Getting into e-Racing (Joining a Team & more)

1

Hey there,
With 2021 looking to become equally bleak as 2020 when it comes to open to the public racing events, I am contemplating to dig deeper into e-Racing. I have done a few races on Zwift so far, and even won a handful (usually the ones with only a few participants😅). While Zwift racing is definitely a motivational boost over just thrashing myself for the 30th time up a given Watopia climb, it isn’t nearly the same as racing outdoors.
While riding outdoors and riding indoors are of course very different by design, the two major things that annoy me about RACING indoors is that it is pretty meaningless (many events only have 5 participants in A Cat) and most of the bigger events are usually just a huge mess. There are no tactics, no realistic race dynamics… nothing really that makes racing fun. People just ride hard at the start and ease off a little until the next climb and then there is wild bunch sprint, where the guy with the most poorly calibrated rollers and the most fortunate boost wins.

Enough complaining: I just followed a few e-Racing events, that are a little more professional (limited entry, part of a racing series) and that seemed a lot more appealing. Teams had team tactics, with lead outs and specialists, attacks, and counters etc.
It felt a lot more akin to a real race.
That got me thinking. Since I training really hard all the time, but might not even have any events to train for, why not get into e-Racing properly. Joining a team is also a great way of motivating one another and having a sense of meaningfulness to what you do on the bike (you assist team mate and wins are for the team…).
When researching e-Racing teams, most of them were either afterwork lads or actual world tour teams.
I think I rather fit into the middle of professionalism here.
That’s what got me to start this thread:

  • Does anyone here have experience with joining/ being part of a amateur/ ambitious e-Racing Team? Good or bad?
  • How did you do it?
  • How is the team organized (choosing events, organized team trainings, tactics/ specialities, else?)
  • Any other advice/ things to note?

Many thanks in advance. Looking forward to your input!

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If you are disappointed with the competition and think its meaningless, pick different races. The quality of field in a rando race that fits into your schedule is very different from the high level races.

  • If you want a longer race (2+hrs), look at the KISS 100 race on Sundays. They are tough and there are a lot of high level racers there.
  • If you want something shorter (50+min), I’ve done the Kiss@race during the week. There were a number of guys from the high level eRacing teams at the events I’ve done.
  • Use zwiftpower to stalk some high level racers you know and see what series they join. I follow a guy from back in the day who is now on the Saris+TPC team. He has been doing the SweatFest series, KISS series and a lot of the OH MY CRIT series.
  • I’ve also seen a lot of hitters doing the Team Italy and Frenchy Fuzion league races. I think SZ (swedish zwifters) also have a series that gets a lot of high level competitors.

I think the process to get on these teams is to do some races and make your name known via your performance, then either reach out to them or wait for them to contact you. There’s a lot of hitters though, so I don’t know how easy it is to get attention. Maybe join a smaller / less selective team and then work your way up / get attention that way. If it fits into your schedule, might be worth trying to find an A team for WTRL.