What You Need to Know About The 2025 F1 Sim Racing World Championship

The esports industry has grown rapidly in the past several years. With various competitive video game titles catering to gamers of all genres, sim racing is one of the growing niches in the market.

Last year, the 23-24 season of the F1 Sim Racing World Championship was the first of the series to be held fully through LAN events. The most-watched event of the season was the F1 Sim Racing World Championship 2023-24 – Event Two, which reached 444,300 viewers. The event spanned Rounds 2 through 7 of the season, with races set on the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, the Red Bull Ring, Silverstone Circuit, Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Circuit Zandvoort, and the Circuit of the Americas.

Now, the eighth and next season of the Formula One Esports Series is officially underway. It’s the second in the series to be called the F1 Sim Racing Championship, and is held on Formula One’s official 2024 game, featuring all ten teams from the real-life sport.

Below, we’ll go through what you need to know about the 2025 F1 Sim Racing World Championship:

The F1 Sim Racing World Championship

In 2017, the first Formula One Esports Series was announced. It’s a professional esports program promoted by Formula 1 in an attempt to involve the official Formula 1 video game and its community of players. A year later, official F1 teams joined the program to set up their own esports teams to compete in the F1 Esports Series championship.

Since then, teams from around the world have virtually raced each other for the coveted Champion titles. The games are played yearly on the corresponding official F1 video game, starting with F1 2017 for the first-ever Esports Series.

All participating esports teams have three drivers in their roster that can be used however they want. In 2025, teams will battle it out in 12 rounds of racing across three events to secure the final win and a piece of the season’s $750,000 prize pool. All 12 rounds are broadcast live via the official F1 YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook channels, as well as the dedicated F1 Esports social media channels.

While F1 sim racing esports may seem a little too niche, the initiative can significantly contribute to boosting engagement between younger generations and the motorsport. For example, a BBC piece on British sim racer Luke Bennett highlights how the Esports World Cup world champion looks forward to introducing sim racing at the upcoming Olympic Esports Games. Aside from potentially becoming an Olympian, Bennett also states that he hopes to get into the real world of motorsport in the future, citing that more and more racers “get a way in through sim racing now.”

Who won the 2023-24 F1 Sim Racing World Championship?

Danish sim racer Frederik Rasmussen, who plays for Oracle Red Bull Sim Racing, finally won the Driver’s Championship for the first time in his career after coming in second place in the standings for four prior seasons in a row. Rasmussen emerged victorious after a hard-fought race with Thomas Ronhaar and Bari Broumand.

On the other hand, Broumand later helped his team, Scuderia Ferrari Esports, win the Constructor’s Championship for the first time. The team ended up leading in the season’s standings at 253 points, followed by KICK F1 Sim Racing Team (213) and Rasmussen’s team Oracle Red Bull Sim Racing (209).

Ahead of the 2025 season, Scuderia Ferrari confirmed the team’s lineup would still include Iranian sim racer Bari Broumand and French-Italian Nicolas Longuet. John Evans, who raced for the Aston Martin sim racing team, has also joined the Scuderia Ferrari HP Esports Team lineup as its third driver.

Notable partnerships in the scene

While the 23-24 F1 esports tournament wrapped successfully, the season wasn’t without its faults. Races and events were canceled due to complications with legal contracts relating to the prize money. The series sat in limbo until a set calendar was revealed in April 2024, before resuming the series into completion.

As such, the ongoing 2025 season aims to correct the errors of the prior season. One of the best ways to do this is by welcoming brand and team partnerships to boost revenue and marketing in the scene.

In a previous post, we discussed Ferrari’s sponsorship deal with HP Inc. The partnership features a shared commitment to advance sustainable innovation and accelerate purposeful technology across the Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 team, the Scuderia Ferrari Esports team, and the Scuderia Ferrari Driver Academy. As part of the sponsorship deal, the HP logo will make its debut on Maranello F1 cars. The Ferrari teams — both real-life and esports — will also start competing as Scuderia Ferrari HP.

Meanwhile, other key partnerships in the F1 esports scene involve cryptocurrency. For example, crypto sports and esports betting platforms have shown interest in the sim racing esports industry. After all, motorsports betting is popular among sports fans, and it has translated well into the esports segment.

In March 2024, crypto sports and esports betting platform Thunderpick struck a partnership with esports organization Heroic. Fans of the esports organization, which has rosters across various esports titles, can expect engaging activities, exclusive content, cool merch, and unique opportunities to connect with the organization and its players.

The multi-year agreement makes Thunderpick the Exclusive Global Betting Sponsor for the org’s CS2, Dota 2, and sim racing teams and aims to revolutionize fan engagement in esports. For racing fans in general, Thunderpick also has a platform-exclusive “Race” minigame where bettors can earn Race Points and win prizes by betting.

Finally, another crypto-based partnership in the sim racing esports scene is one between play-to-earn gaming platform Floki and the KICK F1 Sim Racing Team. Announced in late 2024, the partnership includes the team’s NFT presence in the platform’s Valhalla game. Valhalla’s logo will also feature prominently across KICK F1’s digital and social media platforms and on the team’s drivers’ sleeves.

Ultimately, the 2025 F1 Sim Racing World Championship potentially marks the resurgence of Formula One esports and the sim racing niche. Whether or not it will lead to shaping the careers of aspiring real-life motorsport racers or simply celebrating the convergence of F1 with professional sim racing remains to be seen. Still, new partnerships and brand deals among teams and organizations will hopefully continue to fuel the scene.