It has been announced today, in a statement from Christian Sear and Phoenix, that Sear will officially step down from his role as Deputy Team Principal. The statement, released on Phoenix’s website, reads; “Hello all, Christian here. It is with a heavy heart that I must announce my departure from Phoenix. Any of you who know me know I’m not the sort to make a song and dance about things and I certainly don’t want to become the centre of any sort of media attention, so I’ll keep it short. Things at Phoenix have never been better than they are right now, but the time is right for me to give my full attention to OSM Racing International in both eVirtual and the junior series. Everyone at Phoenix is family to me and always will be.” “Everyone at Royal Phoenix Motorsport is of course sad to see Christian leave his role as Deputy Team Principal” a follow-on statement from Team Principal Alex Easton started, “but he’s making the right decision to focus on OSM, 100%. They had an incredible debut season in VWRS this year and that’s all down to the incredibly hard work that was put in by Christian and all the guys at OSM. Obviously, this doesn’t really change a whole lot in reality. OSM are literally next door to us on Don Street and Christian will be in the ‘Phoenix Centre of Entertainment and Leisure’ plenty of the time – that’s the fancy name for our portacabin with the pool table and makeshift bar! He is, of course, still a stakeholder in the team and will always be the other half of the duo who founded Phoenix in the first place, as well as my best mate, so this really only changes things in a formality sort of way. But, obviously, it is sort of the end of an era! I need a new Deputy Team Principal now!” Sear co-founded Phoenix Motorsport with Easton in late 2014, and was the team’s Technical Director until 2020 when he stepped up to Deputy Team Principal to run the team for the remainder of the 2020 season in Easton’s absence. Following that, Sear remained as Deputy Team Principal at the Manchester based team, but a new project arose for him. Sear – along with Terry McCarroll [Phoenix Head of Sponsorship and PR] and local businessman Jon Oakwell – formed OSM Racing International to compete in the 2020 Virtual 24 Hours race. From there, OSM expanded into VWRS for the 2021 season – running Phoenix junior drivers Daniel Zientek and Ott Eskola – and even further by entering the eVirtual World Championship later on in the year. With OSM operating an eVirtual team, as well as a team in VWRS and VERS for 2022, it does seem that the time is right for them to step out of Phoenix’s shadow and forge their own path in Virtual Motorsport. How, if at all, this will affect Phoenix, will be intriguing.
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