With the upcoming 2022 Formula 1 Esports Pro Championship season on the horizon, Alpine Racing’s Esports team, Alpine Esports, has a fresh look for the upcoming year. The trio of drivers were unveiled on Thursday (7th July 2022) and as expected, it won’t include two of the former drivers from the 2021 season, Nicolas Longuet or Fabrizio Donoso.
Returning to the team will be a rookie from the 2021 campaign, their young Hungarian driver Patrik Sipos. Alongside Sipos will be two new drivers to the team – Samuel Bean and Filip Prešnajder. The trio were chosen after an intense selection process during the F1 Esports Pro Exhibition.
This year’s new-look Alpine team holds the title of the youngest combination of all 10 teams. Sipos and Bean are both aged 18-years-old. Prešnajder, entering his third season in the series now on his third new team, is the ‘elder’ driver numerically, currently 19-years-old.
Sipos, in his rookie season last year, was able to score points for the team and competed in other sim racing efforts outside of F1 Esports, including in the Le Mans Virtual Series. Prešnajder, from Slovakia, joined as a Ferrari Driver Acadamy Esports in 2020, also scoring points in his rookie season before moving to Alfa Romeo’s Esports team in 2021.
The Spaniard, Bean, is a fresh rookie for the 2022 campaign. After a successful showing in the F1 Esports Challenger Series, finishing fifth of the PC players overall, Bean looks to carry that pace into the top level of F1 Esports competition.
Richard Arnaud will serve as the Team Principal Alpine Esports this season, and he believes the young lineup can match what was accomplished last season with a fifth place constructor’s standing finish. Still no word on when exactly things will get underway for the 2022 season, but if it’s anything like last year, we’ll probably have to wait a little longer to find out.
