Sebastian Job wins Porsche Esports Supercup | FOS Future Lab | GRR
After defending champion Joshua Rogers prolonged the title challenge at Le Mans, Sebastian Job has clinched the Porsche Esports Supercup at the final race of the season.
Job headed into the Monza round with a substantial points lead, but still Rogers made a fight of it with a pole position time in Italy, just ahead of Job. However, the reverse-grid start for the sprint race saw the title challengers start further down the pack - and this played a vital role in the destination of the championship.
An incident ahead of the Job/Rogers battle saw both cars involved in their own incident, and Rogers came off by far the worse. Relegated to the back of the pack, Rogers could only watch on as Job took fifth place and the points he required to secure the title.
If the sprint race hadn’t already been enough, Job somewhat gilded the lily with a podium finish in the feature race. Finishing behind only countryman and Red Bull team-mate Graham Carroll, Job put in another stellar performance to close out the season some 96 points ahead of Rogers in second.
No sooner has the 2020 season concluded than the 2021 seasons starts. Porsche has announced qualifying for next year’s championship – running from January to April – will get underway in two weeks. There’ll be five qualifying races to determine 20 places, accompanying the 20 top drivers from this season, starting with a round at Okayama on 24th October.
France’s Arnaud Lacombe kept up his ideal start to the Ferrari Hublot Esports competition, with another victory at the Circuit Zandvoort. This Ferrari-run competition will decide who joins the Ferrari Driver Academy next year, and Lacombe has certainly made his case in the first two races.
As with the first round at Monza, Lacombe managed a lights-to-flag victory, to take two wins from two, in the four-race Pro championship. Indeed the entire front three was identical in both races, with Lacombe ahead of Giovanni de Salvo and Kamil Pawlowski.
The championship is far from over, however, as the four races merely act as a qualifier for the grand final next month. That’ll see the best Pro drivers joining players from a separate “Am” grid, to race off for that coveted spot on the Ferrari esports squad.
Porsche took a clear lead in the V10 R-League series, following the week’s races at Laguna Seca. A dominant 3-0 win against the Yas Heat squad was the best possible result, but Porsche’s advantage came from the match between Williams and Red Bull.
Second-place Williams took the lead in the match through the head-to-heads, but Red Bull came back in the relay - in part helped by a pit stop error. The final race was mired in controversy after Red Bull’s Tormala was involved in, and penalised for, a lap one crash which involved two Williams cars. That left newcomer Nils Naujoks to take the win – ahead of Graham Carroll – and the match for Red Bull. The result keeps Williams in second, but three points behind Porsche, with Red Bull and BMW tied for third a point further back.
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