Idos Motorsport Returns!
News broke out today that the Idos Motorsport team would become itself once again after a three hour long discussion between the managers Alex Skinner, Kyran Parkin and April Carlsvard after recent news from the higher up members of Schubert Motorsport gave their path on how to receive full backing of which was originally was the goal of the team.
The steps seemed relatively simple for the team:
Exclusivity
This required the team to hand out multiple contracts of which would make drivers exclusively drivers of Schubert Motorsport. This would mean, if they signed, they could not drive for any other team if a Schubert car was entered into the same event.
Dedication This requires drivers to dedicate their time to Schubert. Without clashes in races and other teams preventing that, etc.
Those are easy steps, no doubt about that. However. The effects of those steps on the team would have been catastrophic, no matter the time scale. The team has been running since 2014 on other games and moved to rFactor 2 in 2016 for a race in the XtremeRPM series. After a sabbatical the team returned in June of 2017 to take part in the GPVWC ITC series. With very few drivers at the time it was a case of sourcing whoever you could to get them to race whenever they could. This rule of providing opportunities for anyone anywhere alongside a friendly environment is what the team stood for.
For the first stages of Schubert, it was the same. However, as time went on the atmosphere inside the team became a lot less friendly of which was noticed by several drivers and team staff. This then also reflected in races in which drivers would train less, have less dedication and would race for other teams more often. After then being told about these steps to gain full backing the team would then be faced with having to sack 15 drivers from their positions. This would mean all three Virtual Endurance Championship cars would be pulled out due to the drivers being with other teams and also running their own teams whilst not wanting to sign the exclusivity deal.
Formula Challenge would lose a driver as they run their own team in the Superleague division which they'd spend a lot of time managing whilst also being unable to sign the exclusivity deal for obvious reasons.
Formula Simracing would then lose a driver as they drive for the GNS team elsewhere and are loyal to them. Meaning the exclusivity deal would yet again be declined. Here is where you can see the pattern forming.
With a lack of exclusivity deals wanting to be signed the team would be instantaneously doomed to fail. Something of which ,Team Boss, Alex Skinner refused to let happen. This is where the three hour long discussion came about where everything was weighed up and the decision was made if it was felt worth it to continue with the deal or back out and make a name as they originally had planned to. The answer being the latter with a unanimous decision being made inside of the meeting room and the notice being written.
This, once again, means all entry names must be re-named and all skins changed. However this will be a smaller task than before as all the old skins were saved in an archive meaning that everything can be re-done for the next rounds of each series.
Of course, we want to give our extended thanks to Schubert Motorsport for their time with us. It was a great experience and we wish you guys the best of luck in the ADAC GT Masters series alongside your iRacing antics. Hopefully we can meet on the circuit sometime soon.
Some memories from our time with Schubert.
