“Some college friends who were into high performance driving experiences — basically track-based — they took me to [a race track] with my own car … [And they also] told me that there’s a way to improve [racing skills] without actually driving in the car,” Anteater Sim Racing President Maxwell Chen told New University. “He pointed me to something called a ‘racing sim.’ So, I built my own racing sim.”
In his first year as a mechanical engineering student, Maxwell Chen founded Anteater Sim Racing at UCI from the ground-up. Yokohama Tires, FSELA Repair Center, Project Dream, TPM Parts and Sora Gumi sponsor the club and its affiliated off-campus racing team.
“Anteater Sim Racing is a club [whose] mission is to provide the UCI community with an affordable and inclusive entrance in motor sports,” Chen said. “Basically, what we do is we introduce people — in this case, the campus students — to motor sports using sim racing.”
According to Chen, sim racing is a simulation-based racing activity where participants can drive cars using computer software. Sim racing, or simulation racing, traces back to the 1970s when “computer technology started making its way into homes,” according to Apex Race Centre. The underdeveloped technology contained basic graphics and controls that allowed people to play rudimentary games such as “Night Driver” and “Turbo.”
Sim racing developed further in the 1990s. The Papyrus Design Group released “IndyCar Racing” with realistic physics and multiplayer options in 1993, beginning a new stage for sim racing. In the early 2000s, notable games “Gran Turismo” and “iRacing” took the center stage on simulation racing’s overall popularity.
Now, sim racing is a faction within the esports world, where competitors can virtually race in the FIA-Certified Gran Turismo Championships and Formula 1 ESports Pro Series for cash prizes.
After realizing how similar real-life racing could be to sim racing, Chen began building a racing simulator himself.
“I realized that almost 90 percent of the stuff that I practiced in the sim is basically identical to real-life,” Chen said. “For example, when you take a turn and you let go of the steering wheel, the steering wheel will unwind itself … it’s called the ‘force feedback;’ it kind of fights against you to simulate the traction levels [in real-life racing].”
According to Chen, there are different aspects included in building a racing simulator. Two of them include the wheel feedback and pedal mechanics.
“If you have a manual: three pedals. Automatic: two pedals. And then you can press on them, and then based on how hard and how deep you press them, you can modulate your brake and your throttle input,” Chen said. “That would contribute to a smoother — whether simulator or real-life — [drive].”
The Anteater Sim Racing club is affiliated with the off-campus endurance racing team, also founded by Chen. In 2024, the Anteater Sim Racing team competed in two real-life races in Bakersfield and Sonoma, Calif.
The team placed third during their debut at the 24 Hours of Lemons (24H Lemons) race on Buttonwillow Raceway Park track in Bakersfield, prevailing after their car would intermittently stop on the track. The pit crew swapped out various car batteries and alternator parts until they discovered that a grounding issue caused the electrical system to malfunction in the 1990 Mazda Miata’s car battery, according to the club’s Vice President and pit crew member Frank Nguyen.
“[The car] was working fine, nothing happened, and then at the race day itself, the electrical system on the car itself starts to mess up … we come back to the track, we try to fix the grounding issue to make sure the electric circuit is grounded properly and it turns out that that was the fix,” Nguyen told New University.
The 24H Lemons race in Sonoma placed the team in 20th out of around 134 cars on the track. During the practice session, a mechanical issue caused the engine hood to fly off, and the pit crew executed an emergency fix in the pouring rain.
“I think we did pretty well despite the cars that we had,” Chen said.
Anteater Sim Racing at UCI hosts three types of events: simulator tryouts and training, World of Racing field trips and track days with Rev at UCI. According to Chen, these events aim to attract potential racing enthusiasts and provide an affordable way to move from sim racing to real-life racing.
“We have a lot of people that, you know, [are] brought all together by our shared love of racing and motorsports. And everytime we have a general meeting or a club event, we’ll just be having fun,” Nguyen said. “We also talk a lot about racing, which, you know, I like. That’s what I like about the club: how we have one passion to bring everyone together.”
For students interested in simulator racing, visit Anteater Sim Racing at UCI’s Instagram page.
Alyssa Villagonzalo is a Features Apprentice for the winter 2025 quarter. She can be reached at akvillag@uci.edu.
Edited by Kaelyn Kwon and Logan Heine.