until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
After this Saturday’s round of The Race All-Star Cup – Fully Charged by ROKiT Phones, one simracer will win a full day’s test at a Formula 1 team’s simulator, and the result should go down to the wire.
The F1 test will be awarded as a prize to the top simracer in the All-Star Cup championship – which also features real-life professional drivers – and as the top three drivers in the standings are simracers, the title and the test will almost definitely go to the same driver.
The current championship leader is Erhan Jajovski with 70 points having won both of the previous grand finals.
He is currently 14 points ahead of Williams Esports’ driver Nikodem Wisniewski, and 22 points in front of Vegas eRace winner Bono Huis in third.
A maximum of 35 points can be scored in the final round of this championship but, despite Jajovski’s dominant form recently, it’s worth remembering that his position at the top is perilous.
Points are handed out to drivers based on finishing results in the grand final, with championship points 5-4-3-2-1 awarded to drivers who finish the Jones Soda Last Chance Qualifier and the simracers’ heat in sixth to tenth.
So if Jajovski misses out on the grand final by finishing his heat outside of the top five, he could only score a maximum of five points whilst his rivals could claim up to 35.
In the third round of the All-Star Series, before championship points were given out, Jajovski qualified in eighth for the simracer heat but moved his way up to the top five.
A collision with Wisniewski later that race sent Jajovski’s car up into the air and meant he fell down the running order. Wisniewski ended up finishing that race in fourth, while Jajovski crossed the line down in eighth.
That was the same round where Huis would go on to win in the grand final, and if those results were replicated for the seventh round of the All-Star Series it would be outside contender Huis who would win the coveted F1 simulator test, not Jajovski.
Wisniewski, despite finishing the past two rounds in third and second respectively, hasn’t won any of the six rounds in the All-Star Series so far.
Unlike the real-world pros, the simracers only get one chance to make it into the grand final as the Last Chance Qualifier is not open to them.
Before the first round of the championship-points awarding All-Star Cup – the fifth instalment of the series was the first of three rounds awarding points and counting towards the championship – Jajovski’s best result in the All-Star Series was fourth place in the grand final of the fourth round.
Upsets are certainly possible in the championship, as many people’s favourite to win before the All-Star Cup championship started was Rudy van Buren, who is now out of contention – despite having finished all four of the first grand finals in the top three and won the second round of the All-Star Series.
Real-world racers Gabby Chaves, Mike Epps and Maximilian Guenther can still win the All-Star Cup outright mathematically, but the only simracers who have the possibility of winning the F1 simulator test day are Jajovski, Wisniewski and Huis.
Instead, the highest finishing real-life pro will get to award $30,000 to a charity of their choice.
The final round of the All-Star Cup – as well as the Legends Trophy race, which features a number of ex-F1 and IndyCar stars – will start at 17:00 UK time and will be livestreamed on The Race YouTube channel.
It will not mark the end of the series, however, as the All-Star Cup will then kick off its next stage – a five-round follow-up championship, which will run through May.
