iRacing World Championships Preview: Week of 19th October

Then there were two. With Keegan Leahy claiming the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series Championship in dramatic fashion last week at Texas Motor Speedway, that leaves only two of the top-level World Championship Series left on the table.

On Wednesday, the iRacing Rallycross World Championship Series presented by Yokohama will head to Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for the fifth race of the 2021 season. The All-Stars will kick off the evening and will be followed by the World Championship drivers, as per usual.

Thursday will host the Force Dynamics Dallara iRacing Grand Prix Championship. The open-wheel iRacers will take on the Hockenheimring for their sixth race of the 2021 campaign.

Both of these schedules after this week will see four more weeks of racing. Both series will end just in time for the holiday season. To hold iRacing esport fans over, the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Championship will take us into the new year. The Dirt World Championship begins on 15th November for 10 weeks, ending on 31st January, 2022.

Next year, the Porsche TAG Heuer eSports Supercup and the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series will kick off the 2022 esport season on the iRacing service. Neither of their schedules has been announced. The PESC Contender Series is currently underway to determine the 2022 roster while the eNASCAR Road to Pro Contender will start-up in November.

IRXWC:

So far in 2021, the iRacing Rallycross World Championship Series Presented by Yokohama has been a battle between SET Esports and Subaru Motorsports USA. The SET Esports team earned their second win of the season last week at Brands Hatch. Jonne Ollikainen was able to take the checkers for the first time in 2021.

Both SET Esports drivers, Ollikainen and Tommi Hallman, have victories on the 2021 season. The same cannot be said for the Subaru duo as Jon Robertson holds both victories in that camp, also leading the driver’s standings. His teammate and defending series champion Yohann Harth sits back in fourth in the standings. Harth has qualified for every main race so far this season, but at best has finished second.

Subaru Motorsports USA leads the team standings by four points over SET Esports heading into Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. Barcelona is another new venue on the iRX schedule, never before seen in previous seasons. It also wasn’t run during the qualifying series earlier this season.

While last week’s Joker lap took longer to complete due to the dirt and the jumps on the Brands Hatch circuit, Barcelona is the first to feature a Joker lap that is longer in both time and distance. The fork in the road comes just before the start-finish line. It will be interesting to see how these drivers tackle a detrimental Joker as opposed to a beneficial one.

The race feed will be available with multiple options for different languages. The English broadcast will go off on the iRacing Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube pages. The Finnish feed can be viewed on Finnish Sim Racing Association (FISRA). A French version will be on BenjxMotors, and a Norwegian cast can be found on the Norwegian SimRacing Channel.

Tune in at 4:00 p.m. ET / 9:00 p.m. BST to catch the action.

FDDIGPC:

Halfway home, and the battle for open-wheel supremacy on iRacing is down to Peter Berryman, Maarten van Loozenoord and Yohann Harth. The three drivers, two of which drive for Apex Racing Team, have pulled away from the rest of the field after five race events. While Harth doesn’t have a race win in their series either, he’s been able to keep up with his teammate for the most part.

Berryman’s lone win came at Interlagos in the third race of the season. However, van Loozenoord has been able to take three victories now, at Watkins Glen, Monza and Silverstone. In all three of those races, it was a battle of van Loozenoord and his R8G Esports machine versus the world… usually the Apex drivers. Still, van Loozenoord has been able to come out on top more than not. His no-points day at Interlagos is the main reason he’s not leading the points, however.

With Berryman on top of the standings entering Hockenheim, he’ll have to do better than the fourth place effort he had in the qualifying series back in July. It was van Loozenoord who took the victory on that day as well. With the Formula 1-style points system, a fourth place finish could mean the end of Berryman’s points lead run.

One of the official R8G Esports drivers, Valentin Mandernach was runner-up back in July’s qualifying race. Ben Fuller, an Apex affiliate at SDK Racing, was able to finish in third. While Fuller seemed to have the better pace at Silverstone, it was Berryman who took precedence as he’s fighting for the title. Even with Fuller giving up that top spot, van Loozenoord still came out on top and they both lost out.

Will team orders continue this week in order to secure an Apex championship? Will van Loozenoord have any R8G Esport support this time around? Tune in live on Thursday at 3:00 p.m. ET / 8:00 p.m. BST to watch and find out. Every race will be live on the iRacing social channels.