NASCAR, like a number of other corporations keen on attracting a younger audience, thinks e-sports could be a successful tactic. Two different bodies within the stock car racing association are separately developing e-sports championships that aim to commence this year, one of them perhaps in time for the season-opening Daytona 500 on February 18. In early January, Sports Business Daily reported that Blake Davidson, the sanctioning body's VP of licensing and consumer products, was working on an e-sports championship that would take place at tracks during race weekends. Tournament players could choose to play in either NASCAR Heat 2, a more casual, entry-level racing game for the Xbox and Playstation, or opt for the deep-end seriousness of iRacing. Overhauled tracks like Las Vegas Motor Speedway might use their own screening areas to host virtual racing events, but it's more likely that specially equipped trucks would travel between tracks.

When Lewis Hamilton looked to his future in Formula One in 2012 and decided to leave McLaren, the team with whom he had grown up and won his first world championship, it was roundly questioned at the time. After securing two further titles for Mercedes, the move was regarded as inspired but predicting what is round the corner in motor racing has never been easy and, with F1 having just begun the process of reinvention under its new owners, the future is very much on the agenda. Many sports have faced new challenges and opportunities because of the extraordinary changes technological advances have wrought in the past two decades. But that is true of F1 perhaps more than most, having stuck with a long outdated model that has increasingly failed to engage with a younger audience. If F1 and motor racing in general are to survive, doing so is crucial and it seems it is at the crossroads between the virtual world and the real that it is most likely to happen.