After being a title sponsor since 2021, racing simulator equipment manufacturer Fanatec appears to have ended its association with the SRO Motorsports group and its signature GT World Challenge series.
The GT World Challenge is the premier global GT3 racing series, comprising sprint and endurance events across four continents: Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. It was formerly known as the Blancpain GT World Challenge before Fanatec took over title sponsorship in 2021.
Under the Fanatec name, the series has seen some interesting innovations, which included on-site esports events for pro sim racers and a world-first esports event that gave points towards the actual championship.
Teams entered in the endurance series events would be required to field a driver from their real car in the hour-long event — staged in a special Fanatec zone, using Fanatec gear and the official Assetto Corsa Competizione series sim — with the possibility of scoring five points towards their real title chances. There was at least one instance of a driver being recruited to drive the real car on the basis of also being quite the esports star!
However, Fanatec had quite a troubled 2023-2024 to say the least. Prolonged financial difficulties and several trips through the courts saw its parent company Endor AG, file for insolvency, and eventually bought out by Corsair, a US-based gaming product manufacturer.
That certainly seemed to preserve Fanatec’s future, and the brand has been delivering new products over the remainder of 2024, but questions remained over its other marketing activities such as the Fanatec GT World Challenge.
It now seems that Corsair has either terminated or allowed the series sponsorship of the series to lapse, with the Fanatec name being quietly removed from the GT World Challenge sites just before Christmas 2024. Australian motorsport site Speedcafe has also had a confirmation statement from SRO Motorsports that the agreement with Fanatec has come to an end and a new title sponsor would be announced in due course.
Naturally we’ll be wondering about Fanatec’s support for other events, such as the Gran Turismo World Series where the brand is the official steering wheel partner and manufacturers the Gran Turismo DD and DD Extreme as used by the competitors in the series. For now this doesn’t appear to be affected, but we’ll bring you more news as we get it.
See more articles on Corsair, Fanatec, GT World Challenge, and SRO E-Sport GT Series.
