Six BOTT titles, three Team Principals — and trophies to keep

IMS has had trophies made and sent them to all three BOTT-winning Team Principals: Zoolander, Forestal and Webbah. Every season's winning principal will receive one from now on.

The first three have already found their places. Zoolander's sits among the treasures in his display cabinet. Forestal has made his the centrepiece of the motorsport corner around his rig. Webbah keeps his beside his setup, on the desk where he will keep seeing it.

Between them, they led every BOTT-winning team from Season 2 through Season 7. Ferrari won four in succession under Zoolander; Forestal's VCARB broke that run by 13 points; Webbah's Williams eventually won by 475.

Zoolander's favourite Ferrari team was the one he had to rebuild

Zoolander took charge of Ferrari at the start of Season 2 and led them to four consecutive BOTTs. Across his tenure, Ferrari won 66 races and reached the podium 163 times, with ten divisional drivers' titles and nine constructors' championships.

The campaign he remembers most fondly is Season 4. Important members of the previous squad had left to try other teams, and the smaller IMS membership made replacing them difficult. The new arrivals became the group he calls a dream team, with friendships and close bonds that made the rebuilding as satisfying as the championship.

That squad included Sammy278, now Ferrari's Team Principal, alongside BULLDOGGER47 in D1. Ussh and JPlanteX won the E1 and E2 drivers' titles, respectively.

“The real challenge was finding those people in the first place.” Speed was only part of the selection. He wanted drivers willing to prepare throughout the week, grow together and keep putting in the work. Once he had them, he credits the drivers with sustaining the results.

His memory of those Ferrari seasons is of hours spent testing strategies and setups, day after day. Asked for a defining decision or weekend, he struggled to choose one: “Every week felt like trench warfare. Every week was hard work, effort and sweat.”

Zoolander has his own two race wins and 15 podiums, but he puts BOTT above an individual drivers' championship. He also refuses to select one person for special credit from teams whose drivers contributed different strengths.

Ussh was Ferrari's scoring constant through the first three titles, but the support around him changed. In Season 2, Her Wet Cat and TheIceman729 each supplied more BOTT points than D1 champion piastrigoat. By Season 3, Wadz was almost level with Ussh, while PerfectPaulie88's D2 contribution helped Ferrari hold off VCARB by 80 points.

Season 4 gave Ussh his biggest share of a Ferrari title: 26.8 per cent, with JPlanteX's two-division contribution and BULLDOGGER47 and Sammy's returns helping the rebuilt squad win again. The fourth title had a different centre of gravity. Nesbi and geo supplied 661 points between them in Season 5, more than a third of Ferrari's total, while Zoolander added 222 himself. Keeping Ferrari on top required fresh leading contributors as well as familiar names.

The parcel was a surprise. An overseas delivery notice initially worried him because he had not ordered anything from abroad. When he opened it, the strongest reaction came from knowing that a league he has stepped away from still remembered him.

His trophy now shares a display cabinet with model cars, signed helmets, caps, autographs and other memorabilia he treasures. The four Ferrari championships have a place in that collection.

Forestal remembers a birthday, a finale and a team chat full of joy

Forestal took charge of VCARB in Season 2 Round 4. Runner-up finishes in Seasons 3 and 4 helped establish a challenger, but the championship took until Season 6: VCARB finished on 1,972 points, McLaren on 1,959. Ferrari's four-season winning run was over.

Forestal remembers the final E3 race at Brazil from New York City. It was his birthday, and he had woken up to a bad D2 result. He recalls rain at the end, Nesbi recovering from last during the race, Elias's pace and Leon's late defence.

Elias_endale finished second for VCARB, while Leon — L3on Tyl3r2500, now in Ferrari's E3 line-up — brought the other car from 15th to sixth. Their combined 34 BOTT points helped get VCARB over the line. NesbiLeGrand's Ferrari finished seventh, one place behind Leon. The title survived by 13 points; the team chat supplied the celebration.

The season behind that finale puts Techubi at the centre of VCARB's win. Eight E1 victories helped him supply a team-high 355 BOTT points. Piastrigoat added 291 across D1 and E1 despite no grand prix victories, while Forestal contributed 215 and Meowsy 166, including four D1 podiums. Techubi supplied the wins; the steady scoring around him gave VCARB more ways to keep collecting points. Elias and Leon delivered the final-night result for a title built over the whole season.

His belief that VCARB could win had begun much earlier. The piastrigoat he credits was Ferrari's Season 2 D1 champion, part of the team that won Zoolander's first BOTT. By Season 4 he was racing for VCARB. Forestal remembers his decision to leave a team built around him as a show of trust; alongside a strong Season 3, it gave him confidence that he could build a winner of his own.

He also credits uijyl, VCARB's principal for the first three rounds of Season 2, with creating the atmosphere he inherited. Forestal added coaching, setups and strategies while keeping the friendships that made people want to be there.

That long connection has included plenty of racing of his own: four wins and 17 podiums, with all 21 of his Season 7 appearances across four divisions ending in a finish. He handed VCARB over to Leon after the BOTT win and has returned for Season 8, following the team's eighth-place finish in the intervening season.

He describes the new campaign as a rebuild. Choosing mostly inactive drivers was a deliberate gamble, and he is not setting an immediate BOTT target. Keeping a positive team atmosphere and enjoying the racing together are the parts of the championship-winning experience he wants to recover first.

The trophy has become the centrepiece of the motorsport items around his rig. For Forestal, having something he can touch has changed how he feels about an achievement made online.

Webbah's winning team came from learning why the earlier one fell away

Webbah became McLaren Team Principal at the start of Season 2. His move to Williams brought three more campaigns without BOTT: fifth in Season 4, second in Season 5 and fourth in Season 6. The last of those hurt because Williams had led through the opening five rounds.

The Jak he means is jak75421, who won all five opening D3 races in Season 6. That run ended with a retirement from pole at Round 6; eighth and 11th followed. In Webbah's account, Williams had relied too heavily on those early wins. When Jak's results fell away, too little was coming from the rest of the squad to sustain the team's lead. Season 7's team was built with that lesson in mind.

Williams sealed BOTT at Abu Dhabi with Demaiko and Lorenz finishing first and third in D0. They ended the season on 1,692 points, 475 clear of Ferrari. After the earlier near miss and collapse, Webbah finally had the championship he had kept chasing.

The moment brought no sudden surprise. The lead had made the outcome increasingly clear before the title was secured. Asked whether the relief he had anticipated matched the reality, he says: “I was ultimately really happy to finally get the job done.”

He wants the squad remembered for the records it broke and the consistency spread across its drivers. D4 supplied its strongest pairing: Higosh and JD won ten races there between them. Across all their Williams appearances, they contributed 526 BOTT points, 31.1 per cent of the team total.

Yet even Higosh, Williams' biggest scorer, supplied only 16.3 per cent of the final tally. Eight drivers passed 100 BOTT points; Webbah's own 206 ranked third, ahead of OnlineGuy99's 182 and Trident65's 158. Williams had two prolific winners racing each other in D4 and enough contribution elsewhere to turn their success into a 475-point title. That is the practical difference from the early Season 6 dependence Webbah describes.

Webbah has since stepped down, with Zopz taking charge of Williams' title defence. He calls the trophy a thoughtful reward and thanks the owners for paying for it themselves. What it recognises, in his words, is “months of intense preparation, execution, and consistency that comes in BOTT winning seasons”.