When Cooper Webster describes his family, it appears to me that he didn’t have much choice in becoming a driver. His dad took him BMX racing from the age of four, his uncle raced go-karts and his mother’s side of the family own a motorsport business.
No surprise, then, that after his early years of cycling, he moved into karting for the next seven years of his childhood, despite the obvious financial challenges that present themselves in countless motorsport careers.
Webster, now aged 22, still lives with those who gave him his passion just outside of Melbourne, in the Australian state of Victoria, where he was born.
This location presents some strains on his iRacing career, as Porsche Tag Heuer Esports Supercup races start at 4:30 am in Australia.
“It’s hard to live healthy when the races are that early in the morning, because when you’re awake at night and sleeping through the day… your body freaks out,” Webster tells me.
It interrupts normal family life too, missing out on things because he’s sleeping when others are awake, and eating meals separately from his family, all things most other competitors don’t contend with.
Webster feels as though this has held his performances back somewhat in the past, but 2025 was the year when he got used to the unusual race times better than any other.
In the end, he won the PESC title by 19 points, a margin which perhaps flatters the competition, as in the final race with the championship already decided, Webster had by far his worst race of the season, finishing 20th in the feature at Le Mans.
It has also affected real-world racing. Webster has travelled abroad from an early age in kart and car racing – for example, to the UK, India and Macau – all in the last two years.
However, perhaps surprisingly, he told me that being an Australian sim driver is harder, with its early mornings and odd sleep schedule, than the travel of an Australian real-world driver.
He acknowledged that: “It was hard flying to England for all the rounds of GB4 (in 2023) because it was so far away, I had to get good at managing the jet lag. But once I was at the track, it was exactly the same as being in Australia”.
Clearly, by the end of the GB4 season, he had perfected this, as he won all three races of the final weekend of the season at Donington Park on his way to second in the championship.
Although to a lesser degree, he faced the same challenges in India at the end of 2023 while taking part in the inaugural Indian F4 Championship, which he won comfortably.
His sim racing PESC success was his first world title, but he has been in contention at this level before. In last year’s IndyCar Buttkicker iRacing Pro Series, the championship was looking good for a while until real-life racing came in the way, on that occasion, the Macau Grand Prix.
Most would describe this as Webster’s highest-profile event, and he put on a strong showing. He would finish the event in fifth position, making up ten places in the main race after slipping back to 15th in the qualifying race.
Webster told me that sim racing helped his preparation for the event:
“I used the sim to learn the track and get familiar with it because the venue was so challenging and practice was limited, so it was a perfect example of how to use a sim to help in real life”.
He also said that his first open-wheel opportunity in the Australian S5000 championship, utilising cars that make over 500 horsepower, was made easier because of his simulator experience with rear-wheel drive cars.
It never started out as a real-world racing tool for Webster, though.
“It was just to mess around with my mates from karting,” he enthused.
“We all loved racing, so we all got computers and got online to race each other when we weren’t at the track… but I enjoyed it so much and figured out you could do it competitively, and I was hungry for that”.
He’s now been with the Oracle Red Bull Sim Racing squad for over three years.
Towards the end of our chat, Webster tells me about his lack of future plans in real-world racing.
“Nothing’s planned, yet,” he says with a hint of dejection in his tone.
“But I’ve been in this position before in my career, and some things pop up, but unfortunately, nothing on the horizon. I’m not too fazed by it, we all know what motorsport is like. The cost can be astronomical”.
“I haven’t had any big titles on the sim, so this is my first big one and maybe it gets my name out there a bit more,” a couple of weeks out from his title win. Based on his hunger for success in the sim and real world, alongside a clear progression in his results, the next big thing – and win – for Cooper Webster is surely just around the corner.
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