …….Hungarian?

Before I can really start continuing on typing about my story, I have to briefly tell you the story about the Gábor Wéber and Norbert Michelisz. Yes, we are going to have to discuss the Hungarians.

These guys like video games, man…and they liked them back circa 2005. They would have had to, given the fervor the Hungarians built around a game released eight years earlier – Grand Prix Legends. Their love for this game was so strong that they held competitions nationally, and helped drive efforts to organize something of a World Championship.

That is, a World Championship…for an eight year old video game. As I said, these guys really like video games.

I have to assume some of the deep, Hungarian penchant for Grand Prix Legends had something to do with one of their own using the game as a springboard to real racing; a Hungarian man by the name of Gábor Wéber won an early “world title” in Grand Prix Legends and went on to compete in touring car racing for Zengo Motorsport. He is now a Formula One commentator on Hungarian television. I am mentioning this guy’s story now, in surely undeserved brevity, because it is intertwined in a way with the story of the main subject of this post.

Like most of us, years before Wéber jumped from Grand Prix Legends to populating the Zengo seat, a young Hungarian lad was infected by the motorsport bug. In his case, it was the doing of his racing driver uncle. After imparting such a strong impression on him, he built the lad a small and inexpensive Fiat Polski. The benefits of learning car control in such an analog vehicle are numerous (which will certainly be discussed here in future posts) and served as a valuable placeholder, given organized junior racing was so far beyond his family’s financial capability at the time. That Hungarian lad’s name was Norbert Michelisz.

While they were not able to support a costly junior racing career, his parents did support him by procuring a computer for him – meant to be used for studies. Of course, the end result was double duty – Michelisz used it to dive into video games of the racing variety.

A couple years later at university, a few things seem to conspire in Michelisz’s favour. He found himself nowhere near the watchful eyes of his parents..

…with an internet connection.

Alright, calm down. This is a racing blog, you animal. Allow me to rephrase; he found himself with an internet connection..

..and a copy of Grand Prix Legends. Yes, that fateful old video game.

As mentioned above, the Hungarians seemed to really rally around this racing game, and a very dedicated following was alive and well over there. Gábor Wéber had been a world champion in the game just a few years earlier, and had since enjoyed pretty decent success in real-world racing. This information landed on Michelisz’s radar and, seeing that it may just be possible to go from a racing video game to real life racing, he predictably dedicated….well, all of his time as a university student to trying to top Gábor’s performance, nearly failing out of school in the process.

Sure enough, he was successful in surpassing his target’s pace. So successful, in fact, that he fell onto the radar of the very person he was trying to outdo. Having lived the experience of going from virtual to real racing himself and seeing what Michelisz was capable of, Wéber managed to convince his team boss, Zoltan Zengo, to give Michelisz a test. He tested first in a 100Hp Open Astra, then a 180HP Renault Clio at the Hungaroring. He obviously did enough in this showing, because the next season Michelisz was offered a full time drive in the inaugural Hungarian Swift Cup. It was a spec series (contested with equal cars), and with most of the financial backing coming from Zengo, he managed to run the the full season by the grace of his parents who brought the rest of the finances together.

Michelisz converted his rookie year of real life racing into going on a tear – he won six races and claimed the series title. His rookie success warranted an immediate step up, and with more financing from Zengo, he was able to step up to the National Renault Clio cup. He rewarded Zengo’s further financial backing by repeating his title winning performance!

Off the back of two straight national titles, such success warranted a greater move – one out of Hungary. Wéber and Michelisz were entered into the European Leon SEAT cup. Zengo brought most of the budget yet again, but coming off of two title winning performances, it was easier to find sponsorships to round out the rest of the budget. Success was understandably a bit harder to come by on the international stage. Despite taking pole position for two thirds of the races he entered, Michelisz finished fourteenth in the championship.

In his second attempt however, Michelisz seemed to have found his footing on the higher level, and he won five races en route to capturing the title. At this stage, Michelisz was a proven winner and champion on an international level. He had successfully done something quite novel at that time, turning his virtual success into several real life racing titles. Off the back of such unlikely successes, he decided to pursue racing as a profession and promptly left university to do so.

He competed in the 2010 WTCC series with Zengo’s team, winning in the season ending Macau GP and proved that his success was no coincidence – he genuinely deserved to compete at the world championship level.

To be honest I am not exactly sure how he funded his career at this stage, but its obvious he had some help, especially competing for Zengo Motorsport. Now, “some help” does not really mean much in the racing world, as you are usually never very far away from obliterating your budget should you have a crash. I imagine there was some uncertainty over whether he would continue racing over the next several seasons. That is the reality for any privateer drivers who are existing at any level without enjoying the benefit of limitless budgets behind them.

His efforts to stay in the game paid off though, as by 2016 he was promoted to factory driver for Honda. For a racing driver, this is IT. I remember hearing about this years ago and thinking to myself that there maybe, just maybe,was a way I could also do something like this to break into motorsport after all. As the Germans say, hope dies last…but in my case seeing Michelisz continue his winning ways as a factory driver for Honda really kept my burning internal motorsport desires stoked. I was even happier for him when I saw he signed with Hyundai two seasons on. That further legitimized his ascent from gamer to racing driver; not one but two manufacturers acknowledged his capabilities and saw fit to reward him with something which remains quite elusive for many racing drivers today..

A steady paycheque.

Then he went and won a title again. This time, though, it was a coveted FIA trophy. With five wins and ten trips to the podium, Norbert Michelisz clinched the 2019 FIA World TCR Championship with Hyundai.

Take a moment, esteemed passenger, to really consider this – because the point of this post is not to decipher whether or not something is likely. The point of this post is not to determine whether or not something is easily repeatable. The point of this post is to assert to you what Michelisz’s example did for me all those years ago. That is, the purpose of this post is to assert what Mischelisz did, and continued to do at every step of his journey from zero to factory driver….

It proves that this dream, this whole lofty aspiration, is possible. From a video game made in 1998, playing online in his university dorm more than fourteen years earlier…to an FIA World Champion.

What Norbert Michelisz managed to accomplish must be respected. Yes, Michelisz had a connection to work from, which created an opportunity. He went out and made the most of it. Sure, he was the beneficiary of appreciable financial backing. He went out and made the most of it, winning races and clinching titles, rewarding those investments. He became a legitimate professional racing driver, and then became an FIA champion – and it was all generated during a time when there were no organized efforts to take a person from playing video games to racing in reality.

Though I suspect, largely due the shining example made by Norbert Michelisz, the time of far more focused, organized efforts to turn gamers into racers did indeed follow..

..and you can read about it next week when you are notified. That is, assuming you are subscribed..

So do come back, please.