SRO has today announced the revamped British GT Esports Championship will join their roster of esports competition, including amongst others the GT World Challenge Europe Esports. The Championship, which has been run for the last 6 seasons by ‘The Online Racing Association’ (TORA) will now be brought in house and managed by SRO technical partners AK Informatica exclusively on the PC platform.
SRO’s official game, Assetto Corsa Competizione, will host the Championship, and with the recent release of the British GT DLC pack, there is now a healthy calendar with UK tracks and the majority of real-world British GT manufacturers represented in the game.
The calendar will consist of 5 x 1 hour races at all the UK tracks in the game spread over a 6 week period, starting with Oulton Park later this month (March 21st) and finishing with the Championship’s #DoningtonDecider at, you guessed it, Donington Park on April 25th. The races will have a mandatory pitstop, but no driver change.
With GT4 cars now in the game, the Championship will mirror the real-world and have multi-class grids. However, very unlike real-world the drivers and qualification is very different. The 20 car GT3 field will be made up exclusively of real-world British GT drivers and teams, while the 20 car GT4 field will only be for sim racers, but only those who qualify….
Yes that’s right, the GT4 class will be filled with open qualifiers, at least for the first round anyway, with Hot Lap Qualifying open for 3 days preceding the race and setting the entry list. It gets even more exciting as only the top 10 GT4 finishers from each race are automatically qualified for the next race, meaning if you’re 11th down you need to try your luck at the qualifiers once more.
Not only could this provide huge variation with the entries, but it will also be interesting to see how the very best sim racers fair against professional drivers, albeit in the virtual-world. Yes the GT4’s are slower over a lap, but could there be less lapping? Crazy multi-class battles? Or could we even see qualifying upsets with superstar GT4 lap times? We will have to wait and see.
The Champions from both classes get an automatic entry into the sister SRO Esports Championship, GT World Challenge Europe Esports, with the GT4 Champion also bagging a Fanatec sim racing bundle and Intelligent Money British GT VIP experience to a round of their choosing.
SRO has reached out to real-world teams to fill the GT3 category, but racers who think they have what it takes in the GT4 category can pre-register for the Round 1 Hot Lap Qualifying which goes live on March 15th.
Coverage of the Championship will be on the SRO’s YouTube and Twitch channels, as well as British GT’s Facebook page.
2021 BRITISH GT ESPORTS CHAMPIONSHIP CALENDAR
- March 21 – Oulton Park (Hot lap qualifying: March 15-18)
- March 28 – Snetterton (Hot lap qualifying: March 22-25)
- April 4 – Brands Hatch (Hot lap qualifying: March 29 – April 1)
- April 11 – Silverstone (Hot lap qualifying: April 5-8)
- April 25 – Donington Park (Hot lap qualifying: April 19-22)
Full press release – https://www.britishgt.com/news/689
