For the fourth round of the season, the online championship of the eSports WTCC heads over to the southeast of Europe, for the race of Portugal. In the real WTCC, the event is established since 2007. Four different racetracks have been used: The classic track of Estoril, the tight roads of Porto, nowadays the spectacular street circuit of Vila Real, but for our virtual championship, we will go the modern circuit of Portimao. And of course, when you mention WTCC and Portugal together in a sentence, there is one name that comes to mind: Tiago Monteiro, who is also the most successful driver at the WTCC Race of Portugal with 3 victories, sharing his crown with Alain Menu. In the pre-qualifying on the hotlap leaderboard, French driver Thomas Petitjean dominated and set the fastest time by 2 tenths over Juan Manuel Gomez, Nikodem Wisniewski and Tanguy Pedrazzoli. The Hondas were the fastest car, but Klaus Schulze proved with his 5th position that the Citroens shouldn't be underestimated. Championship leader Alexander Dornieden was 6th, while his closest competitor, Volvo driver Jan Stange, ended up in 10th position. The strongest newcomer was Dutchman Frank van Roon in 20th position. If you are interested in following the action live, make sure to tune in Sunday, June 18th, at 17:00 GMT (14:00 Sao Paulo, 18:00 London, 19:00 Berlin) on either the Facebook page of the WTCC or the YouTube channel. James Kirk and Robert Wiesenmüller will lead you through the 2 hours of virtual racing action.
Congratulations to the winners and podium finishers (and to my friend, Miklós Gál for making a flawless debut)! A short report from me: Q: decent pace, managed to put two great laps together, P6 on the grid. R1: I didn't have a cracking start, but still, I was P7 at the end of lap 1 after having pulled a brave move on Fredriksson. Then he braked way too late into T1, lost control and literally banged me off the track (Interestingly enough, yesterday we were racing against each other for an hour, and he could drive without hitting me). My race was ruined, because I fell back to P26. Eventually, I managed to recover to P13 - not bad with a damaged car. R2: I tried not to take part in any unnecessary battles at the start, so I managed to gain 2 positions. Later I overtook Pinczés and profited from incidents in front of me. The second part of the race was a bit lonely for me (3s behind Wisniewski and Nagy, 2s ahead of Leitner) until the last lap when I caught the group fighting for the last podium spot. I tried to pass Báldi but he could stay in front of me, so I finished P7. It's a pity because (once again) I suffered from someone else's careless and thoughtless driving. As (unfortunately) I had the opportunity to watch other guys from behind, I could easily find out that dangerous driving was not that rare. I believe it's hight time people were given more severe penalties (even bans or DQs) because penalty points don't seem to make the job.
Let me be honest that 2016's car is not the car of 2017, even though they say it's the same. I defintely feel the difference with my wheel ( OSW DD). I'm sure the difference was that the racetrack was not the same track which I drove in the afternoon with the boys from Div 1. Than I drove 0: 200.00 of my time and during the race server I did not even come close to a 1: 46,000, plus the track limiter at the final turn before Start / Finish was a trick, so your next round did not count. This meens that I lost two rounds of time so that I no longer had the focus and the fun to continu. In my opinion it's better that if you organize a Competition with 2016 cars than you stay driving those cars and if the track limiter has not changed during the pre-Q, leave them so during the race. Is my idea for this, and just for info
Hello everyone. This was my first ever race in Division 1. In the qualy, I got the 21th place. I said to myself, it's ok, this is the first time, my target is the finish line. The start was worse than I expected, because in front of the Honda still still after the lights, and I nearly hit him. After that so many people crashed, and I could be able to take the 14th place. The tires was completely destroyed by the end of the race. In the second race, I got a better start, and the battles were really good. I took 13th place for the 2nd race. To sum up, this is much more, than I thought I will reach. I hope I could qualify for the next round in division 1. It will be hard but not impossible. See you guys, Miklós Gál
Congrats to the podium finishers and Stange for his first win Qualy was ok, it was my expectation to not qualyficate in the top10. 1st race was started horribly as I was pushed out into the gravel trap because of a misjudged braking. Than I had some battles. Once I was behind Dirk Knatz and I braked later than him and I hit him in a braking zone. I am so sorry man, I was used to brake later in that corner, but I'm not making excuses, that's completely on me. After that I managed to come back to 13th place and I fought with somebody and in the last lap 1st corner braking zone we touched and I hit the outside wall. My car was broken but I finished the race in 17th. 2nd race started from 17th, I had a great start making up places. Doing some good battles and using others mistakes to come up to 8th. In the last laps of the race Dornieden caught up to me but he made a mistake and than I managed to defend my place so finished in 8th. Not the best weekend after the win in Nordschleife but hopefully I get lucky and nobody hit me out in Spa
Race to forget for me in division 2. Excellent qualifying with a third grid position I liked in view of the race. The start was good, but not enough to gain positions so I had to wait two curves later. At that point I managed to side Alves, outside the curve to the right, then find myself inside the left one. At the exit of that curve I was half a car ahead of Alves, so he saw me very well, but he decided to hit the back of the car so i was out of the fight for the podium. The rest of the race was all over at the end of the group, with some nice battles with Ballardini and Opitz. Unfortunately, while I was over Ballardini, Opitz in front of us two missed a braking and I ended up unluckily. (I am sorry for this). Overall, the race has often been too aggressive compared to previous races and I don't understand why. I hope to qualify for Spa so I try again for the podium, although the chevrolet I don't think will be competitive on this track. Thanks to all