IFMC Season 1

## Champions

Drivers Champion: Fernando Alonso

Constructors Champions: Thomas Cook Audi

## About Season 1

The Season 1 IFMC Season will be the inaugural season of the championship. Set up by Joseph Willows the league will consist of 11 teams with 22 real drivers and 11 real test/reserve drivers. The league will start on the 7th February 2016.

## Season Changes

* Team OSCA was initially in the series with Mark Webber, Juan Pablo Montoya and test driver Jacques Villeneuve. The team took part in 3 days of testing which they were quickest in, however they quit after the third day in Jerez after a number of teams complained about the engine that they were using. They were using their own engine which they named Comet and the teams didn't like how they was able to quick off the blocks straight away after 2 months of development and be able to pay cheaper than the others. Etihad Racing team boss Oliver Glazebrook believed that if the issue were to be resolved, then all the teams should have a meeting to discuss this. However, Team OSCA team boss Joshua Anderson believed that the group discussion wouldn't work as both sides would still back up their arguments and no agreement would be made. So he felt the only way this engine controversy would end, is if he pulled out of the series along with Webber, Montoya and Villeneuve. Within 24 hours of Day 4, it was announced that GP2 team, MOrange Orange Racing, which was owned by Matthew Orange, would take the vacant space left by Team OSCA and announced that their drivers would be Nico Rosberg and Adrian Sutil, with their test driver being Kamui Kobayashi. The team chose to use Lamborghini engines, than using a custom engine due to the controversy. Towards the end of Season 1 it was confirmed the idea of custom engines would be scrapped and only manufacturer engines would be available.
* After disappointing results in testing, Carlos Sainz, Jr. had his 5 season contract terminated by Thomas Cook Sport after the third day in Estoril. The team decided to replace him with former Team OSCA driver Mark Webber.
* After disappointing results, Adrian Sutil was sacked from MOrange Orange Racing and was replaced by former Team OSCA driver Juan Pablo Montoya.

Mid-Season Changes:

* Sean Gelael was released from testing duties towards the end of the season due to poor performances in GP2. Rio Haryanto was announced as his replacement for the remainder of the season
* Felipe Massa was handed a race ban for dangerous driving at the Italian Grand Prix and he was replaced in Austria by El Dorado's test driver António Felix da Costa.
* For the Japanese Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton decided to take a break and focus on next season, his seat was taken by Thomas Cook's GP3 S2 driver, Antonio Giovinazzi

## Calendar

* The Argentine to Japanese Grand Prix was pushed back a week due to an issue with the streaming software OBS at the Argentine Grand Prix. The grid remained the same so qualifying essentially took place a week before the race for Argentina.
* The European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring was cancelled due to a glitch on Grand Prix 3 which caused the game to crash. As a result the season became a 15 race calendar. Afterwards Monaco, Canada, Britain and Germany were also cancelled for the same reason.
* After San Marino, there was an unplanned near 3 month break due to a glitch in Monaco, similar to Nurburgring. It took a long time to fix but eventually IFMC returned in June at Monaco, but later became cancelled and moved to Spain after the same error occurred.
* Budapest was made into a Monday race following issues with Silverstone that made the series immediately switch to Hungary.

## Testing

 2
 3

## Drivers Championship

Points are awarded to the top eight classified finishers using the following structure: