Alpine Sim Racing Partners With G2 Esports’ Sim Racing Division

Published by

Tobias Seck

2 months ago

Alpine Sim Racing partners with G2 Esports

Alpine Sim Racing and G2 Esports announced a partnership on Friday to combine their efforts in the world of competitive sim racing.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In addition to partnering with the sim racing division of G2 Esports, the esports branch of the French sports car brand—best known for their entry in the Formula 1 championship, BWT Alpine F1 Team—transitioned its branding from Alpine Esports to Alpine Sim Racing. Alpine Esports was initially established in 2021 as one of the official F1 Esports sim racing teams and launched the Alpine Esports Series in the same year—which has been partnered with Binance as its naming rights sponsor since its second season.

The establishment of Alpine Esports was a byproduct of Alpine’s parent company Renault rebranding its Formula One entry from Renault F1 Team to Alpine F1 Team for the 2021 season to promote its sports car brand. Prior to its rebrand, the Renault F1 team was partnered with French esports organization Team Vitality, which participated as Renault Sport Team Vitality in the F1 Esports Pro Series from 2018 to 2020.

G2 Esports’ history in sim racing goes even further as it started adding sim racing professionals to its roster in late 2017. Just like Alpine Sim Racing, G2 Esports has made appearances in the F1 Esports Pro Series as the organization partnered with F1 entry Red Bull Racing between 2018 and 2023—G2 Esports also ran the F1 Esports team for Red Bull Racing’s sister team in F1 Scuderia AlphaTauri, AlphaTauri Esports Team and Toro Rosso Esports Team before the F1 team’s rebrand in 2020. While Red Bull is still a partner of G2 Esports, its sim racing division switched naming partners.

Currently, G2 Esports participates in the ESL R1 series—a sim racing championship that made its premiere at Katowice 2023 with G2 Esports being one of its founding partnered teams. Initially, G2 Esports participated as G2 Esports Sim Racing powered by BMW Esports competing in a digital BMW M4 GT3 but since dropped that partnership with BMW and is running the Porsche 911 GT3 (992) this season.

While BMW dropped out of esports for the most part at the beginning of 2023 by ceasing its “United in Rivalry” esports campaign, which featured partnerships and activations with prominent teams such as G2 Esports, T1, Fnatic, Cloud 9, OG, and FunPlus Phoenix, its motorsports division stayed as a sponsor in sim racing esports. However, G2 Esports did not make the cut with BS+COMPETITION, MOUZ (formerly mousesports), and Team Redline (the sim racing outfit featuring defending F1 champion Max Verstappen) being the current organizations part of the BMW M Motorsport family.

As part of the announcement, an expansion to sim racing titles outside of F1 was mentioned. Additionally, it’s likely that G2 will continue as an ESL R1 partner. While no specific racing simulation titles were named by the teams, a return to major esports competitions in iRacing, rFactor 2, Assetto Corsa Competizione, or Assetto Corsa EVO, which is planned for release later this year.

Tobias Seck

Tobias Seck is a journalist and business analyst who spent more than seven years at The Esports Observer (TEO) as a business analyst. He was one of the first employees of the publication, having joined in 2015. In October 2018 he shifted to the role of business analyst and journalist, writing analysis and helping fellow TEO writers understand the world of finance as a supplemental editor when needed. He continued in that role when TEO was rolled into Sports Business Journal (SBJ), where he worked until February 2023.