Gaming
Alleric “Ulti” Enslin has legally been able to drive for the last year. However, at 19 he is racing his way to becoming one of the players to watch in South Africa’s growing “eracing” scene.
He’s been actively competing in online racing games for years and got his first ever sim racing wheel when he was 4 years old (but he admits to only really starting to use it when was about 6).
Ulti was also the first winner of the Dominus Gaming GT3 Series. The competition ran for South African racers over the period of 2 months, which competitors racing weekly to get points on the board.
Ulti plays racing sim games for around 50 hours a week and started actively competing in 2015 when he found the Apex Online Racing community. He says he started by competing on Project Cars 1 and his passion for sim racing grew from there. As for season 1 of the GT3 Series? Ulti says he was rather confident he had the competition in the bag before it even began!
“I went into season 1 quite confident. I’d never really seen a South African competition like this. I was excited after we had more than 20 people signed up to compete for the first season. In the first race I got away with a win rather easily, but then the competition upped their game. In the races to follow I had a tough battle with some players and couldn’t keep the momentum I had in the first race. In the end, I pushed a bit harder and snatched a first season win by 1 point!”
Racing online each week in a competition like this isn’t easy. The tracks and track conditions change weekly. To take a season win racers have to be consistent which, Ulti says, was his biggest challenge:
“I’d do well in one race but then struggle to keep my pace for the next. I even had to retire from a few races due to my car having technical issues. But that is all part of racing (online and in real life) and what makes it so special!”
Much like in real life car racing, gear and configurations can assist you to have a “smoother” ride. Ulti concedes that the gear you play with can make a difference in game:
“I still race with the same wheel I got when I was 4 years old. It’s not that great, but it gets the job done. In sim racing, the gear you use can definitely give you a big advantage, but that comes with huge price tags as well. We also use special configs in-game made by other drivers in my team, but obviously we’re not allowed to share much about that.”
As more local tournaments are planned and funded by the community the level of sim racing in South Africa should, by rights, improve. Ulti believes the local eracing community can easily compete in international events, with some players, including him, already signed on as full time professional racers:
“I’m currently racing for Virtualdrivers by TX3, which is Team-LDLC’s eracing team. I’m signed by them as a full time professional sim racer. I take part in all the major events, from ESL to Project Cars World Championship (known as SMS-R). The great thing about sim racing is that you don’t need sub 100ms latency to take part in leagues and events. Latency issues aren’t really a thing when driving cars. This means that South Africans are allowed to compete in any international league they would want to race in.”
So what is next for South Africa’s new sim racing star?
“Currently I’m taking part in other international events and leagues such as KTM’s Super Racers LEague on Raceroom Racing experience. This event is where the best drivers in world battle it out on the sim racing game for a seat in a real GT4 class race car in the 2019 season. Other than that, my core focus and goal is to make it to the Project CARS 2 SMS-R World Championship event in Europe.”
