Twenty-two teams lined up for this first season of ERWC, a unique competition running across three days using a different simulator each day in its own mini-knockout tournament. Each team fielded a three-driver squad, but only the top two in each team would count towards the race score. Drivers would take one point for a win, two for second and so on, with teams ranked from lowest score to highest, and penalty points be awarded for incidents.
Unicorns of Love set the early pace in Assetto Corsa Competizione on day one, with Tobias Gronewald winning and Michael Tauscher in third, behind George Boothby of YAS Heat. Redline would place second in that heat, with Enzo Bonito and Kevin Siggy in fourth and fifth.
Veloce’s James Baldwin won the second heat, from R8G’s Dennis Schoeninger, but it was Triton Racing who won the round through Jakub Charcot and Dominik Blajer’s fourth and fifth place finishes.
With the first races over, the top five teams in each heat advanced to the quarter finals. The remainder entered a repechage for two more spots.
Williams needed that second chance, and Nikodem Wisniewski and Martin Stefanko finished in second and fifth to secure top spot. Carbon Simsport claimed the other berth on countback through Jakub Maciejewski’s third place finish, while race-winner Tobias Pfeffer saw his Logitech G Altus team fail to qualify.
Drivers from eight different teams finished in the top eight in the quarter final. Victory went to BS+COMPETITION’s Nils Naujoks, ahead of Schoeninger and Alex Smolyar (Top Racing), but again it was Unicorns at the top of the table thanks to consistent finishing from Gronewald and Tauscher.
Naujoks won the semi-final to make it two in a row, but the team was eliminated. Veloce placed first through Baldwin’s second place and Eamonn Murphy in fifth. Unicorns just qualified for the final in second, with Redline’s Jeffrey Rietveld picking up two penalty points to knock the favourites out.
That left the final best-of-three race shootout between Veloce and Unicorns. Gronewald beat Baldwin in the first race, but two penalty points for Baldwin meant Veloce lost overall. A Veloce 1-2 followed after Tauscher unbelievably span at the final corner to hand it to Baldwin, but Tauscher made amends to win the final race with Gronewald fourth to win the day.