Twelve months ago, Rudy van Buren was working a nine-to-five job in the Netherlands.
When we sit down to speak, during the German Grand Prix weekend in late July, the towering 6"2 Dutchman -- towering, that is, for a motor racing driver -- is dressed in the orange, white and black kit of McLaren's F1 team. It's official gear -- Van Buren is part of the team as its F1 simulator driver after winning the team's World's Fastest Gamer competition at the tail-end of 2017. The perks of the job are plentiful. Earlier that day he had thrashed around the Hockenheim circuit with me and other journalists in a McLaren supercar; a week earlier he had driven up Goodwood's legendary hill in Emerson Fittipaldi's 1974 title-winning McLaren.