Neil Vehagen took ROWE Racing and BMW to a good start in the virtual part of the FANATEC GT World Challenge Europe, winning the Round 1 of the FANATEC ESports GT Pro Series at Imola.
For 2022, the ESports GT Pro Series has an expanded points table that awards the top five best of each class with a maximum of 5 points down to 1 at each race, added to the combined FANATEC GT World Challenge Europe points table, along with the Sprint Cup and Endurance Cup. The field for the main event is trimmed to 12 car for both Pro Cup and Silver Cup, so a pre-qualifying event does the job of deciding who joins in.
Before the race starts, 2021 champion Arthur Rougier pulled out to the pits and retired, while Yuki Nemoto was fully on attack mode to try a move into leader Neil Verhagen. With Verhagen opening the gap, Nemoto was moving more into a defensive position as Daniel Juncadella was approaching from third place.
Being at the back of the top 4 stalemate, Nicki Thiim was the first to do a pit stop from the frontrunners in the No. 95 Beechdean Aston Martin, and only a couple of minutes later, Yuki Nemoto joined in, only to suffer from technical gremlins at pit exit and lose his Silver Cup lead to Alex Aka in the No. 66 Attempto Audi. Juncadella was the last from the leading pack to do a mandatory stop, but even the Spaniard had his share of bad luck with a stop and go penalty on his neck.
With Juncadella disqualified for not serving his penalty, Nicki Thiim had open way to try to chase Neil Verhagen, but with more than 20 seconds behind, the Danish driver couldn’t do much to threaten the No. 50 ROWE BMW.
ESports GT Pro Series - Imola race results
The No. 66 Attempto Audi of Alex Aka was also secure in fourth overall to get the Silver Cup win as the No. 90 MadPanda Mercedes of Ezequel Perez Companc was 10 seconds behind him.
The next ESports GT Pro weekend will be at the Paul Ricard 1000 weekend, on 4 June.
IMAGE: SRO/Xynamic
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