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The winner of the second season of World’s Fastest Gamer, James Baldwin, has joined McLaren Shadow to be one of its Formula 1 Esports drivers for the 2020 season.
Baldwin fills the gap made by Enzo Bonito who left the team earlier in the year to join Ferrari’s esports line-up.
He joined real-world McLaren driver Lando Norris on Wednesday evening in a live Twitch stream where they discussed Baldwin joining the organisation, along with regular gamer Norris.
Welcome to the team, @JaaamesBaldwin! 🤝
James joins team #McLarenShadow as one of our 2020 #F1Esports drivers.
Watch him live with @LandoNorris and @Tiametmarduk now ➡️ https://t.co/p9ssiPhGf3 pic.twitter.com/5L1BO6xTES
— McLaren Shadow (@McLarenShadow) July 22, 2020
McLaren machinery is nothing new to Baldwin, who won a real-life GT seat for this season with ex-Formula 1 driver Jenson Button’s team as part of his World’s Fastest Gamer prize.
Baldwin and the Jenson Team Rocket RJN squad recently made the switch to British GT, having originally planned to race in the GT World Challenge Europe this year, before the coronavirus pandemic intervened.
The British driver hasn’t taken part in any of the previous F1 Pro Series, although he did participate in a couple of the Pro Exhibition races held during the absence of real-world F1 races due to the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown.
In those races Baldwin drove for the Alfa Romeo team for two races, but failed to score points in either.
He had much greater success in the Veloce Not The GP events, including a dominant win at Monaco where he beat former F1 Esports driver James Doherty and F1 driver Nicholas Latifi who joined him on the podium.
He finished second in two other Not The GP races, finishing just behind Toro Rosso Esports driver Cem Bolukbasi in both the Bahrain and Azerbaijan events.
