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Strengthening its commitment to the Esports scene with a factory team, Lamborghini has unveiled the three sim drivers who will represent the brand during the 2022 season in international sim racing competitions.
Lamborghini decided to create its own official team to build on the valuable experience gained with The Real Race, the virtual one-make championship that debuted in 2020. The Esports Team represents a further opportunity to expand the brand’s presence in a sector that is constantly developing, highly competitive, and offers the chance to experience emotions comparable to those of a real race.
The three sim drivers chosen to represent the brand in the major international Esports competitions are Jordan Sherratt, Gianfranco Giglioli and Giorgio Simonini.
Sherratt, who was born in South Africa in 1999, earned his place on the Lamborghini Esports team thanks to his success in the latest edition of The Real Race, winning fifteen out of seventeen races and taking nine out of ten pole positions. The dominator of the second edition of the Lamborghini Esports championship for the EMEA region, who gained attention after his third place finish in 2020, is the perfect standard bearer for the team, both for the skills he has demonstrated in competition over the past two seasons and for being a huge fan of the Lamborghini brand.
“Being chosen by Lamborghini to be the Official Sim driver still feels like a dream,” commented Sherratt. “All the hard work and sacrifice I have put in behind the scenes have been recognised and I finally get to live my dream! I want to thank Lamborghini for putting their trust in me to represent their prestigious Brand.”
The second talent selected is Gianfranco Giglioli, a 24-year-old Italian-Venezuelan driver already well-established in the sim racing world. He was one of the first virtual drivers to take part in the Formula 1 Esports Series, finishing eighth in the inaugural season. In 2020 Giglioli placed fifth in the first edition of The Real Race, and that same year he won the Porsche Esports Carrera Cup Italia.
Completing the line-up is 22-year-old Italian sim driver Giorgio Simonini. His list of achievements includes first place in the Sim Grid World Cup 2020 and fourth place in the SRO Esports 2020 championship, results that make him one of the most promising drivers in virtual racing.
Sherratt and Giglioli will compete together in the GT World Challenge Esports Sprint Series Europe, and Simonini will join the pair to form the crew for the 2022 Intercontinental GT Challenge Esports Endurance Championship.
The Sprint calendar consists of five races and starts on April 6th with the Misano race. The last appointment is set for August 3rd, with the grand finale scheduled in the virtual version of the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza.
The Intercontinental GT Challenge Esports series kicks off on April 16th with the 12 Hours of Bathurst, the famous Australian endurance race. Here too there are five rounds on the calendar, with the competition concluding on August 27th with the 9 Hours of Kyalami.
Sherratt, Giglioli and Simonini have already started training to prepare for the first events on the calendar, sharing important information on driving and setup. The three sim drivers will be supported during the season by the Squadra Corse staff, who are dedicating a team principal, driver coach and engineers to the project to offer their expertise in the development and analysis of telemetry data, from the track to the virtual simulation.
Automobili Lamborghini’s Head of Motorsport Giorgio Sanna expressed his satisfaction with the launch of this exciting new project: “Sim racing is an important platform in today’s motorsport scene. Video games were born to allow those who didn’t have opportunities for real-life racing to impersonate the professional drivers. Now, after several decades of development in the industry, simulated racing is getting closer and closer to its real-life counterpart and now has nothing to envy from professional motorsport. Moreover, sim racing is an additional tool for us to develop some of the fundamental aspects of real racing, such as car setups and software applications that will play an important role in the future of our brand.”
Lamborghini has also confirmed the return of The Real Race for 2022. The dates of the third edition of the one-make Lamborghini Esports series will be announced in the coming weeks.