Name: Rogério Barroso
Age: 27 (20/05/1976)
From: Fronteira, Alentejo, Portugal
Current Address: Lisboa, Portugal
Occupation: Virtual Operations Director at Virtual-Games.com
Rogério discovered the SimRacing World in the end of 1999, and was able to adapt himself very quickly to the Virtual Racing World.
In 1999 Pedro Augusto, a great friend, meets Paulo Jorge, who was one of the fastest drivers running in GP3GL (now Formula SimRacing).
Rogério debut was in Japan 1999 in Class ACE and with a victory!
He entered Bathurst 1000 Endurance Race with his friend Pedro, finishing 2nd, only 3 seconds behind the winners, in a race that took more than 5 hours!
Thanks to this performance, Paulo Jorge owner of Floyd Speed Racing (FSR), invited him to join his Team, to race in the GP3GL WinterLeague 1999/2000. The outcome: Qualifying Champion (managed 2nd place in all races), 3rd in the Overall Drivers Championship and Constructors League Champion.
Next step, he took the management of FSR under his hands for season 2000. He and Paulo Jorge contracted 12 drivers for the Team. FSR was a 14 drivers Team from 7 different countries. During this year he knew some of his biggest successes!
He again won the GP3GL Constructors World Championship with Roy Kolbe, got 5th place in the overall driving standings.
As manager he went even further, won 5 World Championship Titles in GP3GL (Constructors, Drivers Overall, SuperACE 100% Class, ACE 100% Class and Semi-Pro 100% Class).
He was fortune enough to meet a guy like Paulo Jorge that was able to put him in contact with the right mates, puting him inside a somewhat complex structure, the SimRacing world.
In 2001 he had the privilege of being one of the first persons to join an inovative Project, the first Professional SimRacing League in the world.
Virtual-Games.com hiered him to build a Team for this league, and he was manager, practise sessions coordinator, press responsible, Team site coordinator and drivers spokes man before the owner and the league.
The year 2001, brought some more success to his managing career, but also saw him leaving his driver seat for lack of time, when he was constantly being the fastest keyboard in race conditions over GP3GL WS.
When he left his HotLapping career, in the beginning of 2001, Rogério Barroso was the world digital record holder in Monaco with 1m 17.294.
Now dedicated only to World Championship, he saw his Team winning the Constructor's title! With top drivers, Roy Kolbe, Jari Montonen and Dick Olsson, and a top engineer, Esa Paulasto, together with thousands of laps in circuits around the world, 6000 emails and 2500 hours of work, this Team become the first ever, in the virtual world, to conquer a world title, and gathering the consensus of Team to fallow!
In 2002, he stayed as manager of Virtual-Games.com Team in the professional League, now called Formula SimRacing World Championship. Besides this, Floyd Speed Racing became the official Virtual-Games.com Junior Team in the world amateur League, Formula SimRacing World Series.
But we kept fighting, and we could keep the 2nd place in constructors and 3rd in drivers, so, all in all, not a bad thing if we consider the quality of the Teams and drivers involved. And besides, in WS we dominated! ;)"
In 2003 Virtual-Games.com expanded to other virtual sports, with presences in the European Racing League (NASCAR), GPChampionship.com (GP4) & ROL Touring Car Championship (Touring Cars), besides Formula SimRacing!
Finally, the official Junior Team is now TopGearF1, a totally portuguese Team, managed by Horácio Casquinha, and with João Pedralva and João Marques as main drivers.