Veloce driver Nicolas Longuet has been in the Formula 1 racing scene for almost as long as the scene has existed. He has been in F1 esports since 2019, being part of the Red Bull squad that won the team championship that year in the F1 Pro Series, participating in the 24 hours of Le Mans Virtual with Alpine in 2020, ranked P4 in that year’s F1 Esports Pro Series for Renault Vitality (Now Alpine), and continues to compete at the highest level of F1 league and esports racing with Veloce. Now Longuet has the opportunity to share his wisdom and experience, having signed with the Simracing Centre organisation as a driver coach. I had a chat with “Chromatik” as he was once called, to get his thoughts on the new adventure ahead:

Well basically I decided to try and do some coaching sessions because I’ve seen so many people asking me how to get better, how to reach esports, how to do certain things, and back when I was learning, I wish I had someone maybe help me go in the right direction. Basically, I want to start sharing my knowledge with the drivers that want to improve and show them that nothing is impossible

Was it always a plan to go into coaching, or is this a recent thing?

I’d say it’s relatively recent. I didn’t think there were that many drivers playing the game and genuinely looking to improve so as soon as I figured out how many people were trying to, I thought about helping them

How did the signing with the Simracing Centre come about?

Well the people managing SRC are my friends and I’ve known them for quite a long time and I trust them, I wanted to help them with this dream of theirs and at the same help the drivers with my coaching. Just seemed like a win-win.

 

A great platform for which Nicolas can impart his incredible wealth of knowledge and experience to those looking to rise through the ranks towards F1 esports. Jorrit Jan van Geffen, founder and CEO of Simracing Centre, is also excited by the Frenchman’s addition to their ranks.

How long have you known Nicolas?

I’ve known Nicolas for a couple of months, and ever since I’ve known him he’s been showing his quality and how strong he is. It’s exactly what we love here at Simracing Centre. Immediately we felt that Nicolas would be a perfect coach, and Nicolas was interested! We think that with his qualities and his coaching, our students will be able to grow an insane amount, so we’re very excited to see the performances of our students.

With the growth we have seen in the performance of our students we have had already, I can only imagine how great that growth will be when Nicolas works his magic!

You have several driver coaches in your ranks already, how do you manage the expectations of the coaches when a new student approaches looking for advice?

We have coaches that have made their name within the Formula 1 league racing community, so most of our students are familiar with who the coaches are. Aside from that, if the students are not familiar, we try to give as much information about our coaches as we can so our students can get familiar with them. Sometimes we have students that have specific questions, when that’s the case we put the best coach we have in the field of the area the question in about to make sure our students get the best help they can.

How does a prospective student seek the services of SRC?

On our website! We don’t only have coaching sessions but we also have car setups for the F1 games, for 22 when it comes out as well, and we have race engineers for league races. And we’re expanding too! We will be offering our coaching services to Xbox too. Aside from that, we will also be having coaching sessions on the ACC game (PC) and iRacing. This will all be announced on our socials soon, so stay tuned.

 

Simracing Centre have an incredible lineup of driver coaches that can help any budding sim racing superstar, and we wish the Dutch organisation all the deserved success in the future.