Our Team!
Get to know the people behind Holland Racing Team.
Just press the round 'i' button to learn more about each individual team member.
Founder & team manager
Déthan Rootring
About I started my virtual racing career at the and of November 1999 with the platform F1 Challenge at a team called MayhemF1 from team owner Jimmy Allison, as test driver in the GP3GL league. Later I joined a Dutch team and became personal engineer of an American sim racer who became champion later that year. In 2002 I formed Holland Racing Team. A place for race talents of all ages to have the opportunity to learn and become better drivers and have fun in virtual racing. Together with my friends from Brazil Armaroli Simulators, we started the very first ever nation based championship league and we were the first to offer price money and broadcasted live on the championships website. Back in 2006 there were limited streaming options so this was quite a big deal back then, which gave us quite a lot of exposure. Since 2015 our Dutch team is active in the popular league GPVWC. Despite being a Dutch team, we welcome all nationalities to drive and be a part of our team. My goal is to bring the team to the highest level of sim racing in various leagues and platforms!
Team manager & car design
Gerrit de Vries
About Been into simracing ever since i first touched geoff crammonds (Microprose) Grand Prix 1, and that was back in 1992, it only became really serious when I started competing in an online league with Netkar. Also started making liveries back then, which got me interested into the modding side of things and 3D designing.
HRT Driver
Laurent Keersmaekers
About (born October 9, 1987 in Wilrijk) is a Belgian simracing driver. He started his racing career in the early 90s. His first official qualification session was the Ford Malaysian Grand Pix in 2003 (23/03/2003) at www.gpchampionship.com where he ended up 25th. In his first race Laurent managed to get his first 3 points by securing a 23rd position. He quickly moved up to the F3000 championship for the 2004 season, where solid results were obtained. It also was his first ever season using a steering wheel instead of the keyboard. After ending this season as fourth, he promoted to the F1 league for the 2005 saeson. The 2005 season started very well, with a third place in Melbourne, followed by two wins on the Sepang International circuit and the San Marino GP. These two wins were the start of a splendid season, achieving a total of 11 wins. This lead to Laurent’s first ever championship on the highest level. 2005 was also the first season where he drove in the Grand Prix Virtual World Championship, for the Bracciano Racing Team in the Super League. The season started with a third position in Melbourne, followed by a DQ in Malaysia due to a wrong checksum. Especially the end of the season was remarkable, securing two wins in Monza and Suzuka. Since he only attended to 7 out of the 18 races, he ended 6th in the standings, having collected 45 points. Due to time limitations, Laurent only appeared occasionally at GP starts throughout the 2006 season. In GPVWC, he attended to only 4 races, winning all of them. This gave him the 5th position in the final standings, having 40 points. For the 2007 season, time was less of an issue. He started this season in GPVWC, what should have become his first full season as primary driver in the Super League. The season started well with 4 wins out of the first 7 races, two 2nd places and a 3rd place. However, irregularities were found during the Monaco GP according to the stewards, leading to a DQ for this race. It should be mentioned that during the 2007 season, the sim-racing community was faced for the first time with the possibility of cheating. Therefore, results such as the win in Monaco by over a minute to the 2nd placed driver were regarded as ‘suspicious’. After some protests by the Simsoa Racing F1 Team, that quickly turned into false accusations from both sides, the team and Laurent were DQ’d for 7 more GP’s. Due to the missed GP’s Steve Elencesky could score enough points to secure the championship. Laurent finished the Super League season in 2nd position, having scored 82 points. The 2007 season also marked Laurent’s first appearance for the Vod:Bul Racing Team, securing a win in the Brazilian GP, which also was the first ever win for this team. After the 2007 season, Laurent wanted to retire from sim-racing, due to the problem encountered during the season. However, he got picked up by the Bracciano Racing Team to race in FSR. Because of the great results in the ACE season, Laurent got quickly promoted to the Wold Championship division by the Twister Racing Team.However, due to some serious time limitations, he was hardly able to attend to team practices, and had some serious issues keeping the pace up prior to the summer break. After the summer break however, he achieved some nice results, including two podium finishes. He ended the 2008 season in a solid 10th position, with 27 points. After almost missing the 2009 season start, the Ghostspeed Racing Team offered a contract to replace the retired multiple championship winner Bruno Marques. Laurent couldn’t really impress due to, once again, a lack of time. Especially the first half of the season was difficult, since he also graduated from his engineering studies, as well as started his PhD. The results after the summer break showed that the pace was there, securing a 2nd place in Spa-Francorchamps and two 7th places in Monza and Suzuka. After the 2009 season, he only appeared occasionally, in order to fill empty seats at the Ghostspeed Racing Team, without much success. As a side note: All the races done in FSR were performed on an old PC, sometimes having FPS drops below 20FPS. At some races, he needed to retire due to too low PC performance. After a very long break, he decided to make a comeback to sim-racing in 2017, 8 years after his last full season. In order to pick up the pace, he raced in the WCS league, securing a 2nd place in the first season, and eventually the championship crown in the 2nd season. After these great seasons, he got picked up by the Holland Racing Team (HRT), to take part of the GPVWC Super League Light championship. His comeback was very solid, finishing 2nd in Melbourne, 4th in Sepang and a taking the victory in Bahrain. Due to some car development issues, the remainder of the season became more complicated. However, the results stayed solid. Many more podiums were achieved (7 in total), as well as solid finishes in the top 6 (12 in total). Laurent also suffered 3 DNF’s this season. One due to a broken engine in Canada, another due to hardware failure in Monaco and a start crash in Monza. In the end, Laurent finished 3rd in the championship with 189 points. Together with his teammate Bastian Paisler, the HRT team also finished in 3rd.
HRT Driver
Stéphane Rouault
About I started simracing with a game called monaco grand prix 2 by ubisoft. My dad bought a wheel for us, it was a Thrustmaster. I spent a lot of summers driving numerous season simulations against the ai, tweaking setups and trying to improve lap-times. After MGPRS2 I drove a lot of GP3, and with this game i started simracing against other real drivers. It was an offline league, so you had to drive on your own, and submit the laptimes to a website, on race day you would see how well you'd done. Then came GP4, the graphics were from another planet a that time, and the tracks were amazingly life-like. But still no online races, that started when rFactor was released. My first ever online race was with the Dutch team for the Online Racing League ASRWC, with team leader Déthan Rootring and had a lot to learn but we had good speed and fun races! As ASRWC only ran for 1 season I had to look around for other leagues, and so I found The FormulaSimRacing league. Around this period I had a MoMo F1 wheel, one of the best wheels of its time, later on I got a Logitech g25, and then a g27! After only a couple of races in the lower classes in FSR, it was again Dethan who arranged a seat for me with the big boys in the World Championship at Ghostspeed Racing. I had a good debut and ended on p5, and well in the points. The first season was a good year with a solid amount of points, and it got me a seat for 2008 alongside champion Bruno Marques! But unfortunately I only could drive for half year because of lack of time. WC end results were 2 podiums and a pole position. After the WC period, I decided to drive in the World Series, it suited me more than the WC because the races were driven on Saturday. It was great fun, and had a couple of great teams i drove for. End results for WS were 3 wins and some more podiums and poles. After a period of 4 years almost of no online simraces, Dethan asked me a few weeks ago to do a race for GPVWC for Deltec Racing Team and because I missed driving a lot, I decided to give it a go! And so here we are, looking forward to a new simrace adventure! I just had my first race on Hungary, finish in a solid p3! things are looking good :-) My first FC race at Spa I finished Race p7 in Race 1. Im happy. Stephane scored a total of 93 points in the 2015 season. Now Im still active as driver in GPVWC, my 2nd year in Superleague and first with Holland Racing Team
Setup engineer & car
Matteo Keersmaekers
About Occasional sim racer since 2004 and nowadays more active with RF2 & iRacing Team function: Race Car Developer & Race Engineer
Car design & reserve driver
Bastian Paisler
About My very first racing game was F1 '98 on the PS1. Wen I got my first computer several years later I started driving GP4, F1 2002 and later then F1 Challenge. In 2011 I joined the DRL - Deutsche Rennsport Liga which was using F1 Challenge with a current F1 mod at that time and drove there until the end of 2013, when the league closed down. This was the time when I switched to rFactor 1 and drove in a GP3 League and won two years in a row. Then in 2014, me and some friends revived the DRL based on rF1 now which only lasted 2 years, but was quite a success with one championship and one vice championship for myself. I then got asked from GPVWC members (HRT included) to drive in GPVWC at the end of 2015 on rFactor 2. And it was quite a successful journey with HRT. Climbing up the series career ladder each year which ultimately ended for me at the end of 2019 in the second best series, the Superleague Lights.
