Ben Payne, McLaren's Head of Esports, has expressed how happy he is with McLaren's Shadow project in an interview with us, as the finals have just wrapped up last month with Brazilian racer Igor Fraga taking home the top prize.
"It was amazing. It was the culmination of nine months' work to get to the finals and crown Igor as our champion. We're pleased for him and we're pleased for all seven finalists. I think they had a great week with us here, we obviously offering them life-changing opportunities whether they won or not," he explained.
The Shadow Project, a huge esports program aiming at finding raw talent from drivers around the world, had people play a variety of racing sims, with Igor Fraga winning himself a place on McLaren's esports team. For Payne, the program was a huge success that showed just how serious McLaren is taking esports and racing sims as a whole:
"I'm just happy that we've done stuff that shows really showcases how serious McLaren is taking this recruitment opportunity as a way of using data within the company as a whole. Our drivers [...] went through all the different hurdles our racing drivers do and how McLaren applied technologies will be running it's young driver program, the DNA program, throughout the year. So the data of the gamers and sim racers going into that program and then being used, then being spat out for when we do this again - it just means that McLaren is making more sensible data-driven decisions about what talent looks like, be it on the track or actually in the virtual space as well."
As for the future of the program, he said: "my highlight of the entire Shadow Project will be the smile on his face when he crossed the line and waited for adjudication to confirm that he was our winner. But that smile is worth all the late nights and all the strategy sessions and budget meetings and what have you, because we changed this kid's life. We're looking forward to trying to make sure the journeys these experience under the umbrella of McLaren is up to their expectations."
Did you enjoy the Shadow Project?