| Racing Simulator Developer SimCraft Joins as Presenting Sponsor March 24, 2021 By David Phillips IMSA Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Did those first 36 racing hours of the 2021 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season at Daytona and Sebring only whet your appetite for world-class sports car competition? Already counting the hours until the Acura Sports Car Challenge at Mid-Ohio in May? Missing the dulcet brogue of John Hindhaugh and the IMSA Radio crew? Take heart! Help is on the way in the form of the 2021 IMSA iRacing Pro Series presented by SimCraft. The three-round online racing series, featuring professional drivers, kicks off at the virtual Sebring International Raceway in just over two weeks. The hourlong events will stream live on iRacing’s YouTube and Facebook channels and feature stars of the WeatherTech Championship, IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge and IMSA Prototype Challenge, as well as drivers from other popular racing series in 50-car, multi-class fields of GT Le Mans (GTLM) BMWs, Corvettes, Ferraris, Fords and Porsches and Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) Dallaras. Here’s the full schedule, with each race starting at 6:30 p.m. ET: Thursday, April 8: Sebring International Raceway Thursday, April 22: WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca Thursday, May 6: Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta Many of this year’s competitors got a taste of online action at Sebring last weekend. SimCraft, the presenting sponsor of this year’s IMSA iRacing Pro Series, set up a state-of-the-art APEX6 PRO full-motion simulator in the paddock to give drivers a chance to experience their products in advance of the competition. “We are absolutely thrilled to partner with IMSA for the iRacing Pro Series,” said Sean Patrick McDonald, SimCraft co-founder and Chief Technologist. “For SimCraft, this is 15 years in the making as we attended our very first endurance race at Petit Le Mans in 2007 with a very early SimCraft prototype. We then launched our APEX product line showcasing the newly launched iRacing software at CES in 2009. To see how far virtual racing has come, and to have been a major contributor to all those years of progress, makes this new partnership a win-win-win for us.” IMSA competitors and fans alike are no strangers to sim racing. The IMSA iRacing Pro Series presented by SimCraft is just the latest installment in IMSA’s long-standing embrace of sim racing, including the 2020 IMSA iRacing Pro Series which was captured by Bruno Spengler, co-driver of the real-world No. 25 BMW Team RLL BMW M8 GTE, and the recent IMSA iRacing Preseason Invitational, won by No. 74 Riley Motorsports Le Mans Prototype 3 driver Scott Andrews. “IMSA was one of the world’s first motorsports sanctioning bodies to recognize the appeal and relevance of sim racing,” IMSA President John Doonan said. “For well over a decade, our fans and many of our top drivers have enjoyed competing with one another in IMSA-sanctioned iRacing series. It’s been fun to watch sim racing’s remarkable technical development as well as its explosive growth in popularity during that time. We’re pleased to partner with SimCraft for this year’s IMSA online series, and we can’t wait to see what the future has in store for this exciting dimension of the sport.” Be sure to tune in to Round 1 of the IMSA iRacing Pro Series presented by SimCraft on the iRacing YouTube and Facebook channels at 6:30 p.m. April 8. About SimCraft: SimCraft is a premier racing simulator manufacturer and a worldwide leader in Motion Simulation Technology. With a focus on realism, based on sports science, and an unrelenting objective of recreating the feeling of driving an actual race car, the company’s disruptive motion simulation technology is supported on all major racing simulation platforms and can be linked with any specialized or custom simulation software. The primary benefit of SimCraft Motion Technology, is real driving feel, achieved by a unique physics based philosophy that includes independent, mechanically isolated, degrees of freedom, with a central cockpit positioned in near zero gravity. This allows the rotational axes of motion (roll, pitch, and yaw) and translational axes of motion (surge, sway,and heave) to behave as real vehicles do in earth gravity. Because every degree of freedom is independent of all the others and are all highly tunable, the experience of driving a SimCraft not only feels more real, but also follows a scientifically correct recreation of vehicle motion for the driver.SimCraft’s APEX racing simulator product line is designed with a unique modular framework allowing for a broad range of price points, and a progressive, axis by axis, technology upgrade path: From 1DOF (YAW) to all 6DOF (FULL MOTION) SimCraft is headquartered just outside Atlanta, Georgia. About the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA): International Motor Sports Association, LLC (IMSA) was originally founded in 1969 and owns a long and rich history in sports car racing. Today, IMSA is the sanctioning body of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, the premier sports car racing series in North America. IMSA also sanctions the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge and the IMSA Prototype Challenge, as well as four one-make series: Ferrari Challenge North America, Idemitsu Mazda MX-5 Cup presented by BFGoodrich Tires, Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America and Porsche Carrera Cup North America. IMSA – a company within the NASCAR family – is the exclusive strategic partner in North America with the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) which operates the 24 Hours of Le Mans as a part of the FIA World Endurance Championship. The partnership enables selected IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship competitors to earn automatic entries into the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans. For more information, please visit www.IMSA.com, www.twitter.com/IMSA, www.facebook.com/IMSA or www.instagram.com/imsa_racing. |
