Aston Martin Red Bull Racing is in Melbourne this week for the first round of the 2019 Formula One season – but that isn’t our only racing project setting off on a new adventure this week. Red Bull Racing is very pleased to announce the expansion of our Esports team through a partnership with G2 Esports, who will provide operational support and talent management, in order to create an ultra-competitive sim racing squad.
The boundaries continue to blur between empirical and virtual racing, with sim racing getting ever closer in fidelity to the responses of a physical car – which is why it’s so very popular with our F1 drivers. The drivers confirmed for the professional 2019 Red Bull Racing Esports squad are: Robin Betka (Germany); Cem Bolukbasi (Turkey); Graham Carroll (UK); Nestor Garcia (Spain); Patrik Holzmann (Germany); Sebastian Job (UK); Aurélien Mallet (France); Frederik Rasmussen (Denmark), Joni Törmälä (Finland) and Zach Taylor (USA).
Five of the sim racers on the team will already be familiar to F1 fans, having represented Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso in the 2018 F1 Esports Pro Series. Last year was our first foray into the world of sim racing and given the popularity of the programme, we have decided to broaden our footprint, with a view to competing not only in the F1 Esports Pro Series but also in the iRacing World Championships (iRacing), GT Sport FIA Championship (Gran Turismo), Forza Racing (Forza) and LeMans Esports (Forza) to name a few. We also expect to enter further tournaments based around Project Cars 2, rFactor 2, Assetto Corsa and RaceRoom.
“It is tremendously exciting to see this new direction being taken by the Team” says Aston Martin Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner. “We took part in F1 Esports last year and the response was incredibly positive. We are a Team who has always backed youth and this opportunity provides us with the potential to engage with a wider and younger audience, whilst becoming competitive in a rapidly expanding and exciting new discipline. I can’t profess to be an expert in the field yet but I look forward to seeing how our rapidly expanding Team fares against the best sim racers in the world.”
