Well, what a year! A lot has happened at My3id Gaming over the past year. We have said goodbye to old faces, and welcomed new faces. This year we have cemented our name as one of the best teams in the sim racing world with a host of international titles, both in Live for Speed and in iRacing. Our drivers have also won titles in Race07 and a few have even had real world success.
We couldn't have asked for a better birthday present than winning this years Masters of Endurance championship in both GT1 and GT2. As you know, MoE was cut down to only one race this year with the prestigious 24 Hours of Aston GP being that race. In GT1 we had a mix of new and old with Niki Dakovic, Jarno Lehikoinen, Tomek Nogiec and Joni Törmälä at the helm. After starting second, Tomek quickly took the lead in lap 1 and battled it out with Low Land Lions and spdoRacing over the course of the opening stints. From there until the end it was a scrap with spdo as strategies came into play but fortunately our boys had enough pace to race to victory with a nice margin
We had the old guard back for our GT2 team with Hugo Luis, Jack Basford and David Williams in the cockpit all trying to find the win which was taken at their fingertips in 2009/2010 season. They were joined by MoE veteran Jesse Nieminen and Joe Holmes, who joined us earlier in the year. After three hours we established a comfortable lead and from there on Jack, Jesse, Hugo, Dave and Joe could further the gap to the end of the race with Hugo setting a blistering lap of 2:46.46 during his stints through the night. The guys drove brilliantly and crossed the finish line 2 laps ahead of spdoRacing GT2 in 2nd.
We would like to thank the organisers and commentators for putting on a great show and congratulations to all the teams who finished, we will be back next year to defend both titles!
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Throughout the year, our roster has changed quite a bit, we let go some of the older members and brought in some fresh talent. Our first recruit of the last year was Aleksi Elomaa. Aleksi is focussed on iRacing and represented My3id Gaming in the iRacing Drivers World Championship this year. The next person to join was Piotr Goik. Formerly of Conquest Racing, he was a driving force behind our success in LFS this year, helping us win GT2WS. He has since rejoined Conquest racing. Marius Golombeck was the next driver to join the roster. Many of you know him from being at the front of anything Team Inferno for quite some time. He is also primarily iRacing orientated but does chip into the LFS side of things every once in a while. In the summer, Tomek Nogiec joined us from CoRe Racing. Tomek has been invaluable over the past 6 months helping us win GT2WS and the recent MoE. In August it was Joe Holmes who joined us. He arrived from LowLandLions and also was a part of the GT2WS winning team. Our attention then turned to iRacing once more with the arrival of Germans André Böttcher and Martin Krönke. Both drivers are currently competing in the iRacing Pro Series with Martin currently in 2nd place. Both are in good positions to make the iRacing Drivers World Championship next year. Yang Ou then joined us in October. Yang quickly built a reputation in iRacing after securing the 2011 IZOD Indy Car Premier Series. Last, but not least Joni Tormala and Valtteri Pitkanen joined us only last week. These two young Finns will bring young talent to our LFS lineup, with Joni already helping in taking the MoE win.
Earlier in the year, we claimed our very first endurance title, GT2 World Series. Tomek took the pole position in all 5 rounds with spectacular performances. We managed two wins which was enough to seal the championship. The drivers were Tomek Nogiec, Piotr Goik, Niki Dakovic and Joe Holmes.
Jack Basford won season 2 of Apex Cup with 5 wins and a further 4 podium finishes. He also helped My3id win the team championship with Niki Dakovic and David Williams also partaking. Joe finished runner up.
It was a fantastic year for Jarno Lehikoinen in which he won 5 individual titles and runner up in another. He took the championship in OWRL Season 18 and 19, OWRL FBM 2011, The Original LFS League and LFSCart Road Cup winner. He was the runner up in ITCC this year.
It was a year to remember too for Joe Holmes who finished the year as the person who holds the most World Records in LFS with a total of 93. My3id also top the team rankings with a total of 143 world records. He was also a runner up in the previous season of Masters of Endurance in GT2, and a runner up in the 16hr Racing Minds event.
Niki Dakovic finished 3rd in the TBO World Championship. He picked up one win but his title chances suffered with some racing mistakes.
On the iRacing side of things, we had 6 drivers in the nVidia iRacing.com World Drivers Championship. Hugo Luis claimed the gruelling 18 round season, beating favourite Greger Huttu. In 3rd place was Klaus Kivekas and behind him in 4th was Jesse Nieminen. Aleksi finished 6th with David Williams finishing the season in 9th position. Jesse Nieminen started the championship perfectly with a win in round 1. However, some bad luck in the next few races unfortunately took him out of the championship running. It was then Klaus Kivekas who took over the top of the table showing great consistency and speed throughout the second quarter of the season. From the middle to the end it was the Hugo Luis show, he picked up 4 wins in a row in the crucial stages to overtake both Klaus and Huttu to take the championship and $10,500. Overall, My3id Gaming drivers took 13 wins (5 each from Jesse and Hugo, with 3 coming from Klaus) and 12 pole positions (7 of them from Jesse, 3 from Hugo and 2 from Klaus).
David Williams finished 3rd in the Intel GP Series World Final where he travelled to Hannover to compete. He picked up a nice cheque for $2,000. You can read his report here.
Yang Ou won both the IZOD Indycar Road Premier Series and IZOD Indycar Oval Premier Series. Aleksi was runner up on the road series with Andre rounding out the top 3. Aleksi also finished in 3rd place in the oval series. The overall standings for the Indycar series was Yang first with Aleksi in seconds place. Yang was runner up in the Indy 500.
Aleksi won the Grand Prix Series 2011 season 2 with Martin Krönke finishing runner up. Marius Golombeck won the Grand-AM 2011 Season 2 in the Ford Mustang, the inRacingNews Challenge 2011 season 2 in the Pontiac Solstice and the iRacing Mazda Cup 2011 Season 3 week 13. Andre won the Virtual e.V Indycar Series 2011, the Virtual Racing e.V GT Series 2011 and also won the Grand Prix Series 2011 season 3.
André and Martin helped DE-AT-CH club win the World Cup with Andre finishing 2nd, and Martin 4th overall.
In other sims, David was a finalist in GT Academy United Kingdom in Gran Turismo 5. Ben Crooks was runner up in the World Touring Masters Season 2 in rFactor.
Martin participated in the Ferrari Virtual Academy where he finished 3rd overall. This meant he travelled to Maranello to take part in an exclusive driver training program with Ferrari which is usually only accessible to F1 drivers.
In Race07, André won the sport auto cup at the Essen Motorshow. He won a Raceroom Simulator for his efforts. In the Raceroom Stuck Time-Trial, Marius triumphed winning a year ticket for the Nordschleife with André finishing second winning a Formula BMW test day.
Marcio Campos won the drivers championship in the Locaweb Stock Car Brasil with himself and Hugo claiming the team championship. This enabled them the race in the 500 Milhas de Kart: Beto Carrero 2011, the famous Brazilian kart event which features F1 stars Felipe Massa, Rubens Barrichello and many more familiar faces from the world of motorsport.
Marcio Campos won the Mercedez-Benz Grand Challenge.
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It has been a great year for My3id Gaming, with our drivers winning the biggest challenge in both Live for Speed and iRacing. We have done major restructuring and it has all paid off now. We would like to wish you all a happy new year and happy racing in 2012!
Source: My3id Gaming News
Thanks to Jotemi for doing the render.
