One of the best-known faces in sim racing brought his community, designed to welcome his followers and race with them in a friendly environment, to The SimGrid for 2024. And today, we are bringing his thoughts about the project to a head!

We are, of course, talking about Jaroslav Honzik – aka Jardier – and his Jardier Community. Created as a project to compliment Jardier’s YouTube content, the community has quickly become a virtual second family, where sim racing enthusiasts can race against other drivers or simply chit-chat in a homely way.

Creating a community alongside the YouTube channel

With more than 120,000 users subscribed to his channel, it is safe to say that Jardier is one of the most successful content creators on Assetto Corsa Competizione and the sim racing scene in general. 

With so many people following his racing adventures, the creation of a community was a natural development.

“I thought it was a good idea to create some background while doing YouTube”, Jardier told us. “Creating a community was always something that I wished for with my sim racing. So, we created a Discord server a few years ago, which started filling up very quickly with people enjoying the same things like sim racing and gaming”.

In essence, the Jardier Community started simply as a place to chill and chat with other like-minded individuals. Things quickly evolved and became more serious, but one thing never changed: the original idea to be a simple community, as Jardier himself explained. 

“We started doing community races as it was a great place to organise everything and much easier. Now we are even running our own league, but I always want to keep the original idea to be a community created of people who just enjoy our content and sim racing and gaming”.

An authentic community with genuine values

As explained by Jardier, his community is one of the best places to be if you are into sim racing, mirroring the same uplifting aura as his YouTube content. But what’s the secret to creating such a friendly environment? 

“I think it is important to create a community that is similar-minded as you. So if you are just being yourself then it is very easy, being open and not forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do,” Jardier said.

With the Jardier Community, one of the main upsides is that people feel like they have a second family within the sim racing world. 

“One of the things I noticed sometimes people say in my community is that I’m literally active there almost 24/7, which I think also helps with the growth and people liking it more to feel like a ‘virtual home’. It’s not just a random place, it is literally where I am too”, Jardier explained.

To make this possible, the community has a great group of admins working behind the scenes: Alistair, Simon, Jose, Gabriel, Mike, Ghost, MJ, Fried and Dave. “It is always very hard to find people with the same mind and to do what they do, and my guys are incredible and I’m so grateful for their help. They run everything themselves now”. 

Active championships and future plans

Moving to the competitive side of things, the main championship running in the community has been the Jardier Community League. JCL has now been running for over 12 seasons, gathering some great success. The number of participants has been limited, but this does not take away anything from the championship! It is, in fact, a deliberate choice.

“We are just trying to give our community something back to enjoy and obviously trying not to overpush my admins because it is not easy at all to run a league with over 70 people. It is very easy to get burned out or get stressed, especially online”.

The community organises monthly events, or endurance and driver-swap special races. Regarding the future, we will see more of JCL, partnering with the main sponsor Coach Dave Delta, and maybe even something with SRO…