Why we are launching our Assetto Corsa EVO championship now

On 4 September at 20:30, the 2026 Pre-season of the JOBARD Racing Academy Series gets underway at Brands Hatch: a French-language sim racing championship of eight rounds, running through to December, on Assetto Corsa EVO. This text is not an announcement — the announcement exists elsewhere. It is the reasoning behind three choices that structure everything: the game, the format, the moment.

A championship is a commitment, not an event

Opening a championship has nothing in common with organising a race. A race requires one evening; a championship commits four months — a calendar held to, a set of regulations written before the first start, a race direction that answers for its decisions, and drivers building something round by round.

A commitment of this nature is not made by default. It is made for precise reasons, and you owe those reasons to the people from whom you are asking eight Fridays of their autumn. Here they are.

Why Assetto Corsa EVO

We chose this simulator for what it demands of the driver.

The legacy of Assetto Corsa is a driving experience that does not forgive imprecision: a tyre physics model in which the limit is searched for, found and lost, weight transfers that penalise haste, a living track whose grip evolves throughout the session. EVO continues this work with a higher level of ambition — dynamic weather, tyre and fuel wear management, track conditions that reward racecraft as much as outright pace. For a racing school, this is precisely the raw material we were looking for: a simulator in which progression is visible, measurable and explainable.

The game is in early access, and we say so plainly: it is a game still being built. Version 0.9, released at the end of August, has further expanded the content and refined the physics; the roadmap is progressing towards the final release. We do not regard this evolving nature as a constraint — we integrated it into the project from the outset. Our regulations provide for a freeze of technical conditions before each round, and our choice of car illustrates this.

The Mazda MX-5 ND Cup, the sole single-make of the Pre-season, is anything but a default choice. It is the driver-development car par excellence: limited power, considerable rigour — every tenth of a second is found in positioning, clean weight transfer and momentum management, not in the specification sheet. On a single-make grid, the gap between two drivers can only be explained by driving. That is the condition of a talent-identification championship that deserves the name.

The calendar has been composed as a development programme: eight circuits, eight distinct lessons — the blind corners of Brands Hatch to open, Kyalami, the corkscrew at Laguna Seca, the Red Bull Ring, COTA, Imola, and Road Atlanta for the December finale. A driver who completes this calendar will have encountered virtually everything a circuit can ask of them.

What a season provides

An isolated race has no memory. A season does — and everything that gives motorsport its value lives within that memory.

The contact at turn one in September still counts in December: in the standings, in the points-based licence that follows each driver, in the reputation built round by round against the same rivals. The regulations are written before the first start, public and binding: disputes are examined against a text that everyone has been able to read. The calendar is known four months in advance: you prepare for a round, you develop between two events, you measure yourself against the same references. One round every fortnight leaves time to work — and to measure, with data in hand, what has genuinely improved.

And because a grid brings together drivers of different levels, each driver also competes within a category assigned at registration: from novice to experienced, everyone has a classification in which the margins are settled against their peers — a category win is within reach long before an overall win is.

That is the difference between driving and racing. It comes down to nineteen drivers on a grid, regulations upheld, and an organisation that answers for its decisions.

Why now: growing with the game

The question of timing remained. Waiting for the final release of the game would have been the comfortable choice. We did the opposite, for a straightforward reason: a championship too does not launch finished — it is built.

A standing-start procedure is tested in real conditions. A race direction develops on genuine incidents, not on textbook scenarios. A debrief format is established, refined, and stabilised. All of this requires rounds to be run, and every round of the Pre-season serves precisely that purpose: testing our methods with our first drivers, in conditions where everything can still be adjusted.

The game is being built; our championship grows with it. When Assetto Corsa EVO reaches its final release, the structure will already be mature: regulations tested across eight rounds, a race direction that will have ruled on real situations, established racing habits. The two maturities will converge — that is the wager of our calendar, and we stand by it as such.

Pre-season: the word is chosen

You will notice that we do not call 2026 a "season". It is a Pre-season, and the word is as much a commitment to humility as it is a promise.

2026 is there to build: to test the regulations article by article, to bed in the race direction, to establish debrief methods, to learn — alongside the drivers — what makes a successful round. Season 1, the real one, will be run in 2027, with an organisation that will have already turned eight times. The Pre-season drivers are not joining a finished product: they are building the championship with us, and that carries weight — their feedback shapes the 2027 regulations.

What this commits us to

The commitment we are asking — eight Fridays, 20:30 start time, September through to December — we hold ourselves to first, and beyond.

Eight rounds held on the announced dates. A race direction that examines every reported incident and gives reasons for its decisions. Commented broadcast of every round. And a telemetry analysis tool we are developing for our own drivers, made available free of charge to championship entrants — because a development championship is judged by what its drivers have learned, not only by who won it.

We commit to an organisation that treats its nineteen Pre-season drivers with the rigour of a professional field. That is our definition of premium: not what shines, but what holds.

Joining the grid

The full calendar and the AC EVO league format are on the championship page, the regulations are public, and registration is open on a rolling basis.

JOBARD Racing Academy — the Assetto Corsa EVO championship of the 2026 Pre-season: eight rounds, MX-5 ND Cup, Fridays at 20:30.