The champion of 2020 Job hasn’t made the best of starts this season, but proved the man to catch in sprint qualifying, as he beat Jamie Fluke by just under half a tenth.
Again, the sprint race was almost circumspect, as the front eight almost finished in the exact order they started, with only Ayhancan Guven’s overtake of Kevin Ellis Jr for sixth changing the line-up. Crucially that put Diogo Pinto on pole position for the reverse grid feature race, as he held off championship leader Jeremy Bouteloup for eighth in the sprint.
Pinto initially held firm, but a mistake into the Senna S on lap six saw Ellis – the feature race winner at Barcelona – take the lead. With Ellis now at the front, Pinto then lost position to Dayne Warren and Zac Campbell in quick succession, while Warren hit the front soon after. However, another error in the Senna S, this time from Warren, saw the lead change again, with Ellis hitting the front and dragging Campbell with him. Warren would later end up with a drive-through penalty to fall out of the points. With just the final lap to go, Campbell finally hit the front, passing Ellis into the Senna S. A robust defence saw him take his first series win, from Ellis, with Pinto rounding out the podium. Notably that’s a sixth different race winner in six races this season so far. The results also mean Pinto takes over from Bouteloup at the top of the table, and Guven has closed up to within three points of the Frenchman.
F1 Challenger Series returned for its fourth round this week too, with races at Belgium and Netherlands for the drivers racing across three different platforms.
The Xbox racers were first, and long-time championship leader Tom Manley struggled in the wet conditions at Spa. Instead it was Jed Norgrove on pole position, but after leading every lap Norgrove ran too deep into the Bus Stop on the last lap to allow Harvey Cowen to win, with Zac Oates second.
Normal service was resumed at Zandvoort, with Manley taking pole position and, despite an early pit stop, running almost unchallenged to take the win. With nearly a 100-point gap to second placed Ryan Jacobs, Manley is now guaranteed to qualify for the Pro Draft.
Likewise Tomek Poradzisz is now guaranteed to qualify the PC series, with yet another lights-to-flag victory at Zandvoort. Poradzisz scored both pole positions in this week’s races, but Piotr Stachulec jumped him in the pits at Spa and retained the lead after a race-long DRS battle.
The PlayStation championship however has a new leader, as Joost Noordijk claimed a win at Spa and third at Zandvoort to take the points lead. Noordijk qualified second for the race at Spa, but passed pole-sitter Georges Nader on the last lap at Les Combes to claim a second win of the season.
While Noordijk then took pole at Zandvoort, he was beaten off the line by Duncan Hofland. Noordijk was able to get past Hofland later in the race, but a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit-lane would see him fall to third at the line.
Macie Hitter took her first win of the ROKiT Racing Star campaign, after her rivals all made mistakes. After another pole position, Boulton-Ramos got a poor start, with Jess White and Ella Wrigley beating her into Monza’s turn one. Boulton-Ramos then overcooked a pass on Wrigley, dropping even further back. However, both Wrigley and White threw their leads away in quick succession, gifting it to Hitter. Boulton-Ramos would come home second to retain her championship lead.
A feisty race in the boys’ category saw Bryn Collins win from pole-sitter and championship leader Dylan Warren. Thanks to intense squabbling throughout much of the pack, which ran right down to the final corner as Marcus Luzio and Deagan Fairclough tripped over each other fighting for the podium, the top two were some 18 seconds clear of third-place finisher Oliver Bunn.
ADAC GT Masters moved across the Atlantic for its first ever North American round, at Watkins Glen, but the result was much the same.
After taking two wins from two (and two pole positions) at Brands Hatch, Christopher Hogfeldt was again at the front of the action, but he had to play second fiddle to Jack Keithley in the sprint race. The British driver qualified on pole and led throughout to take the win by 0.3s from the championship leader.
While the feature race had an identical front row, an early stop from Hogfeldt to switch onto the harder tyres saw him undercut Keithley – just, as Keithley emerged from the pits right alongside, but on cold rubber – and maintain his advantage to the end.
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