Indian motorsport takes to the virtual space amid the coronavirus lockdown

The motorsport community has taken to the virtual world in order to get their motorsport fix in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The same goes for India and eSports leagues established by some familiar names in the domestic motorsport community.

 Indian Sim Racing League (ISRL)

This series is organised by eight-time national karting champion Rayomand Banajee and IR eSports in association with Volkswagen Motorsport India as a platform to help Indian motorsports grow at the grassroots level via esports. The series sees participants compete in the iRacing game, using the FIA homologated Dallara Formula 3 car, with identical setups, using his or her own simulator over a 5 round long season. 

Season 2 saw racers from 14 cities compete for top honors, with Chennai’s Sai Prithvi garnering 252 points to claim the title. Joining him was Thrissur’s Abdul Fattah in second place with 191 points and Mumbai’s Raiden Samervel third with 172 points. The championship winner will get a testing program with a Volkswagen Motorsport race car. The second placed overall finisher will receive kart training sessions with Rayo Racing with third place being awarded a free race entry for IndiKarting.  Such is the popularity of this series that Season 3 has already been announced for May 8 with registrations open.

Ultimate E 

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This platform for esports was brought forward by the same men behind the X1 Racing League, Armaan Ebrahim and Aditya Patel. The main objective of this series is to bring the motorsport community together by giving esports racers an opportunity to compete against real world Indian racers. The racing events are weekly with two races per event. Each race has a 10 minute qualifying session, followed by race distances of 15 minute each. 

The series is held on two platforms, PS4 and PC. While the PS4 grid mostly consists of esports racer, the PC grid has many well known real life Indian racers in the mix such as Arjun Maini, Kush Maini, Narain Karthikeyan, Advait Deodhar, Karthik Tharani as well as Shahan Ali Mohsin. Another highlight of Ultimate E is that it hosts its events on different racing games each week like Rfactor 2, iRacing and Asseto Corsa.  Ultimate E is also partnering with Immortals India eSports in hosting a PUBG Mobile event called the Cause-A-Thon. This event is to raise donations to fight against covid19 and support frontline health workers. 

With the lockdown set to continue for the time being, expect esports events around the world to crop up, with existing ones growing stronger with each event as people head for some form of motorsport fix.