I joined #F1Esports in 2017, and after the 'Road to Las Vegas' on rFactor2, I knew it had the potential to become the biggest competition in SimRacing. And yes, F1 and its teams backed it heavily. Williams was one of the teams that came through the door in a big way. Through my project, I had the opportunity not only to build something I truly believed in, but also to have a job I genuinely enjoyed for 6.5 years, giving everything I had to the project. Williams was also one of the pioneers in building its own dedicated SimRacing structure within the team and expanding across different competitions. F1 Esports started strongly, with the first event taking place in the F1 paddock, with the eyes of everyone in Abu Dhabi on it. It then moved to the Gfinity Arena, bringing SimRacing into the LAN environment and putting it in front of millions of viewers. The wave kept getting bigger through 2018 and 2019... And then came the boom: COVID. What became an epidemic for the real world became the epicentre of the wave for the virtual one. Teams invested more, drivers earned more and the audience grew exponentially. But SimRacing was never just about racing. For an F1 team, it can be a powerful marketing and fan engagement platform: creating content that performs, bringing fans closer to the team, giving partners meaningful activations and creating high-value in-person experiences around GPs. Done properly, it can support marketing, sponsor servicing, fan engagement and ultimately generate additional commercial value. But when you are riding a wave, it is easy to focus on the momentum and forget to look at what is happening underneath. Why not bring the competition into the paddock or F1 Fan Zones during GPs? Why not have a defined calendar, allowing teams to plan their annual budgets and resources in advance? Why make it so expensive for teams to participate if the objective is to have every F1 team involved? We often point at the game and its potential bugs, but I believe that's the least of it. Entertainment is key. A simple marble race can be entertaining because everyone understands it and plays by the same rules. SimRacing is no different... Right now, we tend to focus on the bad news, but there are solutions. Not just to get back to where we were, but to build something better: a competition that is more entertaining, more sustainable and commercially valuable for the teams, while giving fans a reason to engage with F1 beyond the race weekend 👊🏻