until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
A third race win for Erhan Jajovski in the Formula E Accelerate esports championship means he’s extended his points lead at the top of the drivers’ championship to give himself the best chance possible at winning the largest share of the €100,000 prize pool.
The Race at Home Challenge champion and a race winner in the Accelerate series, Kevin Siggy, had an unusually poor qualifying performance as he was fourth of the six drivers that went out in the first group.
As the rest of the drivers set their laps Siggy steadily dropped to 11th place as he was 0.417s slower than the pole position time.
Frederik Rasmussen started the race at the fictional Electric Docks circuit from pole position with the championship leader Jajovski second on the grid and then Siggy’s BMW Andretti team mate of Petar Brljak in third.
A better start for the Venturi driver Jajovski meant he cleared Rasmussen on the run to the first corner to take the lead of the race.
.@ErhanJajovski into the lead on the opening lap of Formula E: Accelerate ⚡️#Allianz #FEAccelerate pic.twitter.com/c2liJE6Nte
— ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (@FIAFormulaE) March 18, 2021
From there he was unchallenged and pulled out a 4.6 second gap over title rival Rasmussen to win the penultimate round in the championship.
Behind the top two it was a messy start as a number of drivers made contact with one another at the opening, narrow chicane.
One of the victims was Brljak who dropped down to 11th place and outside of the points places.
DS Techeetah’s Nikodem Wisniewski gained a number of positions in the opening lap to establish himself in third and was an increasing threat to Rasmussen as the race went on.
A lack of energy remaining on the final lap left Rasmussen defenceless to Wisniewski, giving the Polish driver his best result of the season with second place.
Siggy overtook a slow moving Graham Carroll on the final lap to cross the finish line in 10th place, scoring a single point for himself in the drivers’ championship as well as BMW Andretti in the teams’ standings.
The single championship point scored between Siggy and Brljak means Venturi have taken the lead of the teams’ championship away from Andretti with 16 points now separating the two squads at the top of the table.
Venturi’s Jajovski still tops the drivers’ table having increased his lead to 26 points over Rasmussen.
A double points final round means it is still a three-way drivers’ championship fight as Siggy, who’s a further 10 points behind Rasmussen, is still in contention for the largest share of the prize pool and real-world Formula E Gen 2 car test drive.
The final round will take place next week at the new to rFactor 2 Rome ePrix circuit, and just over two weeks before the real-world Formula E championship is due to race at the circuit.
