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Deletraz takes SRO GT ESport Series title, as Button wins at Indy | FOS Future Lab

22nd June 2020
Andrew Evans

Swiss driver Louis Deletraz has taken the Pro title in the SRO GT Esport Series following the fifth and final round at South Africa’s Kyalami.

Deletraz proved the most consistent driver in the series, as the only pro driver to score points in all five rounds. With five different drivers – and five different brands – taking the five wins across the season, it’s been the Swiss driver’s steady form in the event as a whole that’s placed him on top.

Kyalami proved another example. Deletraz placed his Porsche on pole for the race, but was soon passed by eventual race winner Luigi Di Lorenzo in the Aston Martin Vantage. Jordan Pepper – a race-winner in the first round at Silverstone – soon also scythed past, but third on the road was plenty for the man who was already nine points clear.

However Ben Barnicoat in the McLaren 720S was soon on Deletraz’s tail. Barnicoat had won the Nurburgring event by mere inches from Deletraz a month ago, and would be only just behind the Swiss driver in the standings too. Deletraz was able to keep the McLaren behind by a mere two tenths at the end of the hour-long race, to seal the title with a healthy 15-point gap.

The regular SRO series season is now completed, but there’ll be one final race later in the year, at a yet-to-be announced circuit and date. This all-star event will take the top 20 drivers from the Pro series and put them into a 50-car race against their pro and amateur sim racing counterparts.

These two additional series – Silver Series for the pro e-sports racers, and Am Series for online qualifiers – have been running alongside the Pro series, and will contribute 20 and 10 cars respectively, with champions Jesus Sicilia (Aston Martin, Silver) and Samir Ibraimi (Porsche, Am) both expected to be up among the contenders.

Fernando Alonso still leads the Legends Trophy Triple Crown event, but won’t be able to complete the virtual hat-trick after an unexpected result at Indianapolis. Alonso won the double the last time the racers hit the Brickyard, but this time it was Jenson Button and David Brabham taking the spoils. Brabham won the first race, breaking away from the field with Juan Pablo Montoya and Andy Priaulx, while Button took the reverse grid race after Alonso span on the last lap.

That means the action moves to Le Mans next week with no driver able to claim the triple crown, but Alonso in an overall lead of just three points from Montoya.

Renowned sim-racing outfit Team Redline took a win at the iRacing 24 Hours of Le Mans over the weekend, with a margin of victory of just over a minute and a half in the LMP1 category. Mivano Simracing won the LMP2 class, by more than a lap from the Team Redline HPD squad, while SimRC won the GTE class. F1 driver Romain Grosjean competed in the race with his R8G esports team, finishing fourth in the GTE class.

Super GT fans also had an esports treat this weekend, with a special one-off race at Fuji Speedway. Using Gran Turismo Sport, 20 past and present Super GT drivers took part in an hour-long event using GT3-equivalent cars from the brands they represent. Daiki Sasaki of Team Impul Nissan took the win by a healthy seven seconds from GT300 Subaru driver Takuto Iguchi, with Nissan driver Katsumasa Chiyo running out of fuel in sight of the line and surrendering the podium to Honda’s Hiroki Otsu.

Welcome to FOS Future Lab where we report on the latest visions of future technology. We'll be boldly covering flying cars, hoverboards, jetpacks and spaceships with plenty of down to earth topics in between.

  • esports

  • Louis Deletraz

  • Jenson Button

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