CRS Spotlight

Ed, thanks for having me. At its core, we are a drivers’ championship. Our focus is squarely on the racer—telling the story of their journey against the intense, competitive backdrop of motorsport. We share their goals as a racer, bring to life what racing means to them, the hours of practice required each day to compete at the top, and the mental aspect—the preparation, the mindset, the focus. Like our drivers, we feel a deep connection to the craft of racing, and CRS is designed as the arena where they get to showcase those skills with our fans.

I am the League Commissioner for CRS, and I am directly responsible for all sporting and technical aspects of the league. From the very beginning, it was clear that we needed a solid sporting foundation. The racing on track is fundamental to the stories we want to tell, and we understood from the outset that we need to earn the trust of our drivers and our fans. My job is to put all these pieces together: the regulations, the schedule, and the race weekends. This ensures the narratives we follow are grounded in realism. I focus on earning that trust so the rest of the team can concentrate on telling compelling, exciting, and most importantly, real stories.

Fundamentally, all of us here at CRS are racers at heart and we’re all huge fans of motorsport. What sets us apart as a league and as an organisation is our dedication to storytelling and bringing the drivers' journeys to life. We are laser-focused on the narratives, the drivers, and what is sure to be a compelling arc of our first season. Ultimately, for us at CRS, it’s about expanding the choices and options our fans have to live their passion through the lens of our talented drivers from all over the world.

17 top-tier drivers battling it out across six international circuits for the championship title. Our qualifying format is straightforward: 20 minutes, open format, fixed setup, with all the drivers competing for the fastest lap alongside one another on track. It’s all about nailing that early banker lap, but crucially, saving the tires so you can really attack in the final minutes when the car is lightest on fuel. Then it’s a 50-minute race, with a rolling start. The drivers all begin with identical fuel loads, but each driver will need to pit for fuel during the race, so fuel-saving and tire strategy is crucial to be competitive. Every driver will be making real-time decisions out there—it's going to be a thrilling, strategic and intense battle to the flag.

Without getting into too much detail, a key aspect is that the car setup for all drivers is the same, that means the only tool they have to play with in the car is brake bias, everything else is dictated by the fixed setup such as fuel loads, traction control and abs settings, wing levels, etc. We also require that drivers pick one car for the season; they must race it across all six tracks we will visit in Season 1. This is a significant challenge, and it’s one we’re excited to watch the drivers embrace as we won’t be making any in-season Balance of Performance (BoP) adjustments. And this all ties back to our DNA of being driver-focused. What choices do they make? What are the inherent tradeoffs, and what are the consequences of those decisions? Performance is a function of many variables, and how the drivers manage to work around each one is key to the storytelling.

Excellent question, fans and drivers get passionate about this and we welcome that but it needs to be legitimate and grounded in fair decisions. To deliver the level of professionalism we’re looking for at CRS we need a strong and independent team in place and we’ve hired a great team of stewards to support us. The team is external to CRS and will be with us at each race to drive consistency of decisions. Trust and structure are what I am dedicated to, and we take this aspect of the series very seriously.

We ran some early pre-season tests at Spa and delivered a full non-championship race at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya to test all of our systems and procedures with the drivers and the CRS team. Having an extensive pre-season has helped us to gather data—on the drivers, the cars, the logistics—and to fine-tune the regulations. We’re really happy with what we learned.

Oh, absolutely. Knowing what I do about these top-level drivers, and we’re talking about the top 100, top 50 globally for some of them, they will be grinding away in the background, putting in the hours of practice to unlock the performance from the car they’ve chosen and the fixed setup they’re working with. As we’re fortunate to have such a stacked grid in terms of ability, every driver will need to bring their A-game to be in contention, and the hours of time testing outside of race weekends is what will ultimately decide the championship.

Thank you, Ed. At CRS, the fans and the drivers are central to everything we do and we’re already hard at work behind the scenes to bring our drivers’ journeys to life. Keep an eye on our socials for some exclusive content over the next few weeks but it all starts with Round 1 on November 30th, live at @crt-tv on YouTube. We can’t wait to get this series underway! Thank you for your time.