It’s the middle of March and the British Automobile Racing Club is livestreaming the first round of a brand-new one-make national championship, the Praga Cup. Unlike most debut series, however, this one has attracted more than 76,000 views on YouTube, and the chat is feverishly ticking over with new posts about ‘car 87’, ‘Jimmer’ and a gold livery design. This epiphenomenon shall be henceforth known as the Jimmy Broadbent effect.
For the uninitiated, Broadbent comes from the virtual realm of sim racing. He himself is not virtual, but the PC-based platforms he predominantly uses to drive – such as iRacing, Assetto Corsa Competizione and Automobilista – are. He started a YouTube channel nearly 10 years ago by simply uploading video game footage without commentary, and this soon evolved into sharing his sim racing exploits. He’s now amassed more than 800,000 subscribers.
