Max Verstappen was crowned a Formula One world champion for the fourth time in Las Vegas, potentially the best place to be crowned a champion. In what has been one of the most keenly fought seasons in recent history, with seven different drivers winning multiple races, the anticipation is already building ahead of the 2025 campaign.
While F1 fans will also despair at the lack of racing during the winter shutdown with the latest odds at Cloudbet providing some excitement ahead of the new season, motorsports enthusiasts at least had the F1 Esports World Championship to look forward to last year. With the chequered flag in Abu Dhabi signalling the end of the racing in the real world, fans will be wondering why the wheel-to-wheel action in the Esports world is not there to pick up the baton.
F1 Esports fans left in the dark
The main confusion surrounding the absence of a 2024/25 Esports World Championship stems from the lack of information or communication from organisers. Instead, F1 Esports fans, who were so engrossed in the sport in the years right after the pandemic, have had to feed off rumours of contractual disagreements between the ESL and F1 Esports.
It was during the pandemic that online gaming and Esports finally fully spread their wings and took flight into the mainstream, attracting a peak viewership of nearly 500,000 fans for the 2020 F1 Esports Virtual Grand Prix Series Vietnam. And with prominent names in Formula One such as world champion, Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, and Lando Norris also regularly streaming their own personal SIM racing antics on their social media pages, it seemed F1 Esports had the perfect platform to build off.
F1 Esports being quickly overtaken
The lack of progress made by F1 Esports is compounded by the fact other game titles to emerge in the Esports world during the pandemic such as Counter-Strike, DOTA 2, Call of Duty, and League of Legends have all established themselves as mainstream Esports with multiple events held throughout the year for each and prize pools reaching $40 million in the case of DOTA 2’s event, The International 2021. These titles and the teams and companies they have partnered with to create these enthralling, live-streamed events took advantage of the opportunity created by the pandemic, one F1 Esports seemingly either missed out on, or got very wrong.
What is the current status?
Right now, F1 Esports fans do not have a 2024/25 season to look forward to, unless something materialises incredibly quickly to fill the winter void left by the real-life F1 world. World champion from the 2023/24 season, Frederik Rasmussen, will not be defending his title anytime soon unless a fresh partnership between Alpine Sim Racing and G2 can produce some magic.
In the place of the world championship, other community events have tried to pick up the shards of the broken F1 Esports season to continue the online racing. Many of the protagonists in the 2023/24 championship have migrated to companies such as Premier Sim Gaming Leagues (PSGL) and World Online Gaming (WOR) to keep their reflexes sharp. Should an agreement and framework be reached, these virtual drivers could all reunite for another championship battle, but that is more of an if, rather than a when right now.