The F1 Sim Racing Championship returns
The Aston Martin Aramco Esports Team is back for 11 additional rounds of the rebranded 2023/2024 F1 Sim Racing Championship.
Following the first round of the 2023/2024 season that took place at the Bahrain International Circuit on 25 November 2023, F1 recently announced 11 further rounds, each visiting a different circuit across two intense weeks of competition in April and May.
The 2023/2024 season signals an important change for esports events of this scale. With the exception of a handful of one-off races, F1 Esports events have been hosted online since the Covid-19 pandemic. That's all changed this season. Each of the championship's 11 upcoming rounds will be held in a live studio environment in Stockholm, Sweden.
Rounds 2-6 will take place from 10-12 April and visit the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, Red Bull Ring, Silverstone, Spa-Francorchamps, and Zandvoort. Then, less than a month later, the final five races will take place from 7-9 May at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, Autódromo José Carlos Pace, Las Vegas Strip Circuit, Lusail International Circuit and finally Yas Marina Circuit for the season finale.
This season's Aston Martin Aramco Esports Team line-up comprises experienced sim racing drivers with rich racing pedigree.
Fabrizio Donoso's seven years of esports experience – including iRacing 24 Hours of Daytona success and the runner-up spot in the 2017 F1 Esports Series – will be invaluable to the team this season. John Evans, meanwhile, specialises in top-flight single seater competition with top-three results in several prestigious F1 championships. Similarly, Simon Weigang has been part of the F1 Esports Pro Draft since 2019 driving for Alpine, Alfa Romeo and Haas before joining Aston Martin in 2022.
In such a tight field of drivers, preparation is not only essential but extensive as well, with the Aston Martin Aramco Esports Team practicing for upwards of 10 hours per day.
For the uninitiated, the F1 Sim Racing Championship could be a shock to the system. Such is the competitiveness of the field, it is unsurprising for 15 drivers to be separated by as many seconds. As a result, winning is far from a certainty at any F1 Esports race.
John Evans, Aston Martin Aramco Esports Team Driver said:
"We're all quite excited. This is only my second season so I've never raced in a live environment. It'll be a different experience for a lot of the drivers. I think you'll notice a bit of a shake up in the grid, because the people that have never experienced it before might thrive under the pressure or they might fumble under pressure. So that's going to be really interesting to see.
"The favourite to win the constructors this year has to be Ferrari. Obviously, everyone's going in to win it so I would say they've got a target on their backs. On paper, they have the best driver line-up but you've also you've got Mercedes as well and the same goes for Red Bull. Our pace looks good, but a lot of teams are around the same performance-wise, because it's the end of the game cycle. It's just about putting it all together in a live session, about controlling the nerves.
"Aston Martin are my favourite road cars, even when I was a kid I used to look at them all the time. So when I first joined, it was definitely a bit surreal. Obviously, it's a British team and I'm British, so that makes it a bit more special. As for Fab [Fabrizio Donoso] and Simon [Weigang], they're really good to work with. We get on so well, even off the track. It's pretty much the perfect match I would say."
How to watch
You can follow the F1 Sim Racing Championship in 2024 via Formula 1's Twitch channel or F1 Esports on YouTube.
Schedule
Rounds 2 and 3 will take place on Wednesday, 10 April with Qualifying at 11:00 BST, followed by the races at 16:00. The same format is applied for Thursday, 11 April for Rounds 4 & 5 as well as Friday, 12 April for Rounds 6 & 7.
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