STORIES Timekeepers: Niklas Krellenberg, ESports Champion
Catching up with the driving force behind the world of esports racing
6 min
Niklas Krellenberg, Esports Champion
In this installment, we talk with a whole new kind of athlete. Meet Niklas Krellenberg, known to some as “aTTaX Johnson”, a young German esports racing champion— the first eSportsWRC world champion in fact — and now project manager for esports events at Porsche AG. In this role, one of his main goals is to increase global awareness of Porsche esports activities, which he achieves through the organisation of the Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup and as an in-house consultant about all things esports.
What are esports, you might wonder? They make up a burgeoning field of competitive sports played via video game, and Niklas is now at the helm.
Niklas, how and when did you fall down the rabbit hole of esports?
It all started with a game called Project Gotham Racing 3, which was the racing game everybody wanted to play back in 2005. I was playing for fun with some of my online friends. Pretty quickly, I realized that I was able to drive top times, which led to people asking me to join their semi-professional esports teams. Then I signed up for a few national and international tournaments and became a German champion one year later when I was 16, and then qualified for the World Cyber Games in 2006 in Monza.
What about your days as a famous Youtube content creator?
I started YouTube relatively late, actually, which gave me an important and different perspective. I learned how to create content, how to use it to communicate with the community. Before I was just a young “esports racer” who wanted to win every single race. But when you create content, the competition is only the second most important factor. It was about being authentic, entertaining and an even more integral part of the community than before. And this really helped me to understand the whole ecosystem from a different point of view.
What is it like to be a world-class competitive esports player, and to have gained recognition at such a young age?
It’s very much the same compared to other athletes in different disciplines. You’re very young, motivated, and lacking the experience of older athletes, who are way ahead of you in terms of handling pressure. At the finale of a big competition in 2006, I probably should have been on the podium looking at my speed, but in the quarterfinal, I made many avoidable, stupid mistakes. I was nervous like never before in my life, which led to my elimination. I was simply not ready for the whole environment: people watching you, different conditions, different monitors, and other peripherals.
The longer I was active, the better I was able to handle these “all or nothing” situations. Overall, though, being a competitive esports athlete at such a young age gave me many opportunities to meet so many people all around the globe. The esports scene definitely influenced me and played an extremely important role in who I am today.
Tell us about your most memorable e-sports racing moment of all time.
My victory in the Virtual World Rally Championship series. I finally became world champion there in 2016. I always wanted to win a world championship title and then it finally happened late in my career. I was close to giving up that goal, but everything came full circle and I retired straight afterwards.
What are some differences between playing esports and, well, non-esports? What are the different skills needed?
We can find more similarities than differences, which is what makes esports racing pretty special in the context of the entire esports ecosystem. If you’re a good esports racer, you already have plenty of skills needed for real racing. You also know most of the racetracks well, if not perfectly, and have a detailed understanding of how to tackle them. In the esports racing scene we also like to say, “the cars might be virtual, but the racing is real”.
But don’t get me wrong, you’re not automatically a good real racer if you’re a strong esports racer. You’d still have to get used to the feedback of real cars and the dangers of real-life driving. It’s a different mindset. But I know a lot of esports racers who have proven themselves on the asphalt already. And in terms of rules, we’re still very close to real motorsports. However, in esports racing, we can be a bit more creative regarding details like quick weather changes.
How would you differentiate between motorsport pilots using simulations for practice and esports racing?
If it’s simply for training purposes, or to learn the layout of the track and its characteristics, we wouldn’t call it esports, since the element of competition is completely missing. Esports racing is a competitive discipline on its own and not simply a way to get into motorsports. It’s certainly great to see that so many young real racing drivers are stepping into the field of esports racing. They engage with racing games, which helps both sectors to learn from each other. Seeing Max Verstappen win the Virtual 24H hours of Bathurst was a cool moment for esports racing.
Now we’re curious, do you have a driver’s license? What came first for you, virtual driving or driving in real life?
I do have a driver’s licence, but funnily enough, I don’t have a car at the moment. In my daily routine, I don’t need one. I was driving virtual cars before I had my license. There are definitely skills which you can just reproduce in real cars. I think that helped because I didn’t need that many training lessons when I got my license. However, it’s different to drive on a virtual race track than in the city. We all know that.
That’s the great thing about esports racing or esports in general. Everybody can be somebody, without many obstacles. All you need to get started is a game, and the required skill of course.
What does it feel like to drive virtually? Do you feel differently when practicing and when competing?
The difference between practicing and competing is generally tremendous. While practicing, mistakes don’t really matter; you can simply restart and try again. In competitions, though, one little mistake decides whether you’re the world champion or not. When competing in an offline tournament, the conditions are different, and you’re not in your comfort zone anymore. You play on a different monitor and usually need to use different wheels and pedals. There may be a different room temperature that can make you feel uncomfortable. And there are people watching you live and so on. In the beginning of my career, I had problems adapting to a new environment and I wasn’t just able to reproduce the times I set at home. But the more experiences I collected, the easier it got to adapt instantly. Towards the end of my career, I was able to beat all the young guns thanks to my past experience.
How do you mentally prepare for an esports race?
We could talk about this for ages. You need to be an expert of the car you’re driving and to know the track perfectly. Figuratively speaking, I’d say you should be able to drive the track blindfolded. Because you are your own race engineer in esports racing, you need to prepare your strategy. And your body, too! For me, nothing in esports overall is more exhausting than endurance sim racing. You also need to prepare mentally. Many successful international esports teams have their own psychologists who support the athletes in how to manage these high-pressure situations. Some racers do yoga to calm down before the races or listen to a specific song right before the races start, something I also did at the end of my career. And that really helped.
How has the world of esports evolved over time? How has technology brought changes to the experience?
I remember playing my first racing games and back in the day we said, “wow, look at these realistic graphics”. And then here we are in 2021, and games have photorealistic graphics! If I look at our press photos for the Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup, I can’t even tell if it’s the real race or if it’s our virtual series! These improvements don’t stop at the graphics. There are sophisticated technologies that simulate everything on the track, bringing it closer and closer to real racing. There have also been improvements in hardware, too, like rigs, wheels and pedals, which provide new experiences.
What do you expect, predict or hope for in terms of the future of esports racing?
New technology brings simulation and real racing closer to each other, which can be a blessing or a curse. I sincerely hope that esports racing will be seen as its own racing category, its own racing discipline, rather than as a talent pool for real racing. At the same time, the esports racing community on its own also needs to come together. Right now, we still have a pretty fragmented ecosystem; each segment has its own fan base and respective audience. Gathering these forces would give us the possibility to grow even more and to close the gap with other more advanced esports disciplines.
Another thing we’re working on is diversity. At the Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup we were able to include three women out of the eighteen participants in our Allstars Series. I hope that one day it will be 50-50. We’ll keep pushing on that front. I’d say that right now there are more active women in esports racing than in real racing. I hope we’re doing something right!
What advice would you give to someone who wanted to get into esports racing?
The most important thing is you have to have fun in being part of the scene and being an active esports racer because, without fun, you won’t reach the last stage. You really have to love what you do, since you certainly won’t earn any money for it in the beginning. Try different games, play with your friends, try to be a member of different racing communities and then everything comes together. You will see if you’re good enough to be on the podium or not. Esports racing overall is an extremely difficult genre and definitely not one of the “easy to learn, hard to master” esports games. That’s why patience is another key factor.
Great. Thank you, we really appreciate your time.
Thank you for having me!
