Gerald Streets, owner of SKR Sim Racing in Lansdale, uses a wireless keyboard to program a course as a virtual crew fuels up his racecar. Photo by Dan Sokil | The Reporter.
Virtual racing center now open in former newsroom
A racing hot spot has come to town, just a block off Main Street, overlooking an S-turn at Vine Street and Derstine Avenue.
Strap into a seat, and the fun begins. You’ll be transported into the driver’s seat of the fastest, and fanciest, vehicles you can imagine at the new SKR Sim Racing Center in Lansdale.
“This is my prototype, that I built just to see how people would respond to it — and everybody seemed to love it,” said owner Gerald Streets.
From hobby to business
Located at 307 Derstine Avenue, in the former newsroom of The Reporter, just above the former site of Shane and Pepper Candle Company, SKR Sim Racing is the outgrowth of a pre-pandemic hobby that Streets said started at home and just kept growing. Each of the five, so far, racing seats is outfitted with three monitors, surround-sound speakers, and the latest in hydraulics and haptics so drivers see, hear and feel like it’s real.
Gerald Streets, owner of SKR Sim Racing in Lansdale, shows off the racing lights at SKR’s racing center at 307 Derstine Avenue.“I’ve always been into speed, and I caught wind of the sim racing thing maybe a year before Covid. I had some free time, so I built a prototype that looked pretty bad. There were wires everywhere, and I was just trying to get the haptics to work,” he said.
After plenty of research on how to “enhance the immersion, so the lines between reality and being in the car were kinda blurred,” Streets started shopping for equipment, developed a design, and built his own home racing seat, then another. The setup in the new racing center is the third version, with wireless keyboard controls and Windows-based software at each seat to make sure all racers are on the same track.
Racing signs and decor add to the atmosphere at SKR Sim Racing at 307 Derstine Avenue in Lansdale.“The first one was very rudimentary. I was using low-frequency emitters, and there were cables everywhere — but once you’re in it, it was good. Once I got an understanding of how stuff worked, I just kept looking at how I can improve the design,” he said.
“When you’re on the track, if there’s a car there, you hear it there. If there’s four of them behind you, you hear them. And even sitting there, the way I have this set up, is that the sound gets trapped — it really does isolate the sound in the pod they’re in.”
And yes, he says: drivers can hear when they trash talk each other.
What you need to ‘drive’
What do you need? Clean shoes, clean clothes, and gloves, either your own, or driving gloves available at the racing center. Drivers can start by learning road or race etiquette basics, then take lessons in high-speed performance driving, or bring a group and compete.
“There’s a one-hour minimum for racing together, but we can put you all on the same track on a practice session. We can put you all on the same track in a heat session, where you’ve got 30 minutes of practice, and then your qualifying, and then heat one, two, three. Or if you just want to have an endurance race, you can race for 60 minutes,” he said.
“When people come to race together, it’s broadcast on that screen right there: You’ll have a live track map that shows each individual car on the track, plus the names of the turns, and then how close they are to each other, just like when you’re watching a race,” he said.
During a visit by The Reporter, Streets downloaded a software update, then buckled up and ran through a race on one of his favorite tracks on a simulated course in Watkins Glen, riding a white Mercedes racecar, with the steering wheel lighting up as he took turns, and the seat rumbling as he steered from the main racetrack into the repair lane. SKR — Street Knights Racing, “like knights in shining armor” — uses racing software that also remembers users, so your favorite ride and your crash history will be saved for repeat visits.
“You’ll get an email that’ll contain your laps that you ran that day, and the telemetry data to show what you did on your best and worst lap; where you were on the brake; where you were on the gas, and what track you were on. You can also compare against other people that have driven the same car on the same track,” he said.
Gerald Streets, owner of SKR Sim Racing in Lansdale, leans into a virtual turn while racing.All of that data can be used when drivers square off in tournaments, with free driving time at stake, and a leaderboard: “You can come and check, to make sure that you’re still at the top…or not.”
The center has already drawn dozens of likes via sneak previews on local Facebook groups, and Streets said he’s already been visited by riders who remember races at the Hatfield Speedway, a racetrack near Forty Foot Road that operated until the mid-1960s.
Open for racing
SKR had a recent soft opening, with a grand opening coming soon — watch their Facebook page and website for specifics. Five racing chairs are set up, plus a lounge area near the wall-size TV where the live races will be shown. The rest of the room is decorated with racing flags, model cars, and signs — “I wasn’t speeding, I was qualifying” — and plenty of curtains to keep the sunshine out, and the roar of the engines in.
“People ask, how realistic can it be? My response is, ‘Just try it,'” Street said, before strapping in and demonstrating a race.
“It’s a different experience every time. If you get in that car, and you drive a Porsche GT-3, it’s not going to be the same as if you drive a Ferrari GT-3. It responds based on the car that you’re in, based on the actual vehicle,” he said.
Right now the doors are open on a soft basis on weekdays, with hours still being refined, and racers can ride for 30, 60 or 120-minute sessions or sign up for several tiers of monthly memberships. Racers must be age 18 or over, or registered in an identified racing program for kids, and Streets said he’s open to partnerships with tech schools and other businesses for kids to learn the ins and outs of all things automotive.
“One of the big motivators behind why we started this, is there are a lot of car manufacturers, their racing divisions, have identified there’s an outrageous financial barrier of entry to get into racing,” he said.
“A lot of these companies are putting on programs, through the software we use, to find talent. And a lot of these people are transitioning from simulator drivers to real drivers. And there are programs to get people on the race teams: changing tires, working on cars, there’s a lot going on, and they’ve identified that money has been the reason why there’s talent they just never see. So this is bridging the gap, giving them the medium to see what they’ve got, and making a career out of it,” he said.
SKR — Sim Racing Center is located at 307 Derstine Avenue, Suite 202; for more information call (610) 332-1692, email Racing@SKRSimRacing.com, visit www.SKRSimRacing.com or follow “SKR – Sim Racing” on Facebook.
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