ESPORTS: Ready for F1 SimRacing's 2024 return

Following the recent news that the official esports competition of the Formula 1 World Championship – F1 SimRacing, would make its long-awaited return for the 2023/24 season in April and May, Williams Esports have announced a new line-up.

Young Briton Will Lewis makes the step up from Academy driver to take the #3 reserve seat of recently departed Marcel Kiefer, with Ismael Fahssi and Alvaro Carreton remaining as the leading Spanish duo for the team.

Will Lewis has proved his quality as a challenger in multiple PSGL championships including E-Series, F1 and as Champion of F2, where he’s scored multiple Wins, Podiums, and top 10 results.

The up-and-coming talent has also played a major part in the team’s rise to success as a dedicated development driver, working closely with our pros and engineers to improve the on-track performance in the last few seasons and displayed himself as a willing candidate who was confident and ready to take on the highest stage of F1 SimRacing.

Will Lewis: “I’m so thankful for the trust and opportunity the team have given me, I can’t wait to get started and will be giving my absolute all. Being part of the main F1 SimRacing roster has been a dream of mine for so long and it’s something I’ve been working hard towards my whole career. It’s surreal to say I will be in the highest official F1 competition for the Esports team of such an iconic name. Williams have been fantastic to me as ever and I can’t appreciate their support enough to get me here! Let’s go for glory and show what we can do!”

The team share a thank you to Marcel for his time at Williams, as well as his impact for Sim Racing. "We are supportive of his decision and wish him all the best on his future endeavours."

Marcel Kiefer: "Williams gave me the chance to be part of the team for a few months and I really enjoyed my time working with everyone there. They treated me well, I visited the factory, attended the first LAN event of the 2023/24 F1 SimRacing season in Dreamhack Sweden with the team and collaborated with them on their F1 Hotlaps social content which was super fun! Unfortunately, I had a loss of love for sim racing competition and decided to pursue my lifelong dream of becoming a real-life racing driver. I’ve become an Esports Champion and race winner; I’ve driven for the biggest names, had some amazing opportunities but I need to try something new now and this is the right time to do so. There is the possibility of a return to sim racing but for now it’s goodbye. Thank you, team!”

The 2024 series calendar was announced officially this week as shown. We head into 6 rounds of racing from April 10th – 12th for event 1, and the final 5 rounds between May 7th – 9th for event 2.

With Round 1 completed back in November, we are sat well in P6 of the teams’ standings on 4 points. As for the drivers’ standings, at just 18 years old, Ismael Fahssi holds P8 with those 4 points and became the 3rd Spanish driver in F1 SimRacing history to score a top 10.

Alvaro Carreton is in P18 with 0 points but showed a strong performance off the bat, when he reached Q3 before taking damage early on in the race, due to an incident which wasn’t his fault at Bahrain and losing his net top 10 result.

Time is ticking away quickly and we’re looking forward to getting back on track again next week! We are prepared and will be providing coverage of both events on our socials @williamsesports as well as a LIVE broadcast for each race day on twitch.tv/williamsesports.