Last weekend, the brand new FIA GT1 World Championship hold it’s first two races of the season at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi. Also on site was a delegation of iOpener Media, following the progress of the two iOpener-enabled cars of DRK Engineering and Marc VDS Racing.
The two iOpener-enabled race cars weren’t the sole reason for the trip to the middle east though as iOpener president Andy L??rling also met with the prominent Al Badi??family. The delegation from the United Arab Emirates was shown how the iOpener-enabled technology works and got to try the iOpener-enabled Real-Time Racing game in a simulator.
Furthermore, L??rling also met with series promoter Stephane Ratel for a meeting that iOpener would later describe as promising.
I??m not trying to manufacture a news story out of nothing here but these shreds of news and the involved parties lead to some very interesting speculation. Remember, back in September 2009, I posted a first story on a possible FIA GT game made by Simbin and iOpener.
Lots of things have happened until then such as Stephane Ratel announcing that the FIA GT1 Championship would soon sign a video game deal and Simbin confirming the development of a new GTR title. Chances are, these things aren’t connected but if you combine the involved parties, it paints a very interesting picture. Simbin & iOpener have already established a co-operation and the FIA GT1 Championship provides a matching product to make it work – Two one-hour races would be well-suited to the iOpener concept of sim racers racing against real drivers on track.
And as final food for thought, one of the biggest stumbling blocks that has prevented new FIA GT titles in the past is out of the way too. License issues with Ferrari and Porsche would have been a major concern with FIA GT-based titles following GTR2, both manufacturers are not racing in the new GT1 World Championship though. Does all this mean anything ? Only time will tell….
Via Real-Timeracing
