The international renowned Autosport Award celebrates the most outstanding personalities of motorsport each year. This year’s Autosport Award saw the introduction of the category “Esports Team of the Year”. And we won the inaugural award. The award jury selected Coanda Simsport as the recipient ahead of our competitors like Team Redline, R8G and Williams Esports.
What made us eligible for this award? An unrivalled year. 2021 was, without a doubt, breathtaking. We were racing on different race tracks in many series on various platforms from January to late December. With a phenomenal outcome for our team.
For our Australian teammate Josh Rogers the 2021 campaign of the Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup meant nothing else than redemption. Having lost the title in the year before catapulted him to another level of motivation, determination, and pace. He flawlessly secured the world championship title. Mitchell deJong and Charlie Collins completed the season’s podium in second and third place. Crowning Charlie the Rookie of the season.
Summer 2021 meant no break for the simracing world. Our time schedules were packed with thrilling races with competitions like the VRS SCO Sprint Masters and the GTWC Europe and Asia Sprint Series on the Assetto Corsa platform. And it paid off, too: Josh Rogers and Mitchell deJong claimed victory in the VRS SCO Sprint Masters, and Dayne Warren won the GTWC Asia Sprint Series with a clean sheet.
Another huge success was the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing series. After an exhausting and heavily competed season, Keegan Leahy won the final race, with Mitchell deJong finishing third and Bobby Zalenski in fourth place.
The BMW SIM GT Cup gathered the world’s best simracers for its final round in late November. Josh Rogers executed the strategy best in an intense double race event, finishing ahead of Charlie Collins in second place.
What started in September led to another milestone in the team’s year: the Le Mans Virtual Series. Coanda was chosen by Porsche Motorsport to represent the Porsche Esports Team in the series. The final race in January 2022 marked the end of another top simracing competition with a second, third, and fourth place overall for our teams.
“Being elected as the inaugural winner of the award is a huge honour, and we are looking forward to living up to the title in the upcoming months and years,” says team manager Philip Stamm. “There are people that are in the spotlight, all the drivers – but also the people behind the scenes that take care of things so that the guys can really focus.”
The Autosport Awards are given to individuals and teams representing motorsport at one of the highest levels. Coanda began from an idea – friends coming together with a plan to create an environment for dreams to flourish.
Read the official Autosport Award features: