2020 Virtual Canadian Grand Prix

Virtual Grand Prix series ends with fourth straight win for dominant Russell

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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

PositionDriverTeam
1George RussellWilliams
2Alexander AlbonRed Bull
3Nicholas LatifiWilliams
4Esteban GutierrezMercedes
5Caio ColletRenault
6Guanyu ZhouRenault
7Pietro FittipaldiHaas
8Pierre GaslyAlphaTauri
9Ben DalyMcLaren
10Anthony DavidsonMercedes
11Louis DeletrazHaas
12Gianluca PetecofFerrari
13Callum IlottFerrari
14Aarav AminAlfa Romeo
15Juan Manuel CorreaAlfa Romeo
16Ted-Jan BloemenRacing Point
17David SchumacherRacing Point
18Nicolas HamiltonMcLaren
19Simon NeilAlphaTauri
20Jon OlssonRed Bull

Result

PositionDriverTeam
1George RussellWilliams
2Alexander AlbonRed Bull
3Esteban GutierrezMercedes
4Caio ColletRenault
5Ben DalyMcLaren
6Guanyu ZhouRenault
7Nicholas LatifiWilliams
8Callum IlottFerrari
9Anthony DavidsonMercedes
10David SchumacherRacing Point
11Pietro FittipaldiHaas
12Louis DeletrazHaas
13Ted-Jan BloemenRacing Point
14Juan Manuel CorreaAlfa Romeo
15Gianluca PetecofFerrari
16Aarav AminAlfa Romeo
17Nicolas HamiltonMcLaren
18Simon NeilAlphaTauri
19Jon OlssonRed Bull
DQPierre GaslyAlphaTauri

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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8 comments on “Virtual Grand Prix series ends with fourth straight win for dominant Russell”

  1. This thing is finally over. No more of this series before the ‘real’ racing begins.

    1. proud_asturian
      14th June 2020, 20:46

      Survived the cringe!
      Now let the real games begin!

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

    1. 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.

  4. 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).

  5. 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

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