Tony D’Alberto will move from commentary duties to the driver’s seat for his sim racing debut in tonight’s ARG eSport Cup round.

The 2007 Super2 Series winner’s entry makes for a 44-car field for Round 5 of the competition, which will be run with Formula 3 cars at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

“I’ve enjoyed my time in the commentary box, but I haven’t been in a car race since November last year, so I need my racing fix,” said D’Alberto.

“There’s a lot of firsts for me tonight – my first sim race, first F3 race, but I very much doubt there will be any first place finishes.

“You can see how much the drivers have been improving over the past month. There were lots of incidents in the first few rounds, and there still are some crashes, but it’s clear that the field is lifting its game – in terms of speed and online race craft.

“None of that is great news for me. I’m a few weeks behind them, so I’ll try and be as clean and smooth as possible and drag my F3 rig as far as I can up the field.

“While we’d all prefer to be racing for real, the online racing that we’ve seen has been brilliant and I can’t wait to get onto the grid tonight.”

Renault junior Oscar Piastri will also make a cameo tonight as the designated ‘Star’ driver, while the wildcards who earned their way onto the grid through the qualifying race are Luke King, Luca Giacomin, and SuperUtes Series winner Tom Alexander.

Cameron van den Dungen will fill the vacancy left by D’Alberto in commentary.

Harley Haber leads the ARG eSport Cup ahead of tonight’s racing, for which coverage commences at 20:00 AEST and will be carried on Speedcafe.com.

Entry list: Round 5, Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya