Details of World Touring Car Cup eSports championship revealed

The competition will take place on Steam title 'eSports WTCR Oscaro', which was released in May earlier this year.

It contains officially licensed WTCR cars and tracks. Gamers will qualify for live-streamed multiplayer races through a time attack - where drivers will race against the clock and attempt to top the leaderboards.

All seven rounds will take place on Sunday evenings, and viewers will be able to watch the action on the series' Facebook and Youtube pages.

Yann Ehrlacher, who sits fourth in this year's WTCR drivers' championship, will take part in order to aid his real racing training programme.

"[The] eSports WTCR Oscaro is a very good thing because it gives people around the world the chance to live something close to what we live," Ehrlacher said.

"I will take part because it's also really good training for racing drivers and we know the level of sim racers is very high."

The championship will be staged in partnership with real-life and sim racing giants Oscaro as well as Eurosport Events, which promotes WTCR.

"We're really excited the first eSports WTCR Oscaro Online Championship is about to get underway," added head of Eurosport Events Francois Ribeiro.

"Our partner, RaceRoom, has been hard at work behind the scenes to prepare all the cars and tracks since our launch event at the Nurburgring in May and the end result is very good indeed.

"If we consider that two WTCR drivers, Norbert Michelisz and Zsolt Szabo, are products of sim racing then there's every chance we could discover the next Michelisz or Szabo during the upcoming seven events.

"I'm sure the real WTCR Oscaro teams will be watching with interest."

Qualifying is open from Wednesday, while the first multiplayer race will be held on the Hungaroring on August 26.

The championship concludes at Macau one week prior to the real-life WTCR finale at the same venue.