August 7, 2026
George Cooke
Turns out, iRacing is now part of the Global Esports Games and will feature in early December! Over 50 countries have been invited to send their best iRacing driver to the global qualifier event (done online) where the top 19 will get an all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles to participate in the big event.
Needless to say, this has a lot of people very excited and rightly so! NZ Sim Racing Collective were quick to spread the word amongst New Zealand communities and a qualifier event was put on to determine who would be New Zealand's representative.
Streamed on NZ Sim Racing TV by TrackSpotTV on the 28th July 2026, the event included 2 races, a sprint and a feature race. The standard and quality of the driving in this event was incredible and despite a couple of small problems with the stream when it went live, eventually viewers were treated to an epic evening of racing at Mugello circuit featuring the Ferrari 296 GT3 cars. A great combination of track and car gave us some brilliantly close racing amongst the field, but despite that at the top things were a bit different!
Hugo Allan, got away cleanly in Race 1 and found his rhythm early on allowing him to create a formidable gap to the rest of the field. Ultimately, in Race 2, he showed his skill again, the 45 minute race requiring some patience before re-passing on-track rival Bryce Harding. By the end of the race, it was clear. Hugo Allan was the fastest in the field and was the right choice to send into the global qualifier event!
Watch it back on the NZ Sim Racing TV channel on YouTube, I recommend viewing from this timestamp
https://youtu.be/cpI2goL5QiU?t=1941
For more information on the Global Esports Games 2026