A selection of Australia’s best Gran Turismo™ Sport gamers, on PlayStation®4 (PS4™), are once again set to go head-to-head against Australia’s finest professional race drivers in the ultimate battle for eSport supremacy within the sim racing genre.
Following a successful inaugural season last year, Speedweek eSeries powered by Gran Turismo Sport and PlayStation 4 is back for 2019. The series was the first of its kind to be broadcast on Australian commercial television, through the hugely popular Speedweek on SBS. The series increased the exposure of sim racing to the mainstream public and got people talking about the competitive nature of the sport itself.
2015 PlayStation® GT Academy winner and former Nissan GT3 factory driver, Matt Simmons took out the inaugural series after a closely fought, four round contest against 2014 GT Academy finalist and Pro Driver, Josh Muggleton. Simon Feigl was the leading Pro Gamer, finishing third outright.
For season two, the battle of Pro Gamer against Pro Driver continues. Four of Australia’s best Gran Turismo sim racing gamers have been selected to go into battle against four Pro Drivers, whose talents feature a wide diversity of categories.
They will race against each other over four rounds on Gran Turismo Sport, which boast an online community of over 7.5 million people worldwide. All drivers will be racing in GT3 specification machinery with a Balance of Performance applied to ensure an even level of competitiveness across the board.
The Series kicks off at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, before heading to the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain, followed by the Autodromo de Interlagos in Brazil and finishing off with a split round, featuring the Autodromo Nazionale Monza in Italy and Mount Panorama, Bathurst.
The winner of Speedweek eSeries Season Two will not only take home the coveted Speedweek eSeries trophy, but they will also win AUD $5000 in prize money. Creative Director of AVE Pty Ltd, Matthew Swaab, is excited to bring Speedweek eSeries back to TV screens in 2019.
“We were really thrilled by the feedback we gotfrom the the first season last year,” Swaab said. “So we are excited to be producing season two of Speedweek eSeries, as we see sim racing becoming an integral part of motor racing worldwide. ”
“We’ve seen how sim racing has grown in popularity over the last few years and how it’s become more mainstream,” Swaab added. “From Formula 1 through to MotoGP, they’re all embracing and running official eSports championships.
“The Gran Turismo Sport Gamers and Pro Drivers have a common passion and that’s to go racing. The GT Gamers use sim racing as an avenue to professional motor racing, without the huge financial outlay that’s required in real life. The Pro Drivers, on the other hand, use sim racing as a vital tool to get themselves up to speed on circuits they’ve never raced on before, whilst keeping their skills fresh. As we saw last year in the first series, the competition between the Gran Turismo Sport gamers and Pro Drivers was very close, so we are hoping for that again in season two.”
The Pro Drivers contesting season two of Speedweek eSeries include Liam Talbot, currently racing in Porsche Payce Carrera Cup Australia; one of Australia’s leading female drivers, Chelsea Angelo, whose CV includes successful stints in Formula Ford, Formula 3, Super2 and Porsche Michelin GT3 Cup Challenge Australia; Craig Woods, a regular frontrunner in both Aussie Racing Cars and the East Coast Bullbars SuperUtes Series and Joshua Anderson, the 19 year old young gun who’s fast making a name for himself in both Aussie Racing Cars and the sim racing world.
They will pit their experience against our Gran Turismo Sport Gamers, who have carved out their racing reputations online and are hungry to put the Pro Drivers in their place. They include Joseph De Jesus IV, a semi finalist in the 2018 FIA Certified Gran Turismo Championship; Adam Wilk, a finalist in both the 2015 PlayStation GT Academy Australian Finals and 2018 FIA Certified Gran Turismo Championship; Anthony Hui, a finalist in the 2018 PlayStation GT Academy Australian Finals and 4th outright in the 2019 FIA Certified Gran Turismo Exhibition Series and Gopi Mahindajit, an engineering student from Melbourne who is hoping to turn his hobby into a professional racing career.
Speedweek eSeries is produced by leading sports television production company, AVE Pty Ltd. AVE is also the home of the long running motorsports show Speedweek, seen every Sunday afternoon on SBS, as well as Fox Sports.
Season two of Speedweek eSeries powered by Gran Turismo Sport and PlayStation
4 kicks off on April 7 on SBS. The following air dates for season two are as follows:
EP1 – Sunday 7th April – Red Bull Ring, Austria
EP2 – Sunday 14th April – Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Spain
EP3 – Sunday 21st April – Autodromo de Interlagos, Brazil
EP4 – Sunday 12th May – Autodromo Nazionale Monza, Italy and Mount Panorama,
Bathurst
*Dates are subject to change
