FFF, Bentley Among First Entries for SRO Esports Series

Photo: Gary Parravani/Xynamic

Orange 1 FFF Racing Team, Bentley Motorsport and R-Motorsport are among the high-profile teams to commit to the new SRO E-Sport GT Series ahead of the first race next weekend.

Reigning GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS champion FFF has launched a new digital team named FFF Esports to contest the new series, which was announced last week.

The Italian-Chinese team has already been involved in high-level sim racing, and gave last year’s esports standout Kamil Franczak a test drive in a real-life Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo.

Dennis Lind, one of FFF’s full-season GTWC Europe and Intercontinental GT Challenge powered by Pirelli drivers, was the best-placed real-world driver in last month’s SRO E-Sport GT Series Charity Challenge race at Monza.

FFF’s selected sim drivers will be fully supported by the team, racing in the real livery of the No. 63 FFF car.

It’s expected that some of the team’s real-world drivers will once again compete in the Pro races as well as the sim racers in the Silver category.

FFF’s team principal Andrea Caldarelli commented: “While everyone is currently looking to the esports communities as a consequence of the track activities halt, we started this project more than one year ago, supporting SRO E-Sports and all the massive efforts made by Kunos and AK Informatica.

“Alongside our racing programs, esports represents a new challenge for us and I’m sure we will start to look at  FFF Esports as an important branch of the team.

“Even though we long to be back on track, it is very exciting for us to start this new virtual chapter of our company and we aim to be successful.

“This is our first step into the online racing platforms and we are planning already a very attractive campaign that will be announced later, as well for our drivers.”

Bentley Motorsport will compete in all three classes, with some of its real-world drivers in the Pro category as well as Bentley-supported sim racers in the Silver and Am races.

Bentley drivers Al Buncombe, Andy Soucek, Arjun Maini and Martin Plowman all raced in the charity race at Monza last month.

“We entered the SRO E- Sport GT Series Charity Challenge a few weeks ago and were incredibly impressed with the quality of the production and the racing,” added Bentley Motorsport director Paul Williams.

“This is definitely the right place for us to be competing – it caters for our incredible loyal fans who have raced the Continental GT3 in the Assetto Corsa Competizione game for the last few years, while also enabling our real world racing fans to join us as we step into the world of esports.”

R-Motorsport, meanwhile, will enter three cars in the Pro category, with all nine of its 2020 GT3 drivers set to feature in some capacity.

The first Pro and Silver rounds in the new SRO E-Sports GT Series will take place on April 26 on a virtual version of Silverstone.

Jake Kilshaw

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.