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It’s not uncommon for esports series to directly imitate an existing motorsport championship, but the all new RCCO World eX Championship is almost going about it the other way around.
World eX has been created by 2010 Le Mans 24 Hours winner and 2013 DTM champion Mike Rockenfeller with the aim of producing an rFactor 2 racing series where the format and car used are dictated by today’s electric car technology.
All 22 drivers – an equal mixture of esports stars and real-world professionals – will be driving the 1000hp all-electric, but fictional, eX ZERO car.
Rockenfeller, assisted by Romain Grosjean and simracer Erhan Jajovski, helped to develop the eX ZERO to make it a drivers’ car that is tough to handle but can still be slid around corners even though it’s a four wheel drive design that weighs only 1000kg.
Importantly though RCCO (Racing Concept Car Organisation) worked with development partners including Audi’s Formula E partner Abt Sportsline and Nicola Palarchi, who’s worked as a technical director and race engineer in Formula E and DTM, to ensure the fictional car created for the championship is one it’s possible to build for real with current technology.
The intention is that in the future manufacturers will develop their own eX cars for the virtual championship as a way to promote their real-world progress in battery and electric car technology.
As such the race format has been moulded around the limitations of the car, so each round will have a knockout format of short distance races.
Each round will have 22 drivers, with an equal mix of real-world and esports drivers, and events will start with single-lap head-to-heads between pairs.
The winners of that first round, along with the victor from a last chance race featuring the 11 drivers who lost their head to head races, will then move forward to a pair of two-lap sprint races with six drivers each.
The top four from each of these quarter finals move into the three-lap-long semi-final races and then the top three from each semi-final progress into a four-lap-long final race.
It is only in the final that the real-world drivers will have to compete against the sim racers, before the top two from the final go head to head in a single lap showdown in the superfinal that determines the outright winner for each round.
Notable names who have committed to taking part in the full 10 round championship include Grosjean himself, multiple touring car champion and five time Le Mans winner Frank Biela, and W Series Esports League champion Beitske Visser, the sole female driver on the grid.
Reigning Formula E champion Antonio Felix da Costa will be one of the guest drivers for the first round and some high-profile drivers will be standing in for those who have other commitments, such as Bruno Senna who will be replacing Tom Dillmann at Williams Esports in the opening round.
From the esports side there’s Risto Kappet for Grosjean’s R8G Esports team, the current Formula SimRacing championship leader Michi Hoyer as well as Jernej Simoncic, who was one of two wildcard drivers to make it in via the hotlap qualifiers.
Congratulations to Jernej Simoncic and Devin Braune: As the two fastest drivers of the Wild Card Qualifying you will be invited to take part in the #BritisheXPrix #RacingForTheClimate #RFTC #ReachTheNextLevel #WorldeX pic.twitter.com/182SL85G3c
— RCCO World eX (@rccoworldex) March 6, 2021
Nine times Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen’s newly created esports team, TK9 E-SPEED, will be fielding Lasse Sorensen as its real-world pro and Andreas Jochimsen as the team’s esports driver. Kristensen is not planning to take part in the races himself.
Along with promoting electric car technology, the championship is also aiming to raise money for an environmental cause.
The winners of each of the 10 rounds will all qualify for the final shootout at the Nurburgring Nordschleife to determine the overall winner and it’s the world champion who will decide which climate conservation project to donate the prize pool to when the series concludes in November.
Each race lap completed will increase the prize pool by €10 which means the overall prize will be a minimum of €2800 before fan donations are factored in.
The motivation for donations, as well as for the drivers to win each round, is that both viewers and the winning driver will be in with a chance to win a prize at each event.
For the first round it will be a ‘Bio-Hybrid’, a four-wheeled, electric assisted bicycle worth €10,000 – which will be given to either the super final winner or the viewer who donated the most to the competition’s prize pool.
Races will take place on iconic circuits including Silverstone for the season opener, Spa-Francorchamps, Monaco and even a night race at Estoril.
