Kieran Holmes-Darby, gaming director at Formula E (right) with 2022 Accelerate champion Frede Rasmussen (left)
Electric car motorsport brand Formula E says it’s planning more Formula E esports events for the sim racing community, following its finals in London.
The Formula E: Accelerate esports competition took place alongside the London E-Prix on the weekend of July 29th 2022. The top three winners of the final in London received a share of the €100,000 prize fund, VIP tickets to the Seoul E-Prix, as well as the chance to take part in a Formula E driving experience at pre-season testing in Valencia.
Danish racer Frede Rasmussen was crowned the 2022 Formula E: Accelerate champion after sealing a double victory and a maximum points score at the two-round London finale.
UK racer Graham Carroll finished fifth.
The finalists had made their way through a series of open qualifiers throughout the Formula E campaign and were joined by two invitational entries in London.
Frede Rasmussen said: “I’m happy I managed to get it done – it isn’t often you have days like this. Maybe I’ll invest the prize money in my flat [I bought with my season one prize pot].”
You can watch the full Formula E esports final back here.
“Our goal is simply to get as many people as possible engaging with the Formula E sport through gaming” – Kieran Holmes-Darby
To hear more about Formula E, Esports News UK caught up with Formula E gaming director Kieran Holmes-Darby (who co-founded UK-esports organisation Excel with his brother Joel back in 2014, before leaving Excel Esports to join Formula E earlier this year).
“[Joining Formula E] has been great, a real adjustment to life at a big company but thankfully the business is agile enough that I feel I can really make an impact here,” Kieran said.
“Over this initial phase I’ve been focused on getting the company’s gaming strategy set and getting people across the company aligned to give delivery of that strategy the best chance of success!
“The Accelerate Final in London was awesome, the production quality was fantastic and the racing was brilliant. We look forward to putting on many more events for the racing games community. Our goal is simply to get as many people as possible engaging with the Formula E sport through gaming.”
What’s it been like going from traditional esports with Excel to motorsports and the more sim racing side of things? Does he miss League of Legends?
“Of course I miss League, that game changed my life for the better and I am a huge supporter of what Riot Games are doing in our industry,” Kieran answered.
“There are a lot of similarities with all esports, so developing a strategy in the racing games world was not out of the wheel house. The advantage racing esports like Formula E is that we have a real championship series that puts on huge scale events to engage with.
“Esports crossing over with sports has both advantages and disadvantages. When the esport directly ties to the sport, then it is clear that the core media product will always be the sport as opposed to the esport and it is important that the gaming and esports strategy reflects that reality. This provides however a huge marketing machine to piggy back on with gaming and esports initiatives.”
Read more sim racing news on Esports News UK here
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
