Jarno Opmeer on switching Mercedes for Red Bull, racing Max Verstappen and the challenge of F1 esports

Of the many F1 esports drivers, Jarno Opmeer is arguably the most famous of them all.

He is a two-time World Champion, winning the title in 2020 and 2021, has almost half a million subscribers on YouTuber and his audience of around 400k regularly follows his races live on Twitch. But, having been with Mercedes since 2021, Opmeer has now jumped ship to Red Bull and PlanetF1.com caught up with him at his home grand prix in Zandvoort.

Jarno Opmeer on life at Red Bull and being team-mates with Max Verstappen

An obvious place to start, why did you join Red Bull?

Why not? I mean partnering up with Freddie [Rasmussen], obviously, we’re going have a really strong team. I think we haven’t seen two world champions in the same team before. It’s going to be exciting.

Of course, it doesn’t guarantee future success but we’re both very experienced and we’re both very determined to try and win the championship.

What was the first week like?

I’ve known for quite a while but straightaway, first race we did on Wednesday, we finished one two so perfect start.

Now, we just continue to prepare for F1 esports. It’s been great so far.

You moved from Mercedes, what has the switch been like?

I work together with Redline now and the Mercedes esports team is quite small relative to how big Redline is.

Then of course, you’ve got the Red Bull side of the esports team as well, so it’s much bigger, that’s for sure.

Redline is obviously very experienced in sim racing and that’s just great that everyone in there understands sim racing, understands the struggles and the practice routines, etc, etc.

The experience from the team side is great and, definitely I have already noticed, is helping me a lot.

Your compatriot Max Verstappen is a huge fan of sim racing, have you spoken to him much since you joined?

I did an interview with him this morning! Of course, online, we chat a little bit every now and then on the discord, in the team chat. So yeah, I’m sure we will speak more over the next weeks and months.

Of course, Max is really into iRacing. I do some iRacing sometimes, but I’m not a pro at it. I’ve got my F1 side, which I really need to focus on, and it’s not easy to be on the very, very top level in multiple sims at the same time. It is possible, but you really slightly lose a little bit of an edge, which in esports is crucial.

I’m sure I’ll speak to him after the end of the esports season a lot more. Maybe we can do something in iRacing, we’ll figure it out. In the meantime, I think we have to stick to FIFA and Call of Duty.

What are the main differences in racing in iRacing and F1?

Well, F1 year on year has changed a lot anyway, so year on year, you have to refigure out the game all the time.

iRacing stays the same, or not stays the same. It does update, but the base stays the same a lot. So yeah, obviously iRacing is very, very technical. F1 not so much, which in some way makes it for everyone really hard to really figure it out.

As I said, one year is not the same. Whereas iRacing, you kind of know what you have to focus on.

How quickly do you get used to a new F1 game when it comes out?

I think driving wise, you figure it out within a week, It is really the setups and driving combination that you have to figure out.

What’s the fastest way to drive and with what setup combination? That’s always the hard part to figure out. Every game suits better than others in the past.

There is the comparison with League of Legends in that they get new metas every few months, and it’s a little bit the same with F1. Only a few drivers manage to adapt year on year and be at the top level.

How different is esports to the real thing?

It’s different. Of course, real Formula 1, it’s really dynamic. Just a few degrees difference in the weather has a huge impact on tyres, aerodynamics and so on.

Whereas in the F1 game, we do have wet weather but we can prepare endlessly for it. We don’t have wind change, for example, that’s already a huge thing.

I remember when I was racing in Formula Renault, your braking point changes like 20, 30 metres if you’ve got headwinds or tailwinds, You don’t have that on the F1 game.

That makes it in some way easier, but at the same time, everyone is on it all of the time. You have to be so close to the limit to even make it into Q2 for example. So it’s very different.

“That’s why you see in a Q1 or a Q2 you see P1 to P20 within, like two tenths. If it was more dynamic, you wouldn’t see that, because a lot more people would make mistakes.

What is the general health of F1 esports? The 2023-24 season had one event then a break of five months…

The general health? It’s hard to say. I’m not involved. I don’t know much about what’s going on behind the scenes. I can give an opinion on it, but I don’t know everything, so it’s really hard to say what’s going on behind the scenes. Because I know very little as well.

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When did esports as a career become an idea for you?

When I was doing Formula Renault, back in the day, I tried to qualify F1 esports in 2017 but I had very limited time to practice, I didn’t know the game. I still got really close. I think I got like almost top 40, which was when you needed to get into the semifinals.

But then once I stopped real life racing, I knew that I was capable of getting into esports, by the fact that I was so close with such little preparation already, but I still had a huge gap to catch up.

I remember when I just started to try and qualify for F1 esports. I think I was a second slower than [2017 and 2018 champion] Brendon Leigh randomly. So I knew, obviously, it was possible for me, but I had to really put in the hours.

Every real driver who goes into sim racing really struggles in the beginning but I knew I had the potential to be at that top level.

Why do they struggle so much?

I think something a lot of drivers struggle with is obviously the feeling like the lack of G-forces. But it’s also your sense of your perception, of depth, is not really there.

You see a lot of people, regular people, who drive on the sim always crashing. They won’t do that in real life, of course, probably because they’re a little bit more scared, but also your sense of depth is so much better.

So those are the two main factors that are hard to adapt to. Depth and G-force are probably the real struggles when you just start out in sim racing and really having to figure out all the setups, all the little tricks, what works for you, what doesn’t. It takes a lot of time as well.

Do you think everyone is a bit more aggressive than on track? You haven’t got that safety worry, you haven’t got the cost worry as well.

Definitely the practice part of sim racing, you can crash unlimitedly. But of course, once you get to the actual qualifying session, the real session, where you’re trying to get into Q2 or Q3 to get a qualifying lap together, then the damage of you crashing is pretty much the same.

So I think in real life, of course, it’s a huge pain if an F1 driver crashes. But in lower series, if you crash, it’s more of an ego hit than a cost hit.

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