Ben Stokes will be Part of Second Formula One Virtual Race

England cricketer Ben Stokes will test his driving skills in Formula One’s virtual race. He will compete against five Formula One drivers, including Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc this weekend.

The entire sports industry has shut down owing to the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore to provide some entertainment to the viewers, Formula One is organizing virtual races. 

Ben Stokes would be part of the second virtual race. The first race of the new series was held two weeks ago on a virtual Bahrain circuit and was won by Renault’s Chinese test driver Guanyu Zhou.

Sunday’s 28 lap race, with the 20 drivers joining remotely from their homes, will be staged on a virtual version of Melbourne’s Albert Park.

The world cup winning player will team up with Thai racer Alexander Albon. 

Also, the official announcement of Stokes being part of the second race was made by the Formula One twitter handle. 

The post read, “Ready to push the boundaries… arise, @benstokes38! He’ll be racing alongside fellow Red Bull athlete @alex_albon in Sunday’s #VirtualGP #F1Esports” 

Ben Stokes also retweeted showing the preparation he is doing for the upcoming weekend. 

Ben Stokes has been preparing for 3 days

The 28-year-old has taken this task quite seriously and is preparing for the virtual race from three days.

Stokes gave a little sneak peek of his practice session on twitter. He wrote, “3 days of practice so now going to do my first custom GP with 5 races in Australia…this is incredibly hard btw so need a little assistance.” 

Red Bull will sponsor Ben Stokes. They fielded Britain’s six times cycling Olympic gold medallist Chris Hoy in the first race along with Austrian touring car driver Philipp Eng.

This would be a good change for Ben Stokes because all the ongoing and upcoming cricket series have been canceled by the respective boards in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.