The knockout stages went largely to form, as the championship’s top five drivers all made it through unscathed. That included the points leader Sebastian Job (G2 Esports), who claimed second as Siggy took the win on an entertaining final lap. The race also saw previous round winner Nikodem Wisniewski (Williams) eliminated in one of the two major upsets of the knockouts.
Erhan Jajovski (R8G) was the other big casualty, as the highest-ranked driver to fail to progress. He seemed to suffer an equipment failure midway through his race, which was won by Dayne Warren (Porsche), just ahead of Luke Bennett (Redline). Porsche’s team talisman Joshua Rogers also took a win, ahead of Tuomas Tahtela (Heroic) following a post-race penalty for the Finn, while Tahtela’s team-mate Tommy Ostgaard claimed victory in the fourth race by a relatively comfortable margin from Redline’s Jeffrey Rietveld.
Tahtela took pole position in the first semi-final, a race that would prove notable for a major incident on the first lap involving four of the championship’s top ten drivers. Although the incident seemed to be precipitated by Maximilian Benecke (Mouz) squeezing Kevin Ellis Jr (ART) onto the grass in the braking zone for Les Combes, the stewards determined Ellis to be at fault. After losing control, the British driver collected not only Benecke but two-time round winners Luke Bennett and Daire McCormack - eliminating four potential race winners at a stroke. Ahead of this, Rogers took an early lead to romp to victory from defending champion Marcell Csincsik (R8G), with Warren claiming third ahead of Tahtela.
Job set an imperious lap time to claim pole in the second semi-final, while Ostgaard couldn’t back up his earlier win and racked up last on the grid. The British driver would claim a lights-to-flag victory from Siggy in untroubled fashion, made easier by a drive-through penalty for Rietveld, but the rest of the pack put on a thrilling show as five cars fought for two spots all race long. Thibault Cazaubon (R8G) initially took fifth, but was slapped with a post-race penalty for a clumsy lunge that took out both Porsche cars of Mitchell deJong and Mack Bakkum. That promoted Yuri Kasdorp (R8G) into fifth and allowed Caique Oliveira (Furia) to qualify for his fifth successive final.