Hello,
I haven’t made a post on here in a very long time, but I have logged back in as I feel I should deliver the very sad news that one of the true OGs of the Automation community, @Leonardo9613, sadly passed away this morning in Sao Paulo.
I have fond memories of Leo from my time in this community, and I’m sure many of you do too.
Rest easy my friend, I’m thinking of you.
R.I.P. 
Truly gut wrenching. My thoughts are with his family and may he rest in peace.
It’s so strange, we were sending each other snaps literally a week ago and his health just took a sudden turn. It’s scary how fleeting life can be—we really have to take every day for granted.
I’m still at a loss for words. Rest in peace brother.
Though I never known him, I hope that there is some closure for those that were close him.
The guy grew massively over the time he spent here, bloody awful news to see this morning. He’d been part of this place over a decade and as said, made many friends, commentated back in the glory days of the BRC etc.
May he rest in peace.
While I didn’t know him all too well, still a massive shock to hear of his passing. Crazy to think he passed away so young.
Been a while since I’ve made a post on here and I suspect this will be my last.
I’d known Leo for just about 10 years, I have such fond memories of our conversations in the IRC, Discord and elsewhere. He was a proper bright lad and he taught me quite a lot about cars back when we used to talk daily. He was one of the few people I considered a close friend back then.
I’m absolutely gutted to have heard this news and I don’t think I’ve quite processed it yet - I may not be able to for a while. I don’t think anybody could have expected this. It’s made even worse by the fact that he seemed to be going through such positive change over the last couple of years
My thoughts are with his family & friends
Rest in peace Leo mate
Hello all. It’s been a minute since I was on here and it’s been a weird day with this news.
I’m so sorry for Leo’s loss, I hope that everyone has found some time to take it all in. My love is with you guys today, as it is with Leo’s family and his friends.
Leo was one of the people I knew best in this community, and we stayed in touch long after he and I stopped posting here. We talked so much, about cars, life and everything in between. I realised today that every time I’d seen a Ferrari pop up on my Instagram feed, I’d sent it to him.
His loss is so appallingly sudden, but I hope that we can all take some solace in the fact that he was in a great place in his life. He’d found a city and a community where he could truly be himself, and as a few other people have said here, he’d gone through a lot of changes to get there.
Leo really meant a lot to me, and I was blessed to have had him in my life. Never take any of this for granted <3.
The moment I heard Leo had passed away, I remembered his contributions during the Kee era and the early UE4 days - until he all went quiet. Now that he’s gone, the only reminders I have left are the memories. I feel that if I were to ever host a challenge again, it would have to be in his honor. In particular, CSR33 was one of his highlights, with a sensible yet engaging rule set that attracted a lot of entrants, myself included - and the writing and backstory for it was top-notch.
It’s like an old school reunion in here, though under tragic circumstances. For my part I haven’t played Automation nor participated in a comminity challenge for about a year now due to life, but my ties to this community and the niche it represents are borne from a common love.
Like many of the other posters in this thread, Leo and I are from a close “generation” of Automation enthusiasts, from the days of Kee engine, incentivised Beta testing and IRC, long before Steam and even longer before Beam. We were all younger then, and many of us surely remember Leo as a highly intelligent but fiery young man of strong opinions and often stronger words 
In many respects, being his senior by several years he reminded me of myself: passionate, driven but also like most at that age, defiant and unresolved. Maybe that was why, in those years, our friendship was liberally punctuated with butting heads before a spell of relative silence.
After some years in our respective wilderness, I had the pleasure of meeting Leo in 2021, while he was travelling for work. Knowing the path he trod, I recognised someone who had come far in his journey to come into his own, reconciling values, personhood and working out his own balance. We reflected with candour and some amusement about the past and where we were going; and it was heartening to know that of the thousands of people we meet online then sail past into the darkness, he would be, without a doubt, one of the good ones.
Life is oft indifferent to our sentiment, but we ourselves ought not to be. In remembering a life prematurely ended, let us be reminded of the value in living our lives consciously, with vigour.
RIP Leo
That is tremendously sad news about Leo, he was much too young.
I remember him much like Strop does; very smart, very headstrong (sometimes way too much), but at the end of the day he was always acting from a place of kindness. I enjoyed watching him grow as a person, and over the years I knew him, watching him become a more considered and mature individual. He was fun to bounce ideas off of in Automation, and his constant challenging and critique was always welcome.
I hope that his friends and family look on him fondly, and remember all the good times that were had with Leo.
My condolences to his family and friends. Despite more than 11 hours have passed since I heard the news I still couldn’t quite process it. I haven’t had a chat with him for perhaps 7 years now but those IRC days memories are still clear like it was yesterday. I owed a lot of knowledges that I otherwise wouldn’t have known to him. Rest in peace, Leo.
Rest in peace Leo. Although I have lost track of him in the most recent years, reading all of this makes me very very sad. What a loss. I hope his family and friends are doing okay.
I never knew of or met you Leo, but every death saddens me no matter who it is. I pray strength for your family, and hope there was no pain in your passing. May you forever rest in peace.
I also remember Leo winning the first incarnation of the Great Automation Run. I entered that one too (along with the one after that), but it’s been so long since the second GAR (which is also the last one to date), there needs to be a revival of the GAR in his honor - especially since the game has changed significantly since the Kee and early UE4 eras.
Thank you Leo.
Its tragic that people from the old days get together to an occassion like this… sadly we never met, although we have known each other for more than 10 years. But there were many fond memories. BRC… late night chats in the IRC… Automation Multiplayer… Banter in the TS3/Discord.
Many ups and downs have been had, we had our fights but also good moments.
Leo departing from us, the face of earth and your family is a loss.
Farewell friend - we will meet later.
For me, the news of Leo’s passing carries extra weight because I, like him, bought the game at an early stage of development, back when it was based on the Kee engine. For the next few years, he raised the bar for all of us, not just for his companies’ lore, but also the exterior design of his cars.
I really started paying attention to him and his Automation cars after he won CSR4 with the Baltazar Zeppelin (one of my favorite designs from him), which gave him the confidence to host the next CSR after that. Then, after winning CSR32 with the Yucatan Santaka, he went on to host CSR33. Later, he won the first-ever GAR, and throughout this time, he devoted his energy to creating and further developing whole threads on the histories of his companies, most notably Baltazar and Bonham.
And then, some time in 2020 (around June or July), it all went quiet. From that point onwards, I heard nothing from him or his companies. Even after 4.24 gradually gave way to 4.27, there was still no news about him. All this time, I wondered why he’d stopped, but I still hoped he would return one day. Sadly, with his passing, that hope is now gone, once and for all. So on behalf of his family and friends, I would like to say two words: Thank you.
I’ve just heard about the sad departure of Leo.
Most of his charachter was perfectly illustrated by the words of Strop.
I had the incredible luck to meet him in Prague during a vacation with my girlfriend and I have fond memories about having fun with him in a burger house while having dinner toghether.
Later he was also our guest in our flat in Italy for one night when we have built an pickup offroader for some crazy challenge… can’t remember exactly which challenge, but the car was matte salmon colored and with a huge radar on the back.
The BRC, the chats on IRC, the challenges where he arrived second so many times…
The broken glass table for those who now…
It’s such a sad news…
I still can’t belive it.
Apologies for double posting but I’ve had a little bit to process my thoughts and memories, and I have a bit more to say. I’m can be really crappy at being genuine sometimes but my heart is genuinely on my sleeve here.
I’ve been a part of the automation community for the better half of a decade. When I first joined back in the IRC days, I distinctly remember Leo was one of the people in life I really looked up to. He was always really confident in himself, never afraid to back down if something was on his mind. If you ever wondered what the worst thing someone could think or say, he’d give it to you straight with no hesitation about putting it softly. He would gladly be the one to call out someone on their BS, He was your greatest critic and I’m sure he pushed a lot of people (including me) to be better, with car designs and in life. He was extremely knowledgeable and well traveled, something I admired (and still do) and aspire to. To this day I remember his life advice and it’s helped me out on many occasions.
I’m sure anyone with memories of him will tell you of their up and down interactions with him. He did have a bad habit of being purposefully antagonistic to people including me. We shouldn’t make excuses for this behavior but it’s something that I’m really happy that he confronted as a person and learned to grow out of, it’s just a shame it had to be cut short so soon. Even with this streak, I would still call him a friend. He was my greatest critic and We had many great interactions together even outside automation, playing GTA and GT Sport together (I was there when he accidentally got his classic username “sidewaysvomit”
Despite having drifted apart in the last few years of his life, I would say with complete confidence that Leo was a big contributor to help me form who I am as a person today (For better and for worse.) , and even with the bitter memories I will still try and look positively back on our interactions and fond memories together, and it’s really painful to think how he had so recently come into his stride as a person only to have it cut painfully short.
Rest in Peace, Leo.