Williams Esports claimed the 2024-25 GTP IMSA Global Esports Championship, following a testing final race at a virtual Daytona that involved a collision with Max Verstappen.
The four-time F1 champion had entered the American championship’s official sim racing competition as a wildcard for the final round – with a $25,000 prize pool on the line for the season-long teams’ titles across GTP and GTD categories.
Starting third on the grid, Verstappen dived for the lead at the opening corner, only to seemingly misjudge his Acura’s braking performance, sliding into the championship-leading Williams BMW and pushing both cars off the track.
The entire GTP field went by, with the duo suffering damage but continuing. The loss of time and car performance was exacerbated with a drivethrough penalty for causing a collision handed out to Verstappen.
The ARX-06 would pick up further damage later in the race, before Gustavo Ariel, sharing the entry with the Dutch driver, crossed the line after two hours and 40 minutes in 12th.
“I just locked up a bit the rears and in this car, it’s very hard to control that, so I just went wide,” explained Verstappen of the opening corner incident.
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“Of course, there was also the other car that I couldn’t avoid, so that was a bit unlucky there. My mistake.
“After that, I think both cars had damage, so it was quite a difficult first stint. Then we boxed, almost cleaned the car I would say, [it was] almost fully repaired, so the pace was almost back.
“I tried to overtake a backmarker, I think a GTD car, and he didn’t keep his line. I think he just wanted to keep out of the way, to be honest, a bit of miscommunication and I had damage again within three laps of the stint.”
Williams drivers Jaden Munoz and Matt Farrow, meanwhile, would finish in 10th, enough to claim IMSA’s GTP esports championship for the sim racing team based on the same Grove campus as the F1 outfit.
Elsewhere, former Juncos Hollinger IndyCar driver Agustín Canapino competed in all four rounds. The Argentine finished 14th in this race, alongside Maximilian Muir, with Soelpec Precision Racing ending the season fifth in the teams’ championship.
In GTD, the Verstappen-affiliated Team Redline wrapped up the title thanks to two class victories for Florian Lebigre and 2019 Race of Champions competitor Enzo Bonito.
Verstappen is also set to enter the 24 Hours of Daytona simracing event, again using iRacing, between January 17-19.
