I'm baffled to see people trying to defend Abt in the #FormulaE gate on the pretext of "iT's OnLy A gAmE". One not interested in motorsports could easily say real racing is as much of a game than simracing is, only with much more expensive toys. Here's my take on all this :

Focusing on that one incident : it doesn't matter if it was held on a game or anything else. Key thing is it was an official @FIAFormulaE run event doubled as a charity event. By taking part in such an event means you're tying your image to those of all parties involved.

The organizers, the charity, your team/employer and your sponsors all rely on that to generate something, be it revenue or marketing. By lying to everyone about his implication in the event, Abt breached probably several contracts (his own with his team & his team's with FE).

No matter how "serious" the actual race spirit was, we're talking about a widely broadcasted event with money revolving around it. Any company, any sporting organization will sack you if you send someone else do what you should be doing.

No matter if the event was unusual for @FIAFormulaE it was still officially ran / supported by them, and probably subject to the usual or updated regulations. Their decision on their side is final and shouldn't be disputed.

On @audisport 's side, it's a business decision regarding an employee breaching contract by not doing his job and actively impacting their image negatively. If a company like that deems this incident serious enough to be worthy of a suspension... (1/2)

... who are you to say they shouldn't make a big deal of it ? Especially when you see the outburst this just generated on social medias. Especially when they're actually partially owned by the father of the guy who got punished.

Now, let's broaden the subject a bit and talk more about simracing / real racing dynamics in this period. Some real racing drivers are being incredibly salty about that, and are obviously just actively trying to push simracing into the ground. This is stupid on several levels :

- Simulators have been a part of high level real life racing for years now. By talking about simracing like it was witchcraft, you show you don't understand it, what interest simulators can have for racing teams and just look like a boomer.

- Simracing is ever expanding, and it'll probably keep growing exponentially in the following years. It reaches more and more people everyday, generating easy, cheap visibility that actually serves real life motorsports as it reaches lots of people who were never into them before

By being agressive towards an environment many people enjoy and touching the future generations of racers / viewers / racing workers / clients, you're globally generating a lot of hate towards you, look stupid, outdated, and decreasing your PR / pro value to racing teams.

- By trying to minimize such bad behaviors because you don't like the setting / fear it will kill your job (which it won't) / fear you won't perform well enough, you're just condoning this kind of stuff.

- What you're calling "just a game" is actually called esports, which can generate millions and millions of dollars, with pro athletes actually putting full workday hours at least into it (sometimes way more), and provides better ROI and visibility than most other sports.

So, in the end, does Abt derseve what he's getting ? All involved parties seem to think so, and he's actually braindead stupid for not seeing this coming. Especially since there was nothing hard for him in that to respect his engagements or call it off or negociate beforehand.

To all racers saying they're gonna delete Twitch / sell their sim rigs or whatever : please do, go away. Nobody needs you. Simracing will probably be healthier without your toxicity.
To all racers who still enjoy simracing : we're looking forward to race you guys !