Williams Esports racer Daire McCormack has become the first driver to win two ESL R1 finals with a second straight victory in the fifth round of the season.
The championship returned to Hockenheim, last used in the season-opening live event in Katowice – where Coanda’s Joshua Rogers took victory – but now part of the online portion of the championship.
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Once again the Friday quarter-finals saw some major upsets, with arguably the biggest being in race three as championship leader Jiri Toman (R8G) was eliminated. Toman had been in every final so far this season, but ended up missing the cut after picking up a penalty for an optimistic lunge on Mitchell de Jong (Coanda) and Tommy Ostgaard (Heroic) trying to make up for a poor qualifying spot.
Other leading drivers who’d miss out included Kevin Ellis Jr. (ART), who wasn’t able to undo his own poor qualifying in race one, and first-round winner Maximilian Benecke (Mouz). However the other three round winners thus far – Rogers, McCormack, and Luke Bennett (Redline) – all took victory in their own quarter-finals, with Jakub Brzezinski (Williams) the other quarter-final winner.
Bennett was fastest man in qualifying for the first of the semi-finals, beating Rogers to pole by 0.026s, with James Baldwin (Mercedes) and Nikodem Wisniewski (Williams) tied on the second row a further 0.007s behind.
While Rogers took the race win, having passed Bennett for the lead on the last lap at the hairpin after shadowing him all race long, the biggest story in this race though was the elimination of Marcell Csincsik (R8G). Second in the championship going in, Csincsik couldn’t get past his team-mate Erhan Jajovski for the vital sixth place spot. Dayne Warren (Coanda) though would reach his first final of the season, coming fifth behind Baldwin and Wisniewski.
There was a surprise pole-sitter in the second semi-final, as Tommy Ostgaard (Heroic) set the fastest time by two-thousandths from McCormack. Despite a slightly better start from the Williams driver, he had to tuck in behind the Porsche through turn one, and the front four would effectively coast from there to the finish in their starting order.
All the action was centred on the final qualifying spot, with some early-race mayhem seeing no-one hold onto it for long. First de Jong was turned into his Coanda team-mate Mack Bakkum, before Ulas Ozyildirim (FaZe) picked up a slowdown penalty for an unseen collision. That left Yuri Kasdorp (Mouz) holding the spot, before he also received a penalty for contact with Joni Tormala (G2) who managed to on to the finish.
Tormala took that through to the final and set the fastest time in a qualifying session that saw the top six covered by less than a tenth, and he got through the first turn just in front of McCormack to hold the early advantage.
Baldwin though was on a mission, and leapt into third place as he passed Bennett and Ostgaard into turn two. McCormack then made a sublime pass on Tormala, going round the outside of turn eight and nine to get the inside line for turn ten and grabbing the lead.
With Tormala now in Baldwin’s sights, McCormack was able to eke out a small lead which he controlled through to the finish to become ESL R1’s first repeat winner.
The results close the overall table up considerably, with Toman on 186 points leading by just 11 from Csincsik and Rogers, and McCormack now fourth on 168. Redline closed slightly on R8G in the teams’ championship, to trail by 43 points.
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Jordan Caruso’s lead in the Porsche Esports Supercup has more than doubled after the sixth round at Watkins Glen, as his championship rivals stumbled.
There was a familiar name at the top of qualifying, as Sebastian Job took his first pole position of the season, with lead title contenders Charlie Collins, Diogo Pinto, and Caruso in third, fifth, and sixth respectively.
Collins would crash out on lap two, coming together with Pinto through the final corner. However the race truly erupted on the final lap as Pinto and Job somehow collided on the back straight – putting Pinto out of contention – before another final corner incident involving Job and Campbell. Coming through all of this unscathed was rookie Gustavo Ariel, claiming his second successive race win.
Alejandro Sanchez took the feature race pole with his eighth-place finish, but he was soon overwhelmed by a pack of VRS Coanda drivers as Bryn Collins and Campbell hit the front. Job though was also in the mix, eventually getting past Collins and into second place behind Campbell.
That would be the running order right through to the final corner, but this time it would be Job that tasted the outside wall as Bryn Collins nipped beneath him for second. The loss of momentum also allowed Zalenski past for a Coanda 1-2-3, and indeed Job slipped to seventh behind Sanchez, Oscar Mangan, and Ariel.
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