EDMONTON — Currently more than 80 million people in North America alone are participating in the FIA Gran Turismo championships, a motorsport simulation video game that is the second most popular in the world right behind Call of Duty.

Of those, Mark Pinnell, an Edmontonian simulation gamer is one of them. Except he is one of the few people currently ranking in the top five of the championships and, as of Wednesday, ranks number two in the world.

The winner of the World Final will receive the same honours as a real-world motorsport champion like an Formula 1 racer.

To make it to the finals, Pinnell has to beat the millions of other players and qualify in the top 30, a rank he confidently knows he will get.

The 34-year-old warms up for 15 minutes before each game, but during it he says he doesn’t think about it.

“If you are trying to think about exactly what you are doing, or exactly what you need to be doing, in words — like trying to turn it into words in your brain — consciously you are thinking way too slow,” he said.

“By far the fastest and most efficient way to process that kind of stuff is, subconsciously, you got to not think about it. The focus is not like daydreaming, but I let my body do the work.”

The ongoing championship game is currently in its second season, and although Pinnell has a steering wheel set up at home now, 20 years ago he had to go to a friend’s house to play PlayStation video games.

“There was a competition to win a trip to Indie 500 for the top American and top Canadian and I ended up getting second in Canada. And that was without even owning a PlayStation, so I decided it was time to get my own stuff,” Pinnell said.

The 34-year-old is the only Canadian ever to make it to the GT Academy in the U.K. in 2014, a distinction he had to fight to get in.

“The competition started to find the best sim racers and let them race real cars over in England, but Canada wasn’t eligible, so I made an American account with the name ‘let_Canada_in’ and two years in a row topped their boards qualifying, but obviously couldn’t go,” he said.

In 2014, the Academy finally allowed him and three other Canadians to join the 28 American qualifiers in the United States to compete for the top 12 to the U.K.

“Needless to easy, I got first place again qualifying with the name ‘Thanks_eh’ just to be super Canadian,” he chuckled.

In the U.K., the top 12 were featured on the TV show Nissan GT Academy, and Pinnell made it all the way to the finals but lost the last race.

“Oh well; it was the best experience of my life so far and it all came form essentially a video game, so can’t really go wrong there,” he said.

The next year, it didn’t let Canada enter again.

Once Pinnell ranks in the top 30 come October, he will go to the States to compete for the top 10 spot.

The top 10 will be sent to the U.K. in November to compete for the World title.

“That is my goal to make the World Finals, and it’s looking pretty good so far,” he said.

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Pinnell says he dedicates at least six hours a day, which can sometimes extend to 12 to 16 hours.

“It’s a lot of work. It’s definitely more than a full-time job worth of racing. But if you are not going to work that hard, somebody else is.”

Pinnell live streams all his games on the website Twitch and plays in the championships every Wednesday and Saturday between 4 and 8 p.m. local time.