Interstellar Gaming Consortium: Racing League Season V

Season five of this exciting racing competition is due to start this month. Teams from all over New Eden enter into this prestigious event in the hopes of being crowned champions of the league and individual racers also have the opportunity to be crowned champion in their respective ship class.

A season consists of around ten races held in different regions of the cluster, plus some exhibition races. This season the races are being held in The Bleak Lands, The Citadel, Derelik, Essence, Everyshore, Genesis, Heimatar, Kor-Azor, Molden Heath and Tash-Murkon, with the two exhibition races being held in Providence and Sinq Laison. The races are held weekly with a break every third week, so with the two exhibition races this season will last for seventeen weeks.

Season four consisted of over sixty individual racers in eleven different teams, this was the first year that racers were in their own custom teams and due to the success of this format, it has been kept for this year.

With the start of the season a week away there is still time for new teams to apply and sign up.

Each season so far has seen an increase in the amount of racers entering the competition, and due to this, the corporate sponsorship has been steadily increasing and the prizes for winning are getting bigger and better. By the end of season four over 1.3billion in ISK and prizes had been given to the winners, and they are hoping to be able to give even more away this time. Even so most of the pod pilots will tell you that they do not race for the ISK but for the fun and rush of adrenaline that they get from the race itself.

Gyra Rho is the event organiser and designs all the tracks, including detours and decoys for the racers to contend with; she came up with the idea for the races and dedicates a lot of her time to this venture. The racers come from different backgrounds and have different skills that help them in the race as almost any tactic is allowed. Just because you can fit your ship to go faster than your opponents does not mean they can't get a warp disruptor or a scrambler locked on you and gain the few seconds they need to win. Then again they may just decide to destroy your ship.

As always Interstellar Correspondents will be on hand to give you the latest news and information from the competition, as well as some exclusive interviews with this year’s racers.