A sprint-racing-focussed community that’s able to create a strong bond between its racers. That is how we would describe 2S in a few words, who recently joined the SimGrid platform as one of our hosts. Despite joining with SimGrid only a couple of months ago, 2S was founded back in 2017, growing ever since with a great history in Sim Racing. To find out more about them, we sat down with one of their admins, Nico Veldman.
From the roots to SimGrid
The history behind the birth of 2S is one we often see amongst our communities. Six years ago, a group of friends, tired of competing against random strangers, put up a Steam community for some organised racing on F1 2017. The league then switched to Discord, as it made everything easier communication-wise. It’s worth mentioning this step because it was at that moment that the community aspect really started to kick off.
Since then, 2S expanded into different simulators, such as Assetto Corsa Competizione, coming to SimGrid in late 2022 after hosting tens of events and seasons.
“We joined SimGrid at the end of 2022 as we felt we could grow into something bigger”, Veldman told us.
2S also has a strong foundation behind the scenes: while we already introduced Nico Veldman, the other admins all have an important role. Rene Bohn is the original founder of the F1 community. His commitment is what has made it possible for 2S to be in its current state. Even after all these years, he is still a pillar of 2S.
Thimo Braun and Christian Stricker take care of the viewers by providing a high-quality broadcasting service. Last, but definitely not least, Sam Cholmondeley has been a vital part of the admin and steward team on ACC.
Overall, admins’ work is what has allowed 2S to flourish, becoming a thriving community both on and off the track, covering the needs of all of its members.
United in virtual and real
In the admins’ minds, every new 2S member should feel part of something special right from the beginning.
“The first and most important step to building a good community is having a safe space for everyone to communicate with each other”, Veldman explained.
“People should feel included and should be treated as a valued member of the community, instead of being just another driver in the league. Getting people involved with certain events is a very important aspect in order to build a good community”.
The creation of internal bonds between drivers has been successful so far. Many racers joined forces to compete in endurance events hosted by other communities representing 2S together – longer events are a great opportunity to have a lot of fun and to get to know each other better whilst also pushing for results.
In the sim racing world, we often speak about the transition from virtual to real and here is a clear example. In fact, a large group of people racing regularly on 2S met up in Belgium to spectate the real-life 24 hours of Spa. And there will certainly be more occasions in the upcoming future.
“It was a great success and plans are being made to go there again this year. The people that went there were not only long-time members but also people that joined quite recently. Since our birth we have become a tighter community than we could have ever hoped for,” Veldman said.
A focus on sprint racing
While we tend to see more and more communities organising endurance events, 2S is focused on sprint racing. The proof of their success can be seen in their main GT3 championship running on Monday evenings, which has now come to its eleventh edition and is still enjoying more and more success.
The short and simple format allows the community to accommodate more people, preventing them from making things too complicated. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? But of course, there is always time to evolve and for a change of mind in the future.
To wrap up our chat with Nico, we asked him if there were any plans to move on from sprint racing or to expand towards other formats. “For the moment we are planning to continue hosting our GT3 sprint league on Mondays. Since we joined SimGrid, we have been looking into other events so expect to see more from us in the near future.”
