After getting dropped from Toro Rosso in 2007 for a certain Sebastian Vettel, Scott Speed has had a bit of a patchy career, trying the likes of Nascar, sportscar racing and Formula E. He seems to have finally found a home in rallycross, winning the Global Rallycross Championship for the last three years.
He’s also been competing in iRacing, where he’s unfortunately become known for getting angry and taking people out on purpose.
That’s the sort of behaviour you’d expect from 12-year-olds in public lobbies on F1 2017, not the professional world of iRacing, the ultra-realistic sim racing ‘game’ populated with some of the world’s best virtual and real-life drivers.
The final straw seems to have come after coming off worst in a racing incident with streamer James Hewlett. Speed then spent much of the rest of the race trying (and failing) to deal out his own brand of justice and ram Hewlett off in retaliation.
This was the final straw for iRacing officials who, after receiving a number of complaints, have suspended him from using the service.
Apparently as a result of this, Speed put his sim rig up for sale on Facebook, the equivalent of saying ‘if I can’t play how I want to then I’m not playing at all.’
He didn’t sound particularly remorseful in a statement he made to The Drive, either, though he did apologise:
“This is not real life, it’s a game. The penalty for my action if protested against, is a suspension, which I accept and received. I personally wouldn’t feel like a man protesting a guy who I just accidentally wrecked out of the lead for returning the favour. But that’s me, and I understand that thinking is not treating iRacing with the appropriate amount of respect and is wrong. For that I sincerely apologise.”
To add to the hilarity, Speed is actually an ambassador for iRacing’s rallycross content and has been involved in some promotional material, which of course has been remixed into an instructional video on how to take people out.
Oh, Scott. If you wanted to crash into people on purpose and get away with it you should have tried harder in F1 – you’d only have got a stop-go penalty!
