Soumil Arora
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bcl_racing/ | https://www.instagram.com/racekraftesports/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bcl_racing | https://twitter.com/RaceKraftEsport
There’s just a certain charm about watching a team make their way up the rungs of the ladder of sporting success rapidly but with a great sense of steadiness. Whether it may be the case of watching Leicester City transforming into consistent European football mainstays or perhaps watching the Cleveland Cavaliers of the mid-to-late 2000s, there’s this unique sense of warmth that one feels of seeing a strong unit build up right before your very eyes. For a sports fan, few things come close in replicating that sensation!
The RaceKraft eSports Charm
In a very similar way, RaceKraft eSports undoubtedly have been one of the few standout rising teams in the world of Sim Racing, with their focus strongly on Road Courses. From the chaotic top-line Skip Barber championships to the upper echelons of the prestigious SportsCar Open championship, RaceKraft eSports have had a steady ascent since being founded back in 2017.
After leaving a firm impact on the iRacing Formula 3 community upon its release, the team took the bigger steps and moved up to the ranks of the 24h Series and SCO, with the elegant black gold and white being a regular sighting near the top of the field.
This can largely be traced down to the team’s immense commitment to move forward and adapt to the changing needs of the higher levels of competition. Gone was the aimless free practice and merely analysing replays of faster drivers that once worked wonders; with a firm eye on process innovation driven by the hunger to succeed at a higher level, RaceKraft eSports and their drivers have grown significantly in the past few years.
However, most may recognise the RaceKraft name and the rather classy livery from the crown jewel of road course Sim Racing today, the Porsche Tag Heuer eSports SuperCup. Their co-founder, Brian Lockwood spearheads the team’s solitary entry in the most competitive grid in Road Course Sim Racing today and what a fascinating driver he is!
The Brian Lockwood story
From the very beginning, Brian Lockwood has been a true motorsport aficionado, with an unflinching love for the sport which soon extended into racing karts around the USA in his early years and reaching a very high level! Fortunes soon took a turn for the worse as a lack of support pulled the curtains over a promising karting career. Parallelly, the world of Sim Racing, which was merely a fun hobby, saw a surge in competition and captured Brian’s attention.
His professional career began in 2018, a year after forming RaceKraft eSports with a good friend in Mehdi El Fathy, a shining light in RaceKraft’s endurance teams of the recent past. In only 2 years, Brian and the team have grown with almost the stability of the Mercedes AMG GT3 on iRacing, with Lockwood very much a name fans and competitors expect to see in the top half of the grid, if not on the podium.
This measured meteoric rise for Brian Lockwood and the team has come all while Brian himself took part in a season of the Global Mazda MX5 Cup in the USA, which, as enjoyable as it is, was plagued with technical misfortune.
What makes Brian Lockwood truly stand out
Much like most other top-line Sim Racers in the world, Brian Lockwood has a great degree of commitment to Sim Racing. The extent of it though will baffle you. In preparation for the first round of the 2020 Porsche Tag Heuer eSports SuperCup season, Lockwood clocked in over 60 hours worth of practice, with his work ethic getting him a podium in the very first round! In context, most drivers often end up doing usually half of that!
Lockwood himself would be the first to point out that 60 hours for a round is unsustainable, but being the extremely driven individual that he is, a complete restructuring of his and the practice practice approach of the entire RaceKraft team that revolves around efficiency soon followed.
Since then, RaceKraft eSports have been giving a hard time to the competition in the VCO 24h Series eSports and Lockwood has made his way back into the Porsche Tag Heuer eSports SuperCup after agonisingly finishing in P21, one position away from securing automatic qualification for 2021. Had he not missed a round due to gut-wrenching administration issues, perhaps the points table would have looked far more rosy.
Life outside Sim Racing
Life is often about many such ifs and buts that could have or should have swung either way, but eventually did not. The sickening blow of missing a round in a World Championship can sting for long, even to the very best. Staying true to the RaceKraft motto of putting the time and effort in and trusting the process, Lockwood had to regroup and get back on track in the right direction. With such a big fire for competing still burning strong underneath, it was little wonder that the final round of the season in Monza showed some big promise for 2021.
Brian’s sheer passion for Sim Racing is the first thing that you will come across upon having a chat with him – he is one of the very few drivers who are currently making a living purely through sim racing! For Brian Lockwood, if he has driven too much, there’s always the option of going to manage the team as the leader or finding new ways of practicing or marketing the team better or most surprising of all, reading research papers on psychology, a far cry from his antipathy of the same from his school days!
Gaming is a fun hobby for Brian but nothing comes close to the wide world of sim racing and the various gems it has to offer. Whether it be through coaching, managing the team, reading, watching races or best of all, driving, Brian Lockwood has well and truly found his place in professional sim racing. Normally, when your hobby turns professional, the smiles and laughter are often replaced by a slight emptiness and a slow process of losing your love for the hobby. Not for one Brian Lockwood, no – much like those bright candles that light back up after every attempt of blowing them out, Lockwood’s passion for the sport is just that, unwavering and so fascinating to experience.
The road ahead
So what’s next for the 2018 2k World Cup Season 11 and 2019 GoPro Geodesic Champion? What’s next for the immensely admirable RaceKraft eSports squad?
Apart from another run at the Porsche Tag Heuer eSports Supercup, Lockwood and RaceKraft will be gunning it out in the upcoming season of the SportsCar Open and the current season of the VCO 24h Series eSports among others. With the aim of competing at the highest level and improving the entire team along the way, RaceKraft are also working on a fresh, more efficient new take on Sim Racing coaching!
There is a lot about RaceKraft eSports and Brian Lockwood that can excite you in the coming months. The black, white and gold of the team isn’t merely a fun livery to look at; when at their best, it is one that can be found right at the very top, driven by their unparalleled passion, will to improve and utmost trust in the process.
Don’t be surprised if you see them atop the timing screens and points standings far more frequently in the coming years!
Follow Brian Lockwood and RaceKraft eSports here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bcl_racing/ | https://www.instagram.com/racekraftesports/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bcl_racing | https://twitter.com/RaceKraftEsport
