Racing Simulator Leaderboards: A Cool Performance Case Study

Cool Performance builds premium racing simulators — the rigs used by professional drivers, enthusiasts, and brands running events worldwide. When their simulators appear at a trade show or brand activation, every guest who climbs in and sets a lap time wants to know the same thing: where did I rank?

For years, the answer came from a magnetic board.

The Top Gear Board Problem

Cool Performance used to rank drivers the way Top Gear did: names on magnetic strips, reshuffled by hand after every session. It made for good television, but at a busy event it meant a staff member permanently stationed at the board, moving names around while the queue grew.

"With the growth of the simulator market, clients were seeking to improve the user experience and add a fully branded and visually striking solution. Using a manual leaderboard was time intensive and visually it looked poor."

The clients hiring their simulators — agencies and brands putting on events — expected something that looked as premium as the rigs themselves.

Lap Times Straight from the Team's Phones

The team went searching for a digital leaderboard solution and landed on Leaderboarded.

"We were impressed with the wide versatility of use cases it was able to be utilised for."

The event workflow is now simple. As guests finish their sessions, event staff enter each driver's lap time from their own devices. The board re-sorts itself instantly, fastest lap on top, down to the millisecond — displayed on big screens next to the simulators so the whole venue can follow the standings.

A Different Brand at Every Event

Most Cool Performance events are someone else's show — a corporate client or sponsor whose name is on everything from the rigs to the backdrop. The leaderboard has to match.

"We utilise the branding features extensively and can now utilise the custom CSS for advanced editing to display the data in a more aesthetic format for clients."

Each event gets a board restyled with the client's colours and logo using the customization options, so the leaderboard reads as part of the client's activation rather than a third-party tool bolted onto it.

700 Lap Times in Three Days

The switch freed the person who used to operate the magnetic board, and removed the physical limit on how many drivers could appear in the rankings.

"For our biggest event we had over 700 participants submit a time over the course of 3 days."

Every one of those drivers appeared on the board the moment their time was entered. Afterwards, the full standings were exported via CSV and handed to the client, who used them to award prizes for the fastest laps.

The format works for good causes, too. At one event the leaderboard powered a charity competition: the drivers who set the best lap times chose which charity received the prize donations.

"The time saving is significant, allowing our events team to simply put the lap data on their devices rather than operate a manual leaderboard."

Running competitions at your own events? Create a leaderboard for free and have it on a big screen today — or if you need a fully custom-designed scoreboard for a client or sponsor, see custom event scoreboards.