French ace Kylian Drumont took the honors for his countryman Romain Grosjean’s professional esports team, R8G, in the first ever official Gran Turismo Esports Team Competition race broadcast earlier today.
The race, between 12 esports teams represented by some of the best Gran Turismo players in the world, actually took place ahead of the Nations Cup final at the Gran Turismo World Series finals in Fukuoka back in December 2025, but was only broadcast today. That’s made the results one of the better-kept secrets in GT, aided by the fact it was essentially behind closed doors and before the crowds entered for the main event.
While there was a range of teams taking part, from the higher-profile outfits like BS+Competition, R8G, and Williams to some more niche names, the quality of driving talent wasn’t in doubt. The grid included 11 Gran Turismo world champions (ten at the time of the race!), along with multiple winners, and drivers on the podium, of live events.
As a first embrace of esports teams, aside from a local event at the 2023 finals for Spanish players, and coming between the main events of the Manufacturers and Nations Cups, the format was a relatively simple and familiar affair. Each of the teams selected its own Gr.3 car — largely bound to existing brand affiliations — for a 12-lap race around the new Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve with a mandatory stop to switch tires between the two required grades.
First blood went to Drumont in the R8G Ferrari, guiding the new 296 GT3 to pole position by a little less than a tenth from quad-champ Lopez in the TC Esports Mercedes. Lopez though was the only driver to opt to start on the soft tire and was in the lead by turn two before a red flag was thrown, after equipment failure saw the ARTA NSX of Ryosuke Tsujimura (wearing a full race suit!) stranded in its rolling start spot.
At the front, the second start was a carbon copy of the first, but clustering further back would result in Angel Inostroza — crowned Manufacturers Cup champion the previous day — being the unfortunate driver squeezed into facing the wrong way about in his Mobil Esports Copec Porsche 911 RSR.
Lopez wasn’t entirely making his tire advantage count though, pulling out only a second on Drumont while the Ferrari was gapping the squabbling GT-R of Mikolaj Sedziak (Vanquish eSports) and the other 911 RSR of Jose Serrano by a similar margin. In fact Sedziak, shortly after wisely allowing Serrano to make a pass, was the first frontrunner into the pits to ditch the Mediums on lap five.
The stops proved crucial too. With Lopez forced into a switch onto the slower rubber, it barely took a lap for Drumont to hit the front. Serrano’s stop was a disaster though, landing a three-second automatic penalty seemingly for cutting the left-hand part of the entry and having to surrender spots to Sedziak — who almost made the undercut count — and Adriano Carrazza in the Galorys-entered AMG GT3.
That did leave Sedziak free to attack Lopez, which he duly did with a pass into the hairpin with four laps to go as he set off after Drumont. Lopez meanwhile began to fall back into the clutches of countryman — and fellow winner of the 2023 Nations Cup for Team Spain — Serrano.
Sedziak certainly made a good effort of it, but only closed to within a second of the flawless Drumont — extended to almost two courtesy of a late half-second penalty for a slight cut of the final chicane; unserved penalties are rounded up to the next whole second.
An elbows-out defense from Lopez through the final chicane saw him just keep Serrano at bay to take the podium for TC Esports, with Team Falcon in third.
Gran Turismo Esports Team Competition Results
- R8G eSports – Kylian Drumont (Ferrari 296 GT3) – 12 laps
- Vanquish eSports – Mikolaj Sedziak (Nissan GT-R GT3) – +1.794s
- TC Esports – Coque Lopez (Mercedes-AMG GT3) – +3.592s
It’s certainly going to be interesting to see if this is a one-off race or if there’ll be further acknowledgement of the team nature of racing esports in future Gran Turismo live events. There has been more recognition of esports teams in recent years, with some drivers in the Nations Cup at least sporting their esport team logos on their cars.
However the broadcast did highlight one of the difficulties involved, as viewers will have spotted on Coque Lopez’s car and choice of team attire. These prominently featured the wordmark logo for a gambling concern and was (intermittently) blurred out during the broadcast due to local gambling laws.
With the first live event of 2026, in Abu Dhabi, coming up soon, and the final throes of qualifying for them over the next week, we’ll hopefully find out more in due course.
See more articles on Gran Turismo World Series.
