Sim-Racing professional used Michael Schumacher's ultimate cheat code to win an F125 championship race

Sim-racing professional and three-time world champion Jarno Opmeer caused controversy in the F125 Championship after using the ultimate cheat code, birthed by Michael Schumacher, to win a race.

During the Formula 1 summer break, attention was turned to the sim-racing professional crowd, which saw the best virtual racers line up around the Silverstone circuit.

Sim-racing is no longer the gimmick of old, as you might remember from the Noughties playing Forza with a simple PlayStation steering wheel.

Nowadays, the gaming titles are perfect replications of real racing conditions, and one F125 championship race saw a magnificent piece of ingenuity ‘win’ the race.

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Sim-racing professional Jarno Opmeer ‘wins’ controversial F125 Championship race with Silverstone exploit

The state-of-the-art simulators almost perfectly replicate real-life racing and have even seen racers get their shot in motorsport, such as the Gran Turismo and 24 Hours of Le Mans icon Jaan Mardenborough.

In fact, the circuits are so inch-perfect that F1 racers like Lando Norris and Max Verstappen spend hours on end live-streaming on Twitch in their own setup.

With that, there’s also the F125 championship esports circuits, where sim-racing professionals go virtual bumper to bumper.

However, the most recent Silverstone race was shrouded in controversy as three-time world champion Jarno Opmeer took a leaf out of the Michael Schumacher playbook and used the ultimate pit lane cheat code.

Riding in third place on the final lap with a matter of a few hundredths of a second separating the leaders, Opmeer decided to enter the pit lane to finish the race.

With the pit lane finishing line being closer than the actual line, Opmeer managed to undercut the leader and shock everyone, ‘winning’ by 0.008 seconds.

This has to go into the sim racing hall
Of fame @jarno_opmeer 100 IQ win from the pit lane #F125 pic.twitter.com/DaZhVyxmFQ

— Anthony (@puortoanthony) August 6, 2025

However, the celebrations were short-lived.

The PGSL – the governing body for the competition that Opmeer was racing in – awarded the savvy driver with a three-second penalty.

“Any on-track behaviour that goes against the principles of fair competition or sportsmanship is prohibited,” the Racing Code indicated.

Despite the quick thinking, Opmeer ended in fourth place.

Of course, Opmeer wasn’t happy with this decision.

“Only championship in the world where you can get penalized for something not stated in the rules,” the player said on X, formerly Twitter.

The oldest trick in Schumacher’s book

This bizarre incident isn’t the first of its kind, though, as F1 legend Michael Schumacher did so back at Silverstone in 1998.

Using that shortened pit lane finishing line saw Schumacher won the race before he was made to serve a stop-and-go penalty.

This unprecedented rulebook exploit meant that Schumacher wasn’t penalized, and the legislation was changed to ensure it couldn’t happen again.

Opmeer’s cheekiness was slightly different from that of Schumacher, as he didn’t need to serve a penalty and simply took a shorter route to the chequered flag.

Despite the end result, it was almost a stroke of complete genius. It may have been very different if the race had been this close on the real-life tracks, rather than the esports circuit.

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