Simrace247 Sponsor Multiple Sim Racing Champion Jimmy Mansi

Sim racing driver and multiple champion Jimmy Mansi will be backed for the future and sponsored by simrace247.com. Another step to supporting great people in the community.

Jimmy Mansi is a multiple sim racing champion and a great sim racing driver, his future for being backed and sponsored has been secured by simrace247.com.

Every now and then you come across some great people in the sim racing community, some people that just stand out with great tenacity, and the will to keep moving forward.

It is with great pleasure to announce that Jimmy Mansi will be a backed and sponsored racing driver by simrace247.com.

This is Jimmy Mansi’s Story

Simracing & Me “The cars aren’t real, but the racing is”

Like most, I have that t-shirt. Like most, I love racing, be it in real life or sim. However, just over a year ago I started getting into the never ending (but incredibly enjoyable) rabbit hole, that is sim racing.

My name is Jimmy Mansi, I’m 37yrs old and yeah, I’m a sim racer. I’m also a few other things, but I’m not here to offer parenting advice or cookery lessons.

So, where do I start? I guess you could go back to the commodore 64 and Amiga 500 days. I could even go back as far as an Atari 2600 and Space Invaders.. but, where racing really started for me on computers, was the original F1 game from 1996 on the PS One.

This game, to me, had it all. The late, great Sir Murray Walker on comms, the TAG timing that you saw on BBC, the tracks, the cars, and the real driver names that I had grown up watching the race on TV.

Now I could pretend to be Damon Hill, Michael Schumacher or if I fancied a special race at Monaco, Olivier Panis. Since this game, I have been in love with racing games, be it TOCA, Gran Turismo or the MotoGP run of games. Growing up, I was and still am a bike guy.

I’ve loved MotoGP from way back when you had the likes of Gardner, Lawson, Mamola, Rainey, Schwantz, Doohan, and later on, Rossi. The games came and went, the opportunities to race as my idols was there but sadly, for me, motorbike games have always been lacking. So, I’ve stuck with the F1 and GT games for the duration.

Fast forward to the start of 2019, I’ve gone and purchased a PS4 and F1 2019 after around 5-6yrs away from it all. I wanted to rekindle my love of racing through games.

By Christmas that year, I’d heard about league racing (yes, I was that out of the loop I didn’t know it was a thing). I decided to give it a go, I love competing against people, I love winning and I love a challenge, so what could go wrong?

At the start of 2020, I was racing in an F1 League on PS4, I was in their third of four tiers and was competing at the front, usually finishing on the podium at every race. My third race into the season, I won.

Now, remember, at this point, I was 35yrs old, relatively old for racing on a console on F1 (or so I thought). The moment I crossed the line it was like I had gone back 20yrs, the excitement, joy and a mix of emotions including shouting came flooding back. I loved it, this is what I had wanted.

A few months down the line, things changed. I realised a couple of things.. when you’re competing at the front, some take a disliking to you. It’s the Stephen Hendry effect. I won’t go into the details but I quickly said, enough is enough and left (something I will still do today if something doesn’t feel right).

Within the next 48hrs, a couple of people I had met through the racing setup a new league, we had an entire discord community and 20+ drivers ready to go. This was it, I was back racing again with a fresh group of people and I was relatively in control of things..again, what could go wrong?

I quickly realised that being so heavily involved in a league as a moderator, admin and steward, as well as racing, was not a good mix. I’m quite strong with my emotions and to nip that in the bud and clearly look over other incidents was difficult.

I handed over complete control of the league to my friend (who still runs this league today and it’s doing great) and stepped away.

This is where sim racing enters.

I found an old gaming PC in my partner’s house. I got it up and running, plugged in my wheel and downloaded iRacing. Quite simply, I was instantly hooked. The visuals, the cars, the tracks. It was incredible. Why had I not done this before was all I kept telling myself.

Sadly, the PC I was using wasn’t powerful enough to try any other racing sims and ran iRacing at a bare minimum. Fortunately, I have a very caring, loving and understanding partner. She was right behind me with getting to where I am today in terms of sim racing and the setup I have.

Black Friday 2020 I order my big boy gaming PC. By January 2021 I have a full 80/20 rig, a desk and a Samsung G9 curved gaming monitor. Since this, I haven’t looked back. I’ve been involved in some of the most amazing racing, had some incredible battles and met some truly awesome people. I hope this continues because it has been a truly great experience.

Sim racing is my hobby, it’s what I do to unwind, de-stress, and mainly, for enjoyment. I’m incredibly lucky to have the setup I do, I’m also incredibly lucky to be able to spend some evenings doing this with an understanding partner.

Not only has she supported me with setting this up, she has been the voice of reason in times where I’ve wanted to throw it all in the bin.

Let’s fast forward again.

We’re now coming to the end of 2021, what a year in sim racing it has been. I’m a complete Assetto Corsa Competizione addict. Without a doubt, the biggest highlight was winning PLR’s Pro/Overall World Tour.

It was some of the most difficult competition I have faced which made it so much more rewarding. I’ve wrapped up two titles with ASR and am about to start my first season with Actrollvision in his ACR league (gold split). Another huge highlight was teaming up with simrace247, Dan Babic and Alex Torregrosa for the Jardier and Jimmy Broadbent Silverstone 10HR.

I was contacted by Dan via contacts at Simrace247 and asked if I’d like to join the team for the race. I jumped at the chance and if you had told me from a field of 50 teams with some of the elite ACC racers in, that we would place P10 I would have laughed.

But with the support of Darren from Simrace247 and my team, not to mention the guys on the stream cheering us on. It happened. I got to share the track with some of the big guns, there were moments where I was matching them for pace and I loved every minute of it.

Sim racing has really been incredible. I’ll never be in a position to race in the real world professionally. This is as close as I’ll come but, it’s bloody brilliant. From the battles to the people you meet. Seeing yourself improve to a point where you’re within 1 second of the ‘aliens’.. it’s a great feeling.

I dedicate a lot of time to my practice. If you want to compete near the top, I believe you have to. I doubt I’ll ever be on par with the likes of James Baldwin, Jardier and Dalking, to name a few. But just having good, clean and competitive racing is all I’m here for.

Lastly, I just want to say a huge thanks to Darren from SR247. To be included in the team and sponsored is an honor and I look forward to our future racing together.

If you want to keep up (pun intended) with my racing, I’ll be dropping a weekly blog on how my events have gone and various other bits about my sim racing on the SR247 website every Friday.

You can find me on Twitter @JimboMansi_46 where I post snippets from my races and my results.

Cheers for taking the time to read and maybe I’ll see you on track soon!