In today’s Community Spotlight, we are covering Simsport Racing International. SSRI was founded in 2022 when two different hosts merged into one. Right now, Bas van Melis is at the helm, with the precious help of Chris Hill, Sem Spenkelink and Kris Vickers. We asked Bas to tell us more about his community.
The community’s origins and structure
While being a relatively young host, Simsport Racing International already has a solid structure behind it. Despite their humbleness, the admins have done a brilliant job working on the operational side that the everyday driver can benefit from.
“As an admin team we are merely organising the races and championships”, Bas told us. “The most vital part to run a community is listening to your members, as they are the community”.
The community hosts a great variety of events, making the most of the great content available on Assetto Corsa Competizione, both in terms of cars and tracks. SSRI has a dedicated stewards team acting independently that handles any incident reports, whilst they also have a media team and broadcasted races on their dedicated YouTube channel, because as Bas says: “Who doesn’t like their friends and family watching them in action?”. SSRI have all the features of a professional community.
A balanced environment
Reading through our Community Spotlight articles, we have seen many admins giving great importance to balancing the tone of their operation so that everyone can have fun. When you join a new racing group it should not matter if you are an ‘alien’ or a newcomer: everyone should be able to find something that suits them. And SSRI does just that by putting a big focus on categorisation and tier division.
“In the sprint championship we work with tiers so all drivers can race on their own level,” Bas told SimGrid. “We do this using a PST (pre-season test) at the Barcelona track. With the PST results, we can put people in the Pro, Semi-Pro, Silver or Amateur class. The advantage is that they are not competing for 40th place, but actually battling with other 20 equal level drivers in their own class”.
So far the categorisation has not been introduced in the endurance championships, but considering the success it gathered in the sprint events it is a feature that will come sooner or later. Overall, SRI is a great place for sim racers to compete no matter their skill level.
Upcoming and future championships
Talking about track action, Simsport Racing International is getting ready to launch a new edition of their popular 2.4H series.
Started in 2022, the project was abandoned for a while and then brought back to life following the affiliation with The SimGrid. These 144-minute races feature both solo drivers and teams. But originally this series was created to build a community, as Bas explained.
“The 2.4h races were actually created so community members could get to know each other back in the day. And we hope that experienced drivers team up with a less experienced one so their level improves as well. I personally enjoy taking on the challenge of this series with my teammate, as we can have a chat whilst driving”.
The future plans of the community include a change in this series as well. In the next editions, the championship might turn into a multiclass competition, with GT2 and GT4 sharing the track. This will also bring a new alias to the series, re-branded as ‘GT2.4H’.
But, what else can you find on SSRI? “We hope to expand our GT3 league by filling 3 or 4 servers (per driver level) and will most likely look at organising a GT4 league again. Obviously, we will also jump on the GT2 bandwagon.
“But for this, we would need extra admins to join the team. So if someone is interested, be sure to contact us”.
