There were some familiar names leading the way in this weekend’s two Porsche Esports championships, as Sebastian Job put one hand on the Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup and Moritz Lohner won the Porsche Esports Carrera Cup.
Job and team-mate Patrick Holzmann won both of Saturday’s Supercup races at the Nürburgring 24 hour circuit, for a Red Bull double. Holzmann took victory in the three-lap sprint race, but had to play second fiddle to Job in the feature race for a team 1-2.
Despite the sprint race setting the grid order for the feature race, it was Apex Racing’s Kevin Ellis Jr. who took the early lead, keeping the Red Bull drivers behind almost to the halfway point. However the Dottinger Hohe is a long straight to try to hold off two cars with a slipstream, and Ellis found himself staring at two rear wings before long. As Holzmann went right to make the pass, Job benefitted from a double slipstream to sling past both cars to the left.
The two drivers then nearly broke the number one rule in motorsport: don’t hit your team-mate. A late braking move from Holzmann at turn one put him back into the race lead. Job regained the advantage with a fairly audacious move on the run from Bergwerk to Kesselchen and never relinquished the lead.
A good weekend for Job was made better still by the fact his title rivals all fell away during the race. Joshua Rogers was best of them, in ninth, with Alejandro Sanchez failing to finish and Maximilian Benecke a lowly 19th. The result gives Job an 80-point advantage – over Rogers – with two rounds remaining.
Over in the Carrera Cup, Lohner proved unstoppable yet again. The German had won both of the sim-race semi-final events last month, but the grand final pitted him against not only 13 of his fastest peers but six real-world racing drivers who’d qualified via their own competition.
Not that this troubled Lohner. The Williams driver set his stall out early with pole position at Monza by just over two tenths, before running two lights-to-flag victories – almost managing a perfect Saturday, but for Red Bull’s Nestor Garcia nabbing fastest lap in the second race.
Nonetheless, the two wins crowned Lohner as champion, earning him €7,000 in the process. Garcia took second in both races, winning €5,000. One of the pros, Porsche Supercup racer Laurin Heinrich, actually rounded out the podium, thanks to two successive third places ahead of Williams Esports driver Nikodem Wisniewski in both races; that earned Heinrich €3,000 for his efforts.
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