Sami-Matti Trogen signed a contract with Williams Esports for 2020
Sami-Matti Trogen, a 17-year-old Finnish motorsport talent and the World Champion in eSports, signed a contract with the Williams F1 team and will be their official eSports driver.
Sami-Matti Trogen, a student of Mäkelänrinne Sports High School, has been building a convincing career as a race driver for several years. He has achieved success in rallycross, rally as well as in Formula 4 cars, and to mention one, is the 2018 Champion of the international RX Academy series.
The latest breakthrough came in late 2019 when Trogen was titled as the World Champion of iRacing World RX Championship, in which he was competing with a wild card with SET Esport team. Shortly after winning the Championsip Williams Esports became interested in him and now a driver's contract has been signed.
- I'm extremely happy that my eSports career has taken this big leap and my dreams are closer to come true. I have been training a lot with simulators over the years and now it's time to take it to the next, more professional level. It's a big honour to get to sign a contract with Williams, an internationally well-known team – I couldn't be any happier to be part of the Williams team, Trogen describes his feelings.
Winner of nine F1 Team Champions in real life, Williams nowadays also competes strongly in the virtual world.
- Williams Esports is delighted to announce that Sami-Matti has joined our team. Our esports programme has grown from strength to strength over the last 18 months and we continue to attract world championship-winning talent to our roster. Sami-Matti’s performance in the iRacing RX World Championship was exceptional and we will give him all the help we can to defend his title in 2020, comments Steven English from Williams.
Until today, for several years Trogen has used a driving simulator made by rallycross legend Matti Alamäki. With the new collaboration, Trogen will have even better training opportunities.
The 2020 racing calendar will be confirmed in the beginning fo this year, but it's 100% sure that there will again the World RX Championship.
- I'm grateful to Matti Alamäki for my career in eSports, because thanks to him I decided to try eSports. I'm hoping for a versatile race calendar to get the most out of driving in both eSport and, of course, in real life. It has been great to see how much Williams Esports supports me as a driver in real life, they are closely following my progress as a rally driver, says Trogen gratefully.
- A key pillar of the esports programme at Williams is to promote the links between real and virtual motorsports and to explore the transferable skills of the best drivers in the world. Sami-Matti’s real-life career is already successful at the age of 17, so we look forward to seeing how the partnership with Williams can help him achieve success in both forms of racing, English adds.
In addition to eSports, in 2020 Trogen will focus on the Finnish Rally Championship, in which he drives with Ford Fiesta R2 rally car in the Ford Motorcraft team.