Today, the day of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix scheduled for June 7, the Virtual Baku Grand Prix, which featured a number of celebrities, was once again filled with accidents, excitement and a bit of laughter from the pilots’ conversations with their teammates.
The first virtual race was Formula 2 Grand Prix. The tension in the 5-lap Sprint race began already in the 3rd lap – as a small collision occurred between Guanyu Zhou and Enaam Ahmed in the fight for the 3rd position.
The most exciting moment occurred when Louis Deletraz and Roberto Merhi briefly came side by side a few meters from the finish line. After that, the cars collided slightly and Roberto had to deviate from his direction and gave 1st place to Louis, but at the same time retained second place. Guanyu took 3rd position at the last moment.
The F1 Esports Pro Exhibition race, which took place next, continued for 13 laps. Jarno Opmeer finished at the top position, Lucas Blakeley completed in 2nd and David Tonizza in 3rd place.
The Formula 1 Virtual Grand Prix was held on 50% of the real race distance, with no damage and all cars having the same technical characteristics. The first accident in the race was caused by Sergio Perez colliding with the wall on the 2nd lap. Although it is impossible to continue the game when a real accident occurs, since the injury option is not active in this virtual competition, the race continued as if there had been no accident, but with time loss. On the 10th lap, football player Aymeric Laporte crashed and put himself 7 seconds behind. On the next lap, at Turn 10 Pierre Gasly collided with the wall and fell 2.5 seconds behind.
On the 20th lap, Jimmy Broadbent overtook Thibaut Courtois at Turn 1, where mistakes often occur, and the latter suddenly went off the track, thus resulting in a loss of 4.5 seconds.
Esteban Gutierrez finishes the race at third position. Louis Deletraz won the ‘DHL Fastest Lap’. Alex Albon, who had been in second position since lap 10, held his position until the end. With the 3-second penalty, he got 6.8 seconds behind the leader.
The first place went to George Russell from Williams team, who won his third consecutive victory in this Virtual Grand Prix season. As commentator Alex Jacques said seconds before the finish – George Russell, who loves the Baku city circuit, will love it even more after this race…
© SportLens.net | Nurlan Tahirli
Images were taken as screenshots during Live coverages of Formula 1, F1 Esports, Formula 2.
