ENCINITAS — Behind Bier Garden and Culture Brewing on South Coast Highway 101, a reporter with The Coast News recently topped 100 mph in a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car.
The reporter was driving the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Austria — at least virtually — as part of a state-of-the-art simulated racing experience featuring a wraparound video display and a realistic racing seat, steering wheel and pedals. The integrated system provides real-time feedback based on the forces a driver would feel at those speeds while making split-second driving decisions.
Except for the reporter’s crashes into the track barriers, which were presumably much easier to clean up — and far less expensive — in the simulated world than they would have been in real life.
“The vision was to create a space that’s a real hangout, a real hub for people who care about racing,” said John Reikes, co-owner of Turn Zero Sim Racing. “The goal was to really go top-notch on realism.”
Leucadia husband-and-wife team Reikes and Sarah Masterson opened Turn Zero Sim Racing in June as a place where newcomers can experience high-level racing, experienced drivers can sharpen their skills, and like-minded enthusiasts can gather to talk shop.
The space features 12 full-motion simulators, along with lounge seating and high-top tables designed to encourage community beyond the immersive driving experience, which Reikes said has “become a bigger part of this than I thought it was going to be.”
He said he originally expected the hangout areas to attract less-experienced racers, while veteran enthusiasts would spend most of their time behind the wheel.
“I pictured a lot of the more dedicated sim racers would come in, do an hour and leave. And that’s not what I’m seeing or hearing,” Reikes said. “This can be a really solitary thing sometimes. You’re in your house, and you might have a great simulator, and, yeah, you’re able to chat with other people that you’re racing against, but they’re distant. You still feel like you’re a little bit in this cocoon doing it.
“So this creates a place where there’s actual community. There’s real people and it turns it into a social activity. So I’ve loved hearing that and I love seeing that.”
Masterson said she fell for the sport the first time the family raced together with their two children.
“You can talk to each other, you can bug each other a little bit,” she said. “It just ups the fun factor so much when you’re doing it together as a group and have that experience.”
The business combines Reikes’ technology background with Masterson’s experience in building startups.
Masterson said everything fell into place once they found the downtown Encinitas location.
“The relationship with Corner Pizza, with Bier Garden, with Culture, the welcome to the community piece is not just a hashtag,” she said. “It’s so cool to be a part of this community, with these business owners, and we love Encinitas. We feel so lucky to live here.”
Reikes said he has leaned on his technical background to minimize friction points, noting that “a lot of custom software has gone into this place — a lot of testing different hardware and software packages.”
He also compared driving the simulator for the first time to the feedback involved in riding a skateboard or snowboard.
“You want to be smooth, and you want to listen to the car,” Reikes said. “There’s a reason we have all this force feedback coming from the steering wheel, the brake pedal, the belts, the motion base. All of that is so you can listen to what the car is doing and adjust, not so you can fight it.”
Any other advice for a first-timer?
“I try to tell everybody who comes in to take a breath and set the ego aside for a second,” Reikes said. “I can’t tell you how often we get somebody who comes in, never raced, and their first question is, ‘What’s the lap record for this?’
“You are not going to set the lap record your first time in or your second time in. There’s a reason there is such a thing as a professional race car driver. You don’t learn it in 30 minutes. But that’s also what makes it so fun: it takes a really long time to get good at it. It takes a lot of precision.”
Turn Zero Sim Racing is located at 687 S Coast Hwy 101 Ste 151, Encinitas.
