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 under way at Brands Hatch: a French-speaking 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 shape everything: the game, the format, the timing.

A championship is a commitment, not an event

Opening a championship has nothing in common with organising a race. A race asks for one evening; a championship commits four months — a calendar kept, a rulebook written before the first start, a race direction accountable for its decisions, drivers building something from round to 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 heritage of Assetto Corsa is a driving experience that does not forgive imprecision: a tyre physics model in which the limit is sought, found and lost, weight transfers that penalise haste, a living track whose grip evolves throughout the session. EVO carries this work forward 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 progress is visible, measurable and explainable.

The game is in early access, and we say so plainly: it is a game that is still being built. Version 0.9, which arrived at the end of August, further expanded the content and refined the physics; the roadmap is advancing towards the final release. We do not simply accept this evolving nature — we integrated it into the project from the outset. Our rulebook provides for a technical freeze before each round, and our choice of car illustrates this.

The Mazda MX-5 ND Cup, the sole spec car of the Pre-season, is anything but a default choice. It is the quintessential training car: modest power, considerable rigour — every tenth of a second is earned through positioning, clean inputs and momentum management, not through a specification sheet. On a spec grid, the gap between two drivers can only be explained by driving. That is the condition of a talent-identification championship worthy of the name.

The calendar itself has been assembled as a training programme: eight circuits, eight different lessons — the blind corners of Brands Hatch to open, Kyalami, the corkscrew of Laguna Seca, the Red Bull Ring, COTA, Imola, and Road Atlanta for the December finale. A driver who works through 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 has one — and everything that gives motorsport its value lives within that memory.

The first-corner incident from September still counts in December: in the standings, in the points licence that follows each driver, in the reputation built round by round against the same rivals. The rulebook is 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 improve between two events, you measure yourself against the same references. One round per fortnight leaves time to work — and to measure, data in hand, what has genuinely improved.

And because a grid brings together different levels, each driver also competes within a category assigned at registration: from novice to experienced, each has a classification in which the margins are fought out against peers — you can target a category win long before targeting overall victory.

This is the difference between driving and racing. It comes down to nineteen drivers on a grid, a rulebook that holds, and an organisation accountable for its decisions.

Why now: growing alongside the game

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

A starting procedure is tested in real conditions. A race direction is shaped by real incidents, not by textbook cases. A debrief format is established, corrected, stabilised. All of this requires rounds to be run, and every round of the Pre-season serves exactly that purpose: to test our methods with our first drivers, in conditions where everything can still be adjusted.

The game is being built; our championship grows alongside it. When Assetto Corsa EVO reaches its final release, the structure will already be mature: a rulebook 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 deliberate

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

What this commits us to

The commitment we are asking of you — eight Fridays, 20:30 start, September through December — we apply first and foremost to ourselves, and beyond.

Eight rounds held on the announced dates. A race direction that examines every reported incident and sets out the reasons for its decisions. Commented broadcast coverage 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 training championship is judged by what its drivers have learned, not only by who won.

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 format of the AC EVO league are on the championship page, the rulebook is 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.