The egg or the chicken?

Due to some recent events I came to some interesting question:

Guys who played a lot of racing sims and are really really good in it seem to have an easy entry into real life motorsports, if they get an opportunity. Taking Norbi Kiss as the major example, but also some guys who now entered the german OPC Race Camp seem to have a very very good start there. So my question: Are they that good in racing sims, because they have an overall good racing talent and would also be good in those real life racing things without playing race games? Or are those racing sims - our beloved genre - a real good practice? Improve the talents of those racers and give a decent feel for the car and ideas for how to react to fast occuring race situations?

I have an idea, but I don't really know it by now... First lets see, how far our young guys will get :)