Team Philippines led by real-track Champion Iñigo Anton emerges 2nd Overall in SEA ESports Race.
Two Filipinos, who happen to be the youngest competitors in the prestigious Southeast Asian ESports Championship (SEA EC), clinched the SILVER medal for the Philippines in the team championship.
Real-life racers Iñigo Anton and Axel Nocom, despite being fairly new to E-racing proved that they have what it takes, to go head-to-head with the region’s top E-racers/sim racers. Anton finished in P3 and Nocom in P9 in the team championship and that was enough to edge out the elite sim racers Fadhli Rachmat and Andika Rama Maulana of Indonesia. The overall win went to team Malaysia, represented by topnotch sim racers, brothers Naquib and Nabil Azlan.
Anton, a recent 17th Annual Golden Wheel awardee is also the Philippines Autocross, Slalom, Karting, and Toyota Gazoo Racing - Vios Cup champion, while Nocom is a young Philippines Karting champion and is also an Annual Golden Wheel awards recipient. The 17-year-old and the 10-year-old got into sim racing because of the pandemic and have quickly adapted to it, both winning in several E-races in the region. They were the top 2 finishers in the national qualifiers of the SEA EC sanctioned by the Philippine Esports Organization. Out of the 10,000.00 USD prize pool in the SEA EC, team Philippines was able to win a total of 1,800.00 USD.
It is the first time that E-racing is included in the SEA EC tournament. The big effort is credited to the former Formula One driver Alex Yoong who is also the mastermind of Eracing GP. The tournament is in cooperation with the International Union of E-Motorsport, Z-Challenger, Eracing GP, EGG Network, and RaceRoom. The other Sports medal events in the SEA EC are PUBG Mobile, Wild Rift, and Valorant. SEA EC 2022 is a precursor to the 31st SEA Games which will be held in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2022.
Anton is currently preparing for an even bigger race – this time on the global stage. He is part of Axle Sports, which is the only Southeast Asian team that is competing in the premier Endurance Sports Championship in the world - the Le Mans Virtual Series. Anton is the lone Filipino racer in this international race and he admits that he is quite starstruck with the driver line-up of the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual Race that include Formula 1 World Champion Max Verstappen, former F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya and IndyCar Champion Alex Palou.
The 50-car grid will be filled with Formula 1, GT, IndyCar, and Touring car stars racing alongside the best SIM drivers in the world. “Our team boss, Alex Yoong, our race engineer, and our whole team have been preparing hard for the 24 hours of Le Mans Virtual and we are super excited to be racing with the world champions of both real-life and sim racing. We hope to finish in the top ten and we will do our best to represent the region,” Anton said.
The finale, which is the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual, will be held on January 15 -16, 2022 with 50% of the entire US$250,000 prize fund available for the 24-hour standalone race.
