As the 2020 GPVWC Superleague season nears its end, Jernej Simoncic won an all-wet race at Suzuka by a margin of 17 seconds.
The Slovenian driver took pole position by a quarter of a second over Adam Maguire with Dennis Jordan in third on the starting grid.
Jordan’s Evolution Motorsports team-mate, and reigning champion, Jannick Bock qualified down in 11th place.
Simoncic got a good start off the line and led the opening stint with a two second cushion over Maguire before the Irishman pitted.
That undercut tactic proved to be very effective as when Simoncic pitted three laps later he rejoined the race in second and behind Maguire.
Maguire’s time in first was curtailed very quickly though as he was given a drivethrough penalty for speeding in the pitlane.
That put Maguire down to fifth place, which became fourth as the Edonis Engineering driver caught up to the back of Maciej Mlynek on the run up to 130R and passed him on the inside.
He then caught up to the back of Jordan and Germano Zappala but was unable to get back in front of either of them.
As a result Simoncic was unchallenged in the second half of the race and was joined on the podium by first-time podium finisher Zappala in second and Jordan in third.
Prior to this race Zappala’s highest GPVWC Superleague race finish was sixth place.
The intermediate tyre conditions caught out a number of drivers, with Maguire’s team-mate Liam de Waal missing out on a potential top three result after spinning at the S curves on his in-lap.
That meant de Waal ended the race in eighth, one position behind Bock – which means Evolution Motorsports is now tied on points with Edonis Engineering at the top of the constructors’ championship.
In the drivers’ championship Bock still leads the way by 16 points over Maguire and 41 over Simoncic despite both drivers outsourcing the defending champion at Suzuka.
With two rounds of the Superleague season left to go only the top three drivers are still in mathematical contention for the drivers’ championship.
