You don’t need to be an eSports fan in order to appreciate two of the top talents in motorsport going against each other in an online one versus one setting.

Thanks to the Charles Leclerc Streams YouTube channel, we get to see the Ferrari star take on his rival from McLaren, Lando Norris, using Codemasters’ F1 2019 title as their weapon of choice. As for the track they’re on, that would be the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas.

It’s interesting to see how the two compare in what is basically a simulation of the real thing, although unlike the real cars, the ones in the game feature identical performance when raced in Online Multiplayer mode.

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This means that it comes down to not only talent, but also familiarity with the overall gaming setup and driving physics of the actual title, which are quite good if reviews are to be believed.

Leclerc has been training in his Monaco apartment, and he only got his hands on F1 2019 a few days before he started racing his peers using the game’s Multiplayer mode. He also had some help from the FDA eSports team (Ferrari’s sim racing outfit).

“They gave me a few tips,” said Leclerc during a video conference interview. “I’ve been training a lot, training with our esports drivers. I’ve learned a lot.”

His training certainly paid off, as Leclerc won both of his first two official online races (against a full grid, not 1 v 1), in Vietnam and China. The field features multiple other F1 drivers such as Lando Norris and Alex Albon, as well as eSports drivers and other celebrities.

“There’s a lot of fun, but then there are some races where we take it quite seriously. The official [virtual] F1 races are actually quite serious – and we all want to win. This is a good way to stay sharp and practice with pressure. Even on a virtual game like this, I have pressure. When Alex [Albon] was second and very close to me [in the fight for the lead in China], I absolutely wanted to finish first.”