- Karting champion lost to motorsport gets second shot through McLaren esports competition
Rudy van Buren, a 25-year-old sales manager from Lelystad in the Netherlands, has beaten more than 30,000 contestants to be crowned the World’s Fastest Gamer – the McLaren Formula 1 team’s ground-breaking esports competition that aims to find the best virtual racing driver on the planet.
In the final round of the contest, an exacting four-hour assessment using McLaren’s state-of-the-art Formula 1 simulator, van Buren beat countryman Freek Schothorst, a 20-year-old science, business and innovation student from Amsterdam.
Van Buren now claims the greatest job in esports – becoming one of the F1 team’s official simulator drivers for the 2018 season.
Van Buren began racing karts aged eight, ultimately winning the Dutch Karting Championship in 2003. However, like many budding talents, he was forced to quit at the age of 16 due to lacking the financial backing needed to progress further.
However, World’s Fastest Gamer, which identifies racing talent through esports, has given van Buren a second chance at his motorsports career.
On quitting racing, van Buren said:
“You search for a replacement because you’ve still got that racing feeling inside you. You want to go on but there’s no option or route available. That burn inside to win, doing a lap quicker and quicker, lap after lap, it’s a feeling that you can’t express. Every boy that starts karting dreams about F1, and at a certain point that dream just vanishes. Now by winning World’s Fastest Gamer, I can relive that dream.”
On winning World’s Fastest Gamer, van Buren said:
“This has been the most incredible experience and words can’t describe how I feel right now. To think that I came to the McLaren Technology Centre for the very first time last week but am leaving here today as McLaren’s newest employee is mind blowing.
“I can’t thank everyone enough for giving me this amazing opportunity; just being here, meeting the team and competing with some amazing people has been an unforgettable experience. It really has been the toughest job interview I’ve ever faced, but with such an incredible reward at the end of it. Now I can’t wait to get started!”
