Another week, another community. Today we are doing a deep dive into the world of SimRacingAcademy, one of the 350+ hosts actively organising sim racing events at The SimGrid.
Founded back in 2021, SRA has a well-established schedule that offers a mix of sprint and endurance events on Assetto Corsa Competizione. With a style of organisation rare amongst communities today, let’s learn more about SimRacingAcademy.
Who is behind SimRacingAcademy?
When we exchange words with community admins, they usually give us a long list of talented staff who work tirelessly behind the scenes to keep their community running. But, for SRA, this list, uniquely, has just one line with the name Joel Möllers at its forefront. “I am the only admin and have been the only one since 2021”, Joel told The SimGrid. “I am responsible for everything including stewarding and community management”.
If a community carries on for more than two years with a single individual behind it, that is clear evidence that everything works just fine. But it hasn’t always been like that. In fact, SimRacingAcademy began its journey following a period of uncertainty. “After being disappointed with the F1 game, me and a friend decided to create an ACC league. We started off well but quickly had issues with attendance, so we merged with a bigger league in 2021 before joining SimGrid that very same year”.
Not only can one man do it all, but he can do it at pretty high standards as well. Championships and events organised by SRA have broadcasting, live stewarding with a system tracking every contact in a race and 24/7 active practice servers with all possible weather conditions.
Looking at SRA’s events, some are free to enter while joining the community’s main championship requires a small entry fee. This gives the community the chance to grant prizes to the top three in the standings, while the best eight get a free entry for the following season.
“I believe that the secret to building a healthy community is making sure your customers (drivers in this case) have a great experience”, Joel explained to us. “Admins should seem in control and have empathy for drivers when it comes to decisions”.
The right balance between sprint and endurance
SimRacingAcademy schedule might not be too busy, but it has its own rhythm. The most popular event is the SRA GT3 Championship, a sprint competition that has reached its thirteenth edition and has just gotten its new season underway. The format is pretty basic: six races run on Wednesday nights, in which drivers will visit Kyalami, Spa-Francorchamps, Imola, Monza, Barcelona and Zandvoort. Championship races are held on a weekly basis, so it is a pretty intense month of racing for drivers involved!
We know how much endurance racing has gained popularity over time, though, and at SimRacingAcademy, there is not currently a championship dedicated to this type of format, but the community is actively organising longer one-off events once every few months. The last event was a 6 Hours of Kyalami at the beginning of August, while the next race venue hasn’t been revealed yet.
Apart from this, Joel did not tell us any specific future plans, but if you are interested in getting involved you could start by following their Twitch channel, where all the events taking place at SRA are broadcasted.
