VCO Partners with Coupe de France GT

French sim racers will have a higher profile series to compete in as VCO partners with Coupe de France GT for iRacing events starting in December 2021.

The Virtual Competition Organisation (VCO) will be working on the joint venture as the popular Coupe de France GT becomes powered by VCO. The first event to be scheduled under the new partnership takes place on 12th December 2021 in iRacing, with 2,000 Euro prize money on offer.

Twice each year there will be a one-day event to establish a French champion. The most recent Coupe de France involved more than 300 sim racers, organised by Didier Lapchin, Florian Denard, Yannick Lapchin, Thomas Petitjean and Loïc Guérin.

“Top-class Esports racing competitions at a national level deserve support,” said Florian Haasper, CEO of the VCO. “The pacy and entertaining concept behind the ‘Coupe de France’ is a really good fit for the VCO and is very popular in France with participants and with the public. There are some real Esports experts working the background. We are looking forward very much to this cooperation. It can certainly be used as a blueprint for further VCO involvement in national Esports racing communities.”

Yannick Lapchin, member of the organising committee for the “VCO Coupe de France GT”, added: “We are absolutely delighted to engage the Coupe de France iRacing in such a professional partnership with Virtual Competition Organisation. We are very proud and really enthusiastic for the future as we see it as a long-term association. Some members of the Organising Committee have already participated in important VCO competitions, and we appreciate how great it was. We are really happy about how close our vision of Esports is.”

Obviously the fact that VCO partners with Coupe de France GT is good news for French sim racers, especially as they’ll have prize money on offer for the first time alongside increased coverage. But for sim racing enthusiasts in other countries, it’s interesting to see how eSports is evolving, and whether the racing side follows the idea of some other games in linking more events and teams to countries and cities.

Real world motorsport features vibrant national series feeding into the highest global level of competition, so will something similar become the career ladder for future pro sim racers? Potentially alongside the manufacturer and one-make series also becoming increasingly popular and officially supported?

For all our Esports coverage, click here. Including Team ORD competing in the VW Jetta Cup 2021 Season 2, which is being run in partnership with VCO Esports. And if you’re looking to compete in the Coupe de France GT events, you can sign up to iRacing, here (and credit your referral to ORD, which we’d appreciate!).

And you can see the cars available in the GT class in our iRacing car list, here, along with all the tracks you may be competing on in the iRacing track list.