There’s now just over one week until the McLaren Shadow semi-finals take place.

The semis will give us our first taste of proper head-to-head competition, and a crucial barometer of who is hitting peak form ahead of next January’s week-long grand finale.

The qualifying heats are already well underway and have seen some brilliant racing – if you haven’t checked out the action already, you can catch up with highlights from iRacing and rFactor 2.

The next big stage for our hopefuls is the Shadow semis, which take place at the McLaren Technology Centre on Saturday December 1. They’ll bring together the winners of our Real Racing 3 and Logitech qualifying rounds, which are currently taking place online.

Our Real Racing 3 qualifiers on mobile started back in August and continue until the end of October. We’ve already found one winner, will announce another imminently and are still carrying out the heats to determine our third and final winner. These three will all join us at McLaren in December for the semi-finals.

Similarly, our Logitech qualifiers have also started online in EMEA, LATAM and APAC – but these will continue with physical events throughout October. From these, we’ll determine three more finalists who’ll go through to the semis.

The semi-finals will give us our first look at who’s looking in the best shape ahead of the week-long finale, held next year. It’ll ramp up the pressure on our contestants, giving them plenty to sweat about as they try and fight for a place in the final.

Looking further ahead, our iRacing and rFactor 2 qualifiers will graduate straight to January’s grand final, which will be held at McLaren in January. The iRacing qualifiers kicked off in July and are now wrapped up.

The Shadow rFactor 2 qualifiers began in mid-September and ran until the end of October. The winner goes direct to the finals in January.

Additionally, our HTC Chinajoy qualifier was chosen in August, and also moves straight to the finals. Our Middle Eastern qualifiers also started, and concludes with a live final in Bahrain in November.

Finally, our Forza Motorsport 7 qualifer has opened and the qualifier will be announced shortly.

Up for grabs for the overall winner is a seat on McLaren’s 2019 Shadow esports team, a place on our driver development programme and a money-can’t-buy motorsport experience.

Good luck, and see you at the finals!