Drivers, journalists, content creators and all kinds of racing fans gather in Los Santos de la Humosa this Saturday for an event that has gone from being an amateur initiative to an event, with broadcasting and corporate support.
The premise is simple: 90 competitors, divided into three different levels according to their level, make up a total of 15 teams that will face each other throughout six karting races to obtain the highest number of points. These teams are captained by leading members of the racing world in Spain; professional drivers, journalists, simracing competitors and the biggest content creators on platforms like YouTube and Twitch. Along with them, an amalgamation of profiles with a large following on social networks, especially on Twitter, and simple ordinary people from all corners of Spain who share with others the love of racing, regardless of their fame or the number of followers.
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As great headliners, this event has the participation of three drivers who have driven a Formula 1 at some point in its trajectory, as Roberto Merhiformer Manor driver and Super GT competitor; Daniel Juncadellareigning champion of the GT World Challenge Europe, and Roldan Rodriguez, former GP2 and GT driver who is currently part of the DAZN F1 team. They will not be the only athletes present, since the legend of the balomnano Jose Javier Hombrados it will also be put to the test in Los Santos de la Humosa.
For many attendees, these names compete in notoriety with those of the streamers, youtubers and different creators from the world of racing or the automotive industry who have decided to collaborate with the event. names like Victor AbadFlowstreetYT (Alejandro López), ElReyGuiri (David Castilla), Fons Barco, Heikki360 (Xabier Sánchez), BillyCherokee (Alejandro Aroca), Javift14 (Javier Morales), Borja Nanclares or Javi Martínez (member of JaramaFan) will contribute their particular virtual ‘star power’ together with great following tweeters such as BatteryVoltas (Jordi Cunillera), Emma Martín and countless more.
Together with the editor of these lines, who will compete in Group 3, the event also has other colleagues from the world of journalism as competitors such as Nico Abad (former commentator of the Motorcycle World Championship), Miguel Portillo (DAZN F1), Carlos Miquel (COPE), Jacobo Vega and José de Celis (Motorsport.com), among others. In turn, there will also be engineering professionals such as Carlos Sánchez (Aston Martin F1 engineer) and Víctor Forner (Danish Formula 4), multiple top tier simracing drivers such as Pablo López, Álvaro Carretón, Coque López, Ignacio Rodríguez or Néstor García, and regulars on the semi-amateur karting scene with great aspirations for victory.
One of those fans is Alejandro Ruíz-Cabello, organizer of the event together with Óscar Ruízand a classic of the Formula 1 tweeting scene. Known on networks as ‘HalesF1’, his ability to bring together the different nuclei of fans that exist on networks was key to the “GP Twitter Madrid”, a first event with similar conditions that brought together dozens of participants with no other incentive than to have fun and take home a trophy. That instigated the preparations for a second meeting that has ended up exceeding the expectations of all those involved, and at all levels.
#gptwitter teams (CAPTAINS IN BOLD)
«The ‘GP Twitter’ was born as the typical meeting between friends and little by little it grew, both in size and in concept, to become a letter of introduction to the rest of the world of what the F1 Twitter community in Spain is», Ruíz-Cabello commented to Motor.es. “In February we started planning dates, contacting potential participants and studying the impact we could have had by doing something 10 times bigger. Close the list of participants, present the project to companies and look for possible collaborations it has been very costly in terms of work and timesince neither Óscar nor I can dedicate ourselves to this full time ».
«Without a mass of followers behind as a cover letter, it has been quite hard, and some other bad news we have taken along the way, but both the collaborators and the participants themselves have given us nothing more than facilities. Having 90 pilots, journalists and renowned professional pilots and with such collaborations is something that I would not have even dreamed of after the pilot event”, adds ‘HalesF1’, whose work throughout these months has been key to achieving the sponsorship of up to 10 different companiesseveral of them powerful.
For all these reasons, the #GPTwitter will have unthinkable facilities for an event of these characteristics. Between them, a live broadcast of television quality for all the races on Nico Abad’s Twitch channel, with onboard cameras and a team of top-level commentators, as well as free catering for all participants. Likewise, the workers of the Karting Club Los Santos have taken care of all the details, and each of the karts will have a fine tuningincluding new tires.
The variety of the event is in the numbers. The 90 participants bring together a million and a half followers, largely contributed by the 10 most followed, but almost 25% of the competitors do not reach 1,000 followers, a rare avis for an event of these characteristics. “We are a respectful, daring and friendly community,” comments Ruíz-Cabello, “and these are values that are reflected in the organization of events like this, in which users come from all over the Spanish geography and the islands, even from the United Kingdom. United, with no greater intention than to get together and have the best possible time sharing the passion that unites us. A passion that, on any given Saturday morning in the east of Madrid, is capable of moving mountains.