until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
A revised format for the second season of the V10 R-League competition will culminate with Aston Martin Esports and BMW Sim Racing Team going head to head in the final for the largest share of a £120,000 prize pot tonight.
In the series run on Assetto Corsa using a fictional Formula 1-esque car with a V10 engine, 10 teams have been whittled down to two finalists through a group stage and knockout process.
The 10 teams were split into two different leagues of five where each team played against every other team in their league once.
In each match teams take part in two races around two different circuits. The first is a relay race where one driver from each team starts and over the course of a few laps each of the three drivers from both teams has to have completed at least one lap, with driver changes done in the pits.
The second race is a standard six car event around the chosen circuit and the winning team is the one that scores the most points, with the points system being 10 for first place and then 6-4-3-2-1.
So if one team beat the other in all four races during the match then it would’ve scored four points towards the league table. The two lowest scoring teams in each group didn’t progress to the knockout process.
In Group A it was Red Bull Racing Esports, which finished third in the inaugural season, and new entrant R8G Esports – Romain Grosjean’s team – which didn’t make the quarter finals.
Team Fordzilla and JAESA Team Suzuki ended as the bottom two in Group B.
The teams that finished at the top of each group, Team Redline and McLaren Shadow, progressed straight to the semi-finals while the remaining four teams had to battle it out in the quarter finals.
Despite having to do more work to get there, Aston Martin Esports is one of the teams that will be in the final as it beat both Williams Esports and McLaren Shadow in the knockout phases.
Without a doubt the standout driver in the team has been Lucas Blakeley, who was a race winner in last year’s F1 Esports Pro Exhibition events.
On numerous occasions Blakeley has been first of the six drivers in the sprint races which, given the points system in use, all but guarantees Aston Martin Esports the victory in those events.
In the quarter final against Williams Esports, Blakeley started from pole position and won both of the sprints.
THAT'S! How we kick off a playoff 👊 4 – 0 baby @AMCF1esports
POLE ⏱️
WIN 🏆
POLE ⏱️
WIN 🏆Yes yes, super stoked with this, sooo happy to advance to the semi final's @V10RLeague 🤟 gg to @WilliamsEsports on the match up!
Let's GOOOOOO!! 😃 pic.twitter.com/E1U3smPWHA
— Lucas Blakeley (@LucasBlakeley01) May 17, 2021
He was also instrumental to Aston Martin Esports’ relay race victory at Spa as team-mate Daniele Haddad pitted at the end of the first lap so that Blakeley could do a two lap stint with the second lap in clear air.
That undercut, and Blakeley’s out-lap being quicker than Kuba Brzezinski’s in-lap, gave Aston Martin Esports track position and the win.
A spin by Brzezinski in the relay race at Silverstone handed Aston Martin Esports another first place and a clean sweep race wins over Williams Esports, beating it 4-0.
Mistakes and spins are surprisingly common even with the very high calibre of drivers who have taken part across all 10 teams.
Even World’s Fastest Gamer winner James Baldwin lost control of his McLaren Shadow car during the semi-final against Aston Martin Esports in the sprint race at Spa. He wasn’t alone as his team-mate Isaac Gillissen also spun at Les Combes on the next lap.
Those spins proved to be pivotal as Aston Martin went on to take a 1-2-3 in the sprint race. It meant both teams had scored two race victories each but Aston Martin progressed through to the final by virtue of having the highest cumulative points total across both sprint races.
BMW also finished second in its group so, like Aston Martin, had to win both a quarter and semi-final match to make the final.
It played against YAS HEAT in the quarter final and lost both the relay and sprint races at Silverstone. That meant BMW had to win both races at Monza to even have a chance of making it to the semi-final.
In the relay race Kevin Siggy took pole position, kept first place and his team-mates held onto the lead to take the win.
Siggy again started from the front of the grid for the relay race and was unchallenged as he won by a margin of three seconds in just a five lap race as YAS HEAT’s Simon Weigang crossed the line in second.
A three-way crash between BMW’s Alen Terzic as well as Manuel Biancolilla and Cedric Thome, and the penalties that were subsequently given to all three drivers, mixed up the finishing order for the sprint race.
THIS was probably the CRASH of the season! 😵😵😵#V10RLeague #RacingRedefined 🔺 pic.twitter.com/s2JAlqLWZM
— V10 R-League (@V10RLeague) May 18, 2021
Coincidentally though, not only had BMW and YAS HEAT both won two races each, both teams scored exactly the same amount of points across both sprint races.
It was the particular talents of Formula E Race at Home Challenge champion Siggy that meant BMW was declared the victor of the quarter final as he had taken pole position twice in the race qualifying sessions, which was the deciding factor.
The semi-final pitted BMW against the inaugural champion Team Redline yet the German marque won the first relay race and sprint race, with Siggy and Michael Romanidis taking a 1-2 in the latter.
The defending champion team fought back in the second rotation of races and scored the maximum points in the sprint race as it locked out the first three places, with Michal Smidl the race winner.
It was in the earlier relay race where Team Redline lost its chance to make the final, despite winning on track.
Enzo Bonito started from the front of the grid in the Spa relay race with Siggy as BMW’s starting driver. However the stewards found that Bonito had purposely braked at the exit of La Source on the first lap which prevented Siggy from benefiting from a slipstream down the Kemmel Straight.
This was judged to be unsportsmanlike behaviour by Bonito and so Team Redline had its victory taken away from them and handed to BMW, which therefore took a 3-1 win in the semi-final.
Six weeks worth of racing has led to eight teams ending the competition early and now only Aston Martin Esports and BMW Sim Racing Team remain and they will compete against one another for the first time.
As they’ve never faced each other before it’s tough to predict who will win as both teams finished second in their respective league and both teams lost to their league leaders during the group stages.
However both Aston Martin Esports and BMW made the final by beating the league leaders in each other’s group, against expectations on both occasions.
Also both teams have had one star driver who’s done most of the heavy lifting for their team, namely Blakeley for Aston Martin and Siggy for BMW.
Neither driver is best known for their skills on Assetto Corsa as Siggy is known primarily for the accolades he’s racked up on rFactor 2. Arguably though, Blakeley, despite making his name through Codemasters’ F1 games, has the more relevant experience given the Formula 1 inspiration of the V10 R-League’s fictional car.
Regardless, four final races across two different circuits will decide which one of the final teams takes home the largest slice of the £120,000 prize pool.
