Gaming

The state of play in WRC esports’ 2020 season

by Nathan Quinn
3 min read

Most high profile motorsports championships now have their own official esports series including Formula 1, MotoGP and NASCAR. But it’s far from limited to circuit racing.

The World Rally Championship leads the way in off-road motorsport esports as the 2020 season is the fifth running of its own championship on its official game series.

The contest was given some early pedigree when WRC2 driver Jon Armstrong (pictured below) turned to the eSports WRC Championship after running out of money to compete in real world rallying.

Jon Armstrong

He won the esports championship in 2018 and was a finalist in 2019, but this year he has returned to the real-world stages with a Junior WRC drive.

The eSports WRC Championship held its final 2020 online qualifying round last week with gamers tasked with setting the fastest time across two stages in Finland.

Points have been scored by the fastest 50 drivers across all platforms in each of 11 rounds, each involving a different country’s rally stages.

In each round players have a maximum of five attempts to set the fastest time and are able to adjust their car’s set-up.

Lohan ?nexl? Blanc

Double champion Lohan Blanc (pictured winning last year’s title), known as RC LDLC OL Nexl, was the fastest in Finland with izamusing second and just 1.4 seconds slower on the eight and a half minute long stage.

WeD_Sami-Joe05, real name Sami-Joe Abi Nakhle, was third in Finland but ended the online championship in first place, albeit tied on points with Blanc once each driver’s worst score was dropped.

Nakle and Blanc won four rounds each and had three second and third place results, but a 12-point haul in Turkey gave Nakle the top spot in the online phase of the competition.

The eight highest points scoring drivers will face one another in a grand final. In previous years this has been an in-person event, taking place in the Rally GB service park last season, but as is the case for so much of motorsport at the moment the plan for this year’s finale hasn’t been outlined yet amid the coronavirus pandemic. The real-world WRC is still to resume, though it has largely finalised an alternative calendar for September-November.

Alongside the esports drivers’ championship is a teams’ championship, with most of the fastest drivers representing a team.

Driving for a team isn’t compulsory and izamusing, who finished third in the drivers’ championship, is among those not to do so.

Wrc 8 Fia World Rally Championship 20200807171645

Race Clutch, which has three of the top five highest scoring drivers in its team, outscored the WRCeDRIVERS team in second by 70 points.

Virtual Best Racing finished the online qualifiers in third with Williams Esports’ sister team, Williams JIM Esports, in fourth.

Joining the top eight gamers are two wildcard drivers who were victorious in other events.

The first of those was held in January when four people were invited to an event held at the La Rascasse bar in Monaco including Alan Boiston and Steve Brown, known as Team VVV and SuperGT on YouTube respectively.

It was WRC esports driver Greekman, real name Giannis Kalogerias, who won that event and earned himself a place in the grand final.

Earlier this month the second competition to give out a wildcard spot was the Rally Finland eChallenge, in which esports and real-world rally drivers competed against one another in the absence of the cancelled real-world Rally Finland.

It was Mika Laitinen, or Mihalo, who emerged on top as he bested Junior WRC driver Sami Pajari by 0.667 seconds.

Lauri Joona, another Junior WRC driver, rounded out the podium and was under two seconds slower than Laitinen.

Kalogerias and Laitinen and the eight online qualifiers are competing for the prize of a Toyota GR Yaris, the road going version of the car that Ott Tanak won the WRC drivers’ championship with last year.

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