2018 saw Vermin Racing return to the world of sim racing with great success. Join us as we look back on the year and how it unfolded.
When Slava returned to sim racing in early 2018 it caught the eye of Richard, who had put the team in a long sabactical. He could see from Slava's sim cockpit setup and how serious he was taking it that now would be a good time to return to sim racing as a team. Slava already had a tribute skin to Vermin Racing, so Richard contacted him about supporting him in his championship and things grew from there. It didn't take long for Richard to return himself to racing in the SRO F3 series alongside Slava. As the SRO season progressed, Slava was also running in the Race Department series, which drew the attention of three drivers. Christopher Holman joined Vermin Racing and was starting to develop as a good driver, if a little inconsistent at first, sadly he decided to quit racing for Vermin after a couple of races. Oscar Williams and Jack Smith both joined the team at the same time and imediately improved our pace and performances, bringing in wins and podiums consistently in SRO. Sadly we didn't quite have the momentum to push for the Drivers championships in SRO having started late, Richard managed to finish 4th overall, but as a Team we pulled together and won convincingly. Vermin Racing then took on the trout league, with a new signing Roel Postma on board and Richard taking a testing role due to time commitments we started the series strongly. Oscar and Jack again proved consistent front runners with Slava improving from race to race. Roel only raced once for Vermin and then we parted ways. As the trout season progressed Oscar challenged for the drivers championship, with Jack picking up some great results but unable to attend a full season. The turning point for Oscar's challenge was at Donington Park, with a lot of bad luck effectively making Oscar the underdog for the championship going into the final race. Oscar and the entire team did everything they could to give him the best chance but the odds were too great and although Oscar won the race in the penultimate round it wasn't enough to clinch the trophyy and he finished 2nd in the championship. The team finished 3rd overall in the championship and have vowed to come back stronger in 2019. Sadly towards the end of 2018 Richard had the terrible loss of his father who had started him on his sim racing journey many many many years ago, so he had to step back from managing the team for a short term, Jack took over temporary management and the team pulled together again until Richard returned to managing things.
With 2019 just around the corner it is an exciting time for Vermin, with our partnership with Dragonspirit VRT bringing in two new valuable and exciting drivers into our stable with Niko Anders and Heigo Poom as well as providing Oscar a Vermin powered race seat when he returns from his abscence. Jack and Slava will have the added talent of Maxi Junger as a team mate as well.