Baldwin then had a poor feature race qualifying on the dry circuit, coming across the line only in eighth as van der Velde was the man to catch. Blajer was unlucky to line up second for the second race in a row, just four hundredths behind.
This time Blajer was able to stick with the pole-sitter as the two Williams team-mates ran side-by-side right through to Maggotts before Blajer had to back out. That let Schöniger – who’d beaten Vojtech Fiala off the grid – in on the fight, with a banging of doors sending Blajer across the inside of Chapel and, courtesy of the escape road, back on in second place.
Schöniger came back again through Stowe, but got his braking wrong for Vale and ended up fending off Fiala again rather than gunning for second. All that fighting meant that van der Velde had a second’s lead by the end of lap one.
After spending much of the intervening 15 minutes working together to catch up to the leaders, the Blajer vs Schöniger battle erupted again with a move from Schöniger into Brooklands. Once again he couldn’t quite keep ahead and had to cede position at Copse, with van der Velde again drawing a second clear.
The Loop was Blajer’s undoing again. He got a poor exit with three laps to go and allowed Schöniger to finally get the move done on the Wellington Straight. Van der Velde though was over two seconds up the road at this point and took a comfortable win.
With just the final round to go in Valencia in a fortnight, Schöniger has a slim eight-point lead over van der Velde, though Blajer, Baldwin, and Fiala are all still in with a chance of the title too.
Alpine Esports Series Round 2 Feature results
- Tinko van der Velde (Williams) – 12 laps
- Dennis Schoniger (Williams) +2.252
- Dominik Blajer (Williams) +2.858