00:00My life is realistically determined by a tenth of a second.
00:04I was going down to turn one and the pedal went to the floor
00:08and there's a point where I relaxed and waited for the impact.
00:14I'm 21 years old, living in Italy, and there's not really many people who can say that.
00:20This is Brendan. Brendan is a sim racer.
00:23Someone who races exact replicas of real tracks on a simulator just like this one.
00:27At the age of 18, Brendan was crowned the e-sports world champion, beating 60,000 other gamers.
00:34But things didn't go smoothly when he got in a car on the real circuit.
00:37He's now part of the e-sports team at Ferrari, living La Dolce Vita while he trains.
00:42This is how gaming changed his life.
00:44We didn't really have any money growing up, so I didn't have the money to go karting.
00:49We never even had a thousand pounds in the bank account at one time.
00:51So it gave me this opportunity to drive the most fantastic cars in the world, albeit on a video game
01:00and drive the most fantastic tracks.
01:02But it was racing to me, and for me that was real.
01:06Formula One has its own video game series that simulates the F1 as accurately as possible.
01:11Every year the prize fund increases.
01:13In 2020, it was a whopping $750,000.
01:17But it's not easy to make it to the top.
01:20Within school it was quite difficult.
01:22Bullying, being beaten up, negative words said to me.
01:25I wasn't wanting to go to school.
01:28My attendance dropped to like 30% in a year.
01:31I feel sorry for them.
01:33You have to be a certain type of person, and they have to have certain stuff going on in their
01:36lives behind the scenes.
01:39You have to rely on your own core self to be happy yourself.
01:44Because of the contrast of being at school and not being happy, but then being really happy on my simulator,
01:51it kept on giving me a focus to remind myself, okay, get out of bed, you've got a race to
01:57train for.
01:58And what that was doing was giving me an opportunity to train for something all week in my spare time,
02:03then have a race on a Sunday night, and that was really my drive every week was to try and
02:09win that next race.
02:12Drive until I get bored, and I never got bored.
02:16My first competition I won on a big stage was the semi-final in 2017.
02:22I didn't believe it for about half an hour, and it only sunk in when they called out my name
02:28with the trophy.
02:30Winning that event was my passport to a better life.
02:34I was able to move out of my parents' house and live independently.
02:39But I was able to do it in a very relaxed way when I had a team around me and
02:43was able to support me.
02:44And then since then, it's given me a lot of confidence.
02:47And as a 21-year-old now, I'm living in Italy, living the dream with Ferrari.
02:53Getting into a real-life car for the first time, I couldn't stop smiling for an hour while in the
03:01car.
03:01And then I barely slept that night because I was literally shaking with excitement.
03:08I went out on track at Silverstone. It was half wet, half dry, and I was able to perform quite
03:14well.
03:15I was always meeting the targets and exceeding the targets.
03:17And they accepted me straight away just like any other racing driver.
03:22So I think they saw, okay, he's a gamer, but he's quick.
03:26And then that led on to an opportunity to do the season in F1600 in the UK, where a lot
03:34of bad luck actually struck us.
03:36In the first race, there was a brake failure at 120 miles an hour.
03:41It was going down to turn one. You brake at about a hundred-meter board there.
03:45It's a really high-speed corner. You probably take the corner at about 80 miles an hour.
03:49I hit the brake pedal, and the pedal went to the floor.
03:54I still have the onboard footage of it, and there's a point where I relaxed.
03:59You can see it in my hands, sat back, and waited for the impact.
04:05I got out of the car. They took me to the medical center. I was fine.
04:10The marshal on the side of the track, after my crash, said,
04:14it hurts a bit more than a video game, doesn't it?
04:17To be honest, some people are just nasty.
04:21The media, we told them the truth, that the brakes failed, and then quoted it as,
04:27eSports champion crashed on race debut.
04:30And without a doubt, the media had an effect on whether I could continue that season or not, after four
04:35races.
04:36I actually remember it a lot more as a lesson to remind myself, to trust myself, that I am me,
04:45and the way I want to train, and the way I want to run, or the way I want to
04:48drive the car, is all an extension of myself.
04:52And you just not got to let these people affect you.
04:58I didn't have a good two seasons in eSports following that.
05:03I needed a change in life, so I moved to Ferrari, and instantly, the most weight off my shoulders in
05:10the world, where the team actually trusted me for the first time in two years.
05:14And instantly was able to perform.
05:17I've been in Marinello for about three and a half months now, and I absolutely love it.
05:20My day right now is, of course, you wake up, then I go running.
05:24Running, to me, is a meditation.
05:26It's a moment for me where I'm not trying to track my pace, and I'm just listening to music and
05:31refreshing myself mentally, getting ready for the day.
05:36Then I will go and train with the Ferrari crew.
05:39Ciao, David.
05:41And driving laps on the simulator, looking at data, and having our coach improve us.
05:47But this, this is where it gets really special.
05:51Oh, nice.
05:52Maybe you can over-dig, that's perfect.
05:54Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.
05:56In the moment, we're in the off-season of F1 eSports, so it's a bit more relaxed.
05:59But then as soon as the F1 eSports season starts to kick off, we'll be doing multiple hours a day,
06:05maybe between eight and ten hours a day, getting ready for the season.
06:11I don't know when I'm going to retire from racing, but until then I see it with Ferrari and develop
06:16myself within the team here.
06:17This is how you overtake.
06:20After my racing career, I would like to be managing a team and managing drivers to give them the coaching
06:29and support and the lessons that I've learned throughout my racing career.
06:33I want to be supporting these young people who don't have that support, maybe.
06:39And they might have the most talent in the world, but at this level, it's all mental.
06:44And when your job is defined by one tenth of a second, it's all mental.
06:54The grid is normally 20 cars is separated between two and four tenths of a second.
07:00If you hold a pen up at home, drop it and try to catch it again, that's about three tenths
07:05for the average person.
07:07Our lap times are as close as the human reaction time, and that gives context to how hard our job
07:13is.
07:14My life, let's say, on whether I've had a good year or not, is realistically determined by a tenth of
07:21a second.
07:23My advice is grab your dream and don't let it go.
07:29And you're going to have to make sacrifices in life.
07:32For me, for example, I didn't go to prom as a kid.
07:35I actually did a race that night, and I did well in that race, so I don't regret it.
07:39If I can go back and speak to my younger self, I'd probably just keep on reminding myself to believe
07:48in yourself no matter how many people doubt you and try to change you.
07:52Just be yourself.
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