Logitech G x Bianca Bustamante - Drive To Win

Bianca’s childhood and teenage years were spent in the fastlane of her racing passion. Today, with already a dozen years on the track, she still has her whole life ahead of her. But entering the sport as Filipina, a child and now a woman — she felt that to be successful in pursuing her passion, she couldn’t take it lightly.

Encouraged by her father, she started karting when she was just three, “Racing was something that I had to do — to live, to have a career. I revolved my whole world around motorsport.”

She went door-to-door asking for support to buy fuel or tires so she could race karts. She begged for a Logitech GT Force sim racing wheel for Christmas. She sat behind it as often as her parents would let her. She tried to embody lessons her father taught her on professionalism, even as a young girl, no one would catch her stalling.

At 18, Bianca may already be an accomplished professional athlete and cultural icon to some, but after every race she still asks herself what’s next? There’s a consideration made on the cost of her every choice, apparent when she speaks. “I know that my losses are where I learn the most. I'm willing to bleed for this sport.” She´s searching for her ‘Everest’ and once she finds it, the next step is to climb it.

En route to becoming a  multiple-time winner of  ‘Karter of the Year’ in Asia, Bianca has fine-tuned her resolve: a strict gym regiment, lots of time on the simulator and a stone-cold professional rationale. “I can't be immature. I can't be 18, I can't be a woman — I'm a racing driver. That's what I am. And that's what I will always be.”

But Bianca is all those things she feels she cannot be; a tragedy of success.

There can be an irony in racing, in passion — you can live life too fast and other people just can't keep up anymore. Always on the road, new faces everyday, Bianca jokes that her most consistent relationships are with her car and with her fans At least social media can keep up.

Bianca takes time to document her journey along her ascent for her more than 2.5 million social media followers in what she calls ‘shared stories’. She talks candidly with her fans about her successes and struggles, her highs and lows which creates a feedback loop of inspiration for the young racer. “My fans inspire me much more than I think inspire them, to be honest.” 

Traditionally, practicing for motorsport requires a wealth of resources, but with the rapid development of the simracing community and equipment, Bianca said Logitech G broke the barriers to reality for new talent, like herself. Especially since the pandemic spun so many sports for a loop.

“Through the pandemic, the only way I could feel that adrenaline and salvage that passion was through the cutting-edge developments Logitech G put into the sim racing world.”

Just recently, Bianca became the first female ever to join McLaren’s Driver Development Programme, moving up from the team’s F1 Academy seat last year, Bianca is a testament to the inclusivity and diversification the sport has undergone.

To her, simracing has become a great equalizer of the sport, giving opportunities and experiences to stay the course of their passions to make it onto the track and onto their own podiums someday. They’ll still have to get past her though.