Are you a racing prodigy? NASCAR Hall of Famer Bobby Labonte joins search group to find next generation of racing talent

Labonte joins influencer Cameron Das as judges for the Prodigy Search Selection Show, Live Oct. 12 at 10 a.m. ET.

JACKSONVILLE, FL, October 10, 2023 – Racing Prodigy™, a groundbreaking sports, entertainment, and media property making motorsports more accessible through esports, welcomes NASCAR Hall of Famer Bobby Labonte and content creator Cameron Das to its third Prodigy Search Committee.

NASCAR Hall of Famer Bobby Labonte. Photo courtesy NASCAR

On October 12 at 10 a.m. ET, Labonte and Das will join host Arjuna Kankipati live on the Prodigy Search Selection Show to select two Prodigy Pass™ winners, awarding all-expense paid trips to Prodigy Week™ part 1 at Atlanta Motorsports Park, Oct. 30-Nov. 1. The two winners will join 10 others who participated in the Prodigy Racing League™ (PRL™) esports tournaments to compete at Prodigy Week where they will be trained and tested in real race cars for the opportunity to earn a paid racing contract in the real-world PRL planned to debut in 2024.

PRL’s first season is well underway, with tens of thousands of racing gamers across 90 countries having competed in its tournaments in the month of September alone. Tournament winners automatically earn Prodigy Passes to compete at Prodigy Week, while those who place in the top 500 in any of the four-game partners’ tournaments may submit video and survey submissions to Racing Prodigy sharing why they are deserving of the Prodigy Search judges to award them with a Prodigy Pass. For this third Selection Show,

Racing Prodigy has narrowed the racers from the PRL RaceRoom Tatuus F4 Cup, PRL rFactor 2 Radical SR3 Cup, PRL SK Racing TKM Continental Cup (mobile), and PRL iRacing Chevrolet Silverado Cup to 20 finalists from whom judges Labonte and Das will award two Prodigy Passes.

“It has been really cool to see how gaming in racing has evolved from the time I got involved back in the Papryus days to today. I’ll race anything, so it’s nothing for me to jump on the sim and have some fun,” said Labonte. “I do believe there is talent out there who might not have the right opportunity to race but are working hard to develop and fine-tune their driving skills in esports. So, I’m excited to meet these sim racers from around the world, hear about their ambitions, and then see how they do in a real race car on a real race track.”

Watch Bobby Labonte and Cameron Das discuss what they look for in racing talent, and make their two selections live on the Prodigy Search Selection Show on Racing Prodigy’s YouTube channel on October 12 at 10 am ET. 

On September 28, former F1, IndyCar and NASCAR driver Max Papis along with sim racing content creator Random CallSign selected Siro Zambra from Switzerland as the newest Prodigy Pass winner. The committee chose Zambra from the PRL iRacing FF1600 Cup Challenge. Zambra has been sim racing for fewer than three years.

Max Papis. Photo courtesy IndyCar/Chris Owens

On August 20, IndyCar driver Linus Lundqvist and sim racing content creator Aarav “Aarava” Amin comprised the first Prodigy Search Committee. The duo chose American David Dalton Jr., who competed in the PRL iRacing GR86 Cup, his first racing esports tournament of his career.

Linus Lundqvist. Photo courtesy IndyCar/Joe Skibinski

The sixth (mobile-based) and seventh (PC-based) PRL esports tournaments conclude part 1 of season 1. The PRL iRacing Chevrolet Silverado Cup, which ran Sep. 26 - Oct. 8 saw Garrett Lowe from Charlotte, N.C. and Dominik Lukomski from Poland each securing a Prodigy Pass. The tournament split drivers into two geographical regions to race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, the PRL’s first tournament on an oval track, with racers competing in a Chevrolet Silverado.

The PRL SK Racing TKM Continental Cup began Sep. 20 and concludes Oct. 14, awarding a Prodigy Pass to the winner. The mobile racers had the choice of three tracks for qualifiers, with each track coming with a Racing Prodigy TKM kart optimized for that specific track, including the Todd Road (Melbourne, Australia), PF International (England), and Wackersdorf (Germany).

In all, Racing Prodigy will award 12 total Prodigy Pass winners in lead-up to Prodigy Week, part 1 - eight from its PRL esports tournaments and four from the Prodigy Search program. To be eligible for the PRL esports tournaments, participants must register at www.RacingProdigy.com and meet all requirements.

Prodigy Pass recipients:

Gustavo Ariel, Brazil; PRL iRacing GR86 Cup champion

Laurens Beerten, Belgium; PRL X30 Miami Cup champion

Dino Filippa, Argentina; PRL iRacing FF1600 Cup

David Dalton Jr., United States; Prodigy Search Selection

Marko Pejic; Germany; PRL RaceRoom Tatuus F4 Cup

Lorenz Hörzing, Austria; PRL rFactor 2 Radical SR3 Cup

Siro Zambra, Switzerland; Prodigy Search Selection

Following the first Prodigy Week, Racing Prodigy plans to host a second Prodigy Week in early 2024 to bring Season 1 to a close, with an additional 38 Prodigy Pass winners, creating a pool of 50 of the world’s most talented drivers from which PRL teams will draft. The plan is for those drafted to receive paid contracts to compete in PRL’s first real-world racing series in the United States, to be launched in 2024.

For more information on our partners, please visit:

Atlanta Motorsports Park: https://www.atlantamotorsportspark.com/

Asetek SimSports®: https://www.asetek.com/simsports/

GRID Engineering: www.grid-engineering.com

iRacing: https://www.iracing.com/

Primal Racing School: https://primalracing.com/

RaceRoom: https://game.raceroom.com/

rFactor 2: www.studio-397.com

SIM-LAB: https://sim-lab.eu/

Street Kart Racing: https://www.streetkart.me/

ABOUT RACING PRODIGY

Racing Prodigy™ is a sports, entertainment, and media property whose mission is to open motorsports to all – both in and out of the race car – by overcoming the major financial barrier to entry. To accomplish that goal, it created the Prodigy Racing League™ (PRL™), the world’s first e2Real™ sports league that discovers talent through gaming and provides real-world racing opportunities.

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