Start your (virtual) engines… The IWC Esports Challenge at Battersea Power Station

Fergus Nash

The first time I set foot in a luxury watch boutique was for a sim racing competition in 2019, driving a GT3 car around the Hungaroring. I won a pen, notebook, and baseball cap for my third place ranking, and figured that I’d pretty much peaked in my sim racing career. IWC went down a much more intense route to celebrate the launch of their new Battersea Power Station boutique in London, hosting a professional iRacing Esports Sim Challenge that was streamed live and featured a wealth of talent.

Since IWC and Mercedes-AMG have shared a long and successful partnership, both through road cars and the Formula 1 team, the Swiss brand with piloting heritage have also come around to sponsoring the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Esports Team as well. Back in October, a qualifying phase was held online for competitors to set their fastest laps around the virtual Silverstone track, the home of British motorsport. The top class were then invited to the IWC Battersea Power Station boutique for the final qualification, before the two teams were then separated and individually coached.

One team was guided by the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Esports Team driver Jarno Opmeer who won both the 2020 and 2021 Formula 1 Esports championships, and the other was coached by Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula 1 Team driver George Russell, winner of the 2018 Formula 2 championship and freshly an F1 race winner in Brazil 2022. Despite Jarno Opmeer’s obvious seniority in Esports racing, George Russell had clearly learned enough from his four wins in the 2020 Virtual Grands Prix to impart some good wisdom and send his team to victory. The winners will be given an incredible factory tour and simulator experience at the Mercedes headquarters in Brackley, while the individual racer with the fastest lap of Silverstone was also given an IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph 41 Edition “Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team”.