Twitch: @R8GMaarten IG: @R8G_Maarten Twitter: @R8G_Maarten
In the world of sport where the ultimate aim is always to win, success can often be quite the prima donna. Once you’ve caught its sight, its hard to go after anything else, especially when success can tease you so often into chasing it! That said, does success mean much unless it isn’t sustained? When you come to think of it, there have been far more one hit wonders in the world of sport than gritty champions who, much like the composer of a song, may not appear as flashy and prominent as their counterparts but always run the extra mile to get what the team aims for!
But eSports and in particular, Sim Racing is different. Even while being a part of a team, ultimately, there’s only one driver in each car at a time! The spotlight here shines brighter on the individual, yet, often hidden behind the big superstars are stalwarts in the making with an eye on sustained success and an approach to match just that!
Who is Maarten Van Loozenoord?
Maarten Van Loozenoord, the 29-year old Dutchman who was recently signed up by the promising R8G eSports team, founded of course by Romain Grosjean, absolutely embodies this approach. A man of immense self-discipline and clarity, Van Loozenoord has had a string of successful seasons, each seemingly more impressive than the one before!
After having found his passion for Sim Racing by lapping the iconic Nordschleife on Gran Tourismo endlessly as a child, Maarten transitioned to iRacing and in his very first season, finished as the runner up in the iRacing Road Pro Series in the Williams FW31, which featured a few superstars of today in the form of Graham Carroll and Mack Bakkum! The first title was never too far away – Van Loozenoord clinched the Formula Renault 2.0 Championship in 2016 and after a short sabbatical from competitive iRacing, he returned with a renewed determination and some freakish speed!
The Championship Runs!
In 2019, Maarten Van Loozenoord was a double champion, winning the Formula Renault 3.5 Prime Time championship and claiming the SRW GT Pro Championship. It was merely a sign of things to come for in the 2019-20 season, Maarten was a cornerstone of the RevMatch eSports team who won the incredibly fierce LMP2 championship of the SportsCar Open, truly the stage for the best endurance racers on the service to pit it out against each other.
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Starting off with the well-respected Apex Racing UK squad, Maarten has been very well travelled in the world of Sim Racing, even creating and managing his own team for a brief spell! These stints were preceded by the big one – Van Loozenoord being snapped up by the exciting R8G eSports team!
The secret ingredient
If there is one thing I learnt about Maarten’s character after having a long and insightful chat with him, it was his unwavering commitment to his primary target. A veteran of the Royal Netherlands Army, which was a lifelong dream of his, a 17-year old Maarten Van Loozenoord’s life totally changed after his stint in the troops. Out came a more disciplined, target oriented person with excellent awareness on the value of time, the latter, somewhat aptly being the most important thing in racing!
Perhaps the biggest example of Maarten’s discipline was his jaw dropping physical transformation – in a bid to be fitter and more focused on Sim Racing, Van Loozenoord, who once weighed over a 100 kilos, shed 25 kilograms in a matter of 6 months with a complete lifestyle transformation! Talk about determination!
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A strong believer in a philosophy of ‘If you don’t work hard and maintain discipline, the results will not consistently arrive’, many would call this approach cliché but Maarten Van Loozenoord has gone out of his way to prove its effectiveness!
R8G eSports
An avid MMA fan and a passionate kickboxer too, you can often see Maarten bring a fight-like intensity to race, but he matches it with a strong sense of awareness, much like an MMA fighter would! You could go kamikaze and try and land a reverse roundhouse kick in the first 30 seconds of the bout but as history has proven, a more measured, patient and pragmatic approach, both on the mat and on the virtual racetracks is far more likely to pay off!
Perhaps this awareness among other key factors saw the newly founded R8G eSports by AAA take a keen interest in Van Loozenoord from the very beginning. Before you knew it, there he was, representing the Orange, White and Blue in championships like the BMW SIM 120 Cup, the SportsCar Open and the VCO Pro Sim Series, the latter being the one where I have the privilege to call the action firsthand.
The more focused approach of such a big team appears to be an advantage for Maarten and his teammates – no longer having to work on designing logos and liveries or co-ordinating with stakeholders, at R8G eSports, the drivers have one clear task – just drive! After wrapping up his day job of being a delivery driver, Maarten can simply focus on the time and effort needed to sharpen himself as a driver, all while being very entertaining on Twitch!
The future for Maarten Van Loozenoord
What’s next, you ask? A fair bit! Apart from racing in the VCO Pro Sim series with Felix Hirsinger, Maarten Van Loozenoord will be racing the BMW M8 GTE in the 2020-21 Season of the SportsCar Open in the GTE class with his R8G eSports teammates Scott Andrews, Thibault Cazaubon, Yuri Kasdorp and Elliott Vayron. Meanwhile, Maarten has got one eye on the next upcoming iRacing World Championship, more details about which could follow soon.
Whatever car that may be remains a mystery but what you can be sure of is to see Maarten Van Loozenoord and R8G eSports lighting it up in some of the top Sim Racing championships around for a sustained period of time! Exciting times lie ahead!
You can follow Maarten here:
– Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/r8gmaarten
– Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/r8g_maarten
– Twitter: https://twitter.com/R8G_Maarten
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