George Russell scored another crushing victory as Formula 1’s Virtual Grand Prix series ended with a race on Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
The Williams driver romped to victory from pole position, pulling over five seconds clear of Alexander Albon, who he shared the front row of the grid with. Russell briefly contemplated dropping back to race for position with Albon after his rival collected a time penalty for abusing track limits.Russell’s team mate Nicholas Latifi ran strongly in the opening laps having qualified third, but crashed out of third place at the final chicane on lap four. That allowed Esteban Gutierrez in for third place
Renault junior driver Caio Collet kept the F1 drivers honest at the start of the race but crashed on the ninth lap. He nonetheless came in fourth, separated from team mate and round on winner Guanyu Zhou by Ben Daly.
Latifi came in seventh ahead of Callum Ilott, who led briefly after Russell pitted from the lead on lap seven. Anthony Davidson and David Schumacher completed the top 10.
Pierre Gasly made an ambitious attempt to contest the race having taken part in the Virtual Le Mans 24 Hours earlier this weekend. However he was disqualified from proceedings after collecting too many track limits penalties.
A total of 23 such penalties were handed down to the top 10 finishers, Russell the only driver to avoid one.
Russell’s win means he collects the unofficial Virtual Grand Prix championship. The series has concluded three weeks before the F1 season is due to begin with the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring.
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Grid
Position | Driver | Team |
---|---|---|
1 | George Russell | Williams |
2 | Alexander Albon | Red Bull |
3 | Nicholas Latifi | Williams |
4 | Esteban Gutierrez | Mercedes |
5 | Caio Collet | Renault |
6 | Guanyu Zhou | Renault |
7 | Pietro Fittipaldi | Haas |
8 | Pierre Gasly | AlphaTauri |
9 | Ben Daly | McLaren |
10 | Anthony Davidson | Mercedes |
11 | Louis Deletraz | Haas |
12 | Gianluca Petecof | Ferrari |
13 | Callum Ilott | Ferrari |
14 | Aarav Amin | Alfa Romeo |
15 | Juan Manuel Correa | Alfa Romeo |
16 | Ted-Jan Bloemen | Racing Point |
17 | David Schumacher | Racing Point |
18 | Nicolas Hamilton | McLaren |
19 | Simon Neil | AlphaTauri |
20 | Jon Olsson | Red Bull |
Result
Position | Driver | Team |
---|---|---|
1 | George Russell | Williams |
2 | Alexander Albon | Red Bull |
3 | Esteban Gutierrez | Mercedes |
4 | Caio Collet | Renault |
5 | Ben Daly | McLaren |
6 | Guanyu Zhou | Renault |
7 | Nicholas Latifi | Williams |
8 | Callum Ilott | Ferrari |
9 | Anthony Davidson | Mercedes |
10 | David Schumacher | Racing Point |
11 | Pietro Fittipaldi | Haas |
12 | Louis Deletraz | Haas |
13 | Ted-Jan Bloemen | Racing Point |
14 | Juan Manuel Correa | Alfa Romeo |
15 | Gianluca Petecof | Ferrari |
16 | Aarav Amin | Alfa Romeo |
17 | Nicolas Hamilton | McLaren |
18 | Simon Neil | AlphaTauri |
19 | Jon Olsson | Red Bull |
DQ | Pierre Gasly | AlphaTauri |
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Jere (@jerejj)
14th June 2020, 19:36
This thing is finally over. No more of this series before the ‘real’ racing begins.
proud_asturian
14th June 2020, 20:46
Survived the cringe!
Now let the real games begin!
Scotty
15th June 2020, 3:36
So, we all know it’s just a video game. I have to say though, Russell may have won some fans and it shows that he may do well in decent equipment.
Slobo (@slobo)
15th June 2020, 6:00
Where was Bottas? https://www.racefans.net/2020/06/13/full-driver-line-up-confirmed-for-f1s-final-virtual-grand-prix/ you had him in the thumbnail and he didn’t show up.
Wonderbadger (@wonderbadger)
15th June 2020, 8:12
Have I missed something? I can’t find any coverage of the lemans 24H virtual from this weekend, it was one of the best organised most professional races I’ve watched during lockdown and on the whole drivers raced fairly without any of the silliness we see in the F1 game races. Yes there were a few technical glitches but not half as bad as the F1 game but overall it was an enjoyable and close race. A shame it has no coverage on here despite f1fanatic changing its name to racefans because it apparently wanted to expand outside of f1.
David Beverley
15th June 2020, 15:00
Yea, the Le Mans race showed what was capable with sim races. Aside from a couple bugs with the game (not bad over 24hrs) it was in a completely different ball park. They took it as seriously as the real thing. The studio production, commentary, driver line-up, penalties, timing & stats, camera angles. The game looked & sounded great. Was just brilliant.
StephenH
15th June 2020, 12:35
Interesting to note that the Virtual Le Mans race actually ignored in-game penalties in favour of ‘real-world’ penalties issued from the actual real-life Le Mans Race Control team (Eduardo Freitas and co.) who were monitoring the procedures as they would have in a real-world race, which gave it, in my opinion, a lot more credibility than this VirtualGP Series.
George Russell not only won by a mile, but he was the only driver not to collect any penalties during the race as well. Perhaps they could turn the severity of the penalties down and have Masai perform a similar role as Freitas did (given the limits of the F1 games compared to rFactor).
stefano (@alfa145)
15th June 2020, 23:01
I’ll just start this game of reminding everybody how Kubica was not so bad everytime Russell crushes the opposition. Let’s have him in a Mercedes and I’ll be repeating myself day in day out