With three races of the Formula SimRacing World Championship still left to run, Jernej Simoncic now has over a race win’s worth of points advantage over his nearest championship rival following his fourth victory of the season.
He took pole position at the Nurburgring GP circuit, beating his nearest championship rival Petar Brljak who joined him on the front row of the grid.
Simoncic held the lead until the first of two pitstop phases when he pitted a lap after Brljak and was successfully undercut by his rival.
In the second pitstop period Brljak stopped three laps before Simoncic but he came out directly behind the slower Luke Maguire.
Despite that Simoncic wasn’t able to jump his rival, but one lap after leaving the pits he closed up to the back of Brljak’s car and passed him down the inside into the first corner.
Brljak got back in front by taking the outside on entry to the final chicane and sticking directly to the right of Simoncic so he could take the shorter line around the final corner and reclaim first.
Two laps later Simoncic repeated his earlier move and was able to stay at the head of the pack for the remainder of the race, but wasn’t able to pull away from Brljak as he finished just over a second ahead of him.
The FSR win continued a run of recent success for Simoncic that includes an Indianapolis oval victory in The Race All-Star Series Powered by ROKiT Phones Sim Masters championship on Saturday and being part of Burst Esport and ByKolles’ second-placed line-up in Virtual Le Mans the previous weekend.
Muhammed Patel, who only joined this season’s championship in the previous round, qualified in fourth but got a better start than Michi Hoyer to move up to third.
He held the position until just past the halfway mark when he disconnected from the session, and on the same lap Craig Baxter pulled off the circuit to retire having just gained a position from Patel’s retirement to move into sixth.
Patel’s non-finish meant Hoyer inherited third place and Dawid Mroczek fourth, meaning three of the top four drivers came from Burst Esport.
Behind Janos Bracsok in fifth and Alex Siebel in sixth was Edge Esports’ Jim Parisis.
Parisis was the highest placed driver not to have started on the soft tyres as he qualified outside the top 10 and elected to begin the race with hard compound tyres.
After two hard stints he fitted the soft tyres for a final 14 lap stint, in which he overtook five hard and medium shod drivers to finish firmly inside the points positions.
With three races in the championship still to run Simoncic has a 29 point lead over Brljak and a 59 point advantage over Hoyer in third. The series continues with Zandvoort on July 12.
