For the second week in a row, Jon Robertson is a winner in the iRacing Rallycross World Championship presented by Yokohama. Entering Iowa Speedway as the points leader, Robertson won the pole, won his heat and won the main event with ease on Wednesday night. Now a three-time winner in the series, Robertson was untouchable and extends his points lead at the one-third mark of the 2021 season.
The Iowa Speedway Rallycross circuit features a shorter dirt section than the other two races at Daytona and Atlanta. The 0.66-mile, 1.06-kilometer course features a section of the oval portion of the track, something not seen on the other two tracks either. Robertson finished fourth at the circuit last year, improving this season with the clean sweep.
QUALIFYING AND HEATS
With Robertson barely edging Vicente Salas for the pole position, it set up for a series of events that were great for him and not so great for others. Robertson, Salas, Kevin Ellis Jr, Jonne Ollikainen, Tommi Hallman and Yohann Harth rounded out the Top 6 in qualifying and scored some points in the process.
The first heat saw Robertson and Hallman run perfect races to advance. The two Logitech G Altus Esports teammates of Luis Núñez and Beau Albert were in the conversation, but used their joker laps early and came out near one another. Hallman waited on his and was able to bypass them both to advance.
Heat two was chaos from the green lights. Salas and Harth both had slower starts while Killian Dallolmo and Jakob Rafoss were able to squeeze in and make it four-wide before the jump. Salas’s car started pin-balling and eventually turned left into Harth, taking them both out of contention. Dallolmo and Rafoss continued on and advanced.
For the third heat, the Rahal Letterman Lanagan Esports duo of Ellis Jr and Jake Robertson were able to duplicate their heat magic from last week. As it was at Atlanta, the duo managed their heats perfectly and took the top two spots in order to advance to the feature.
In the final heat, the results completed a SET Esports perfect score. Both SET Esports’ Ollikainen and SET Esports Team GRX driver Rasmus Tuominen managed to hold off the Jim Beaver Esports duo of Toni Lähteenmäki and Alex Bergeron for their own tickets to the main event.
C-MAIN AND B-MAIN LCQ’S
Both of the lettered main events saw chaos before the first official lap even began. In the C-Main LCQ, as Núñez scooted away, the rest of the field found their share of incident points.
Albert and Jarno Leskinen want spinning, Quentin Dall’olmo caught a piece and the rest of the field had their own share of misfortune. Núñez was able to advance to his first feature of the season while the rest were eliminated.
The second verse, same as the first. In the B-Main LCQ, Harth was in fifth as the field rounded the starting gate area. Matt Bussa wound up flipping end over end after contact, including a boop from the front nose of Harth.
Harth, winner at Iowa last year, was able to cruise to victory as the rest of the field was unable to catch him. That set the 10-car field for the feature race.
MAIN EVENT
Bookended by the Subaru Motorsports USA drivers, the feature went green with Jon Robertson in front and Harth attempting to work his way from the back. Harth didn’t get too far, getting into things before the jump as Núñez and Tuominen went sideways in the same breath.
Robertson was gone. As a complete 180 from last week where he led only the last lap, this week he led every single lap of the feature en route to the victory.
IOWA MAIN EVENT RESULTS
- 86 Jon Robertson – Subaru Motorsports USA – 10 LAPS
- 30 Kevin Ellis Jr – Rahal Letterman Lanagan Esports +0:02.052 sec
- 44 Jonne Ollikainen – SET Esports +0:02.983 sec
- 18 Killian Dallolmo – SET Esports Team GRX +0:04.641 sec
- 87 Tommi Hallman – SET Esports +0:04.827 sec
- 45 Jake Robertson – Rahal Letterman Lanagan Esports +0:05.037 sec
- 13 Jakob Rafoss – Vermont SportsCar +0:07.036 sec
- 90 Yohann Harth – Subaru Motorsports USA +0:07.590 sec
- 22 Rasmus Tuominen – SET Esports Team GRX +0:12.372 sec
- 14 Luis Núñez – Logitech G Altus Esports +0:12.753 sec
After three races, Robertson leads by 12 points over Ollikainen. Hallman is 29 points behind the leader and despite missing his first feature of the season, Salas still sits fourth, 32 points out of the lead.
POINTS FOLLOWING RACE #3 – IOWA
- Jon Robertson – 78 points
- Jonne Ollikainen – 66 points
- Tommi Hallman – 49 points
- Vicente Salas – 46 points
- Kevin Ellis Jr – 44 points
- Yohann Harth – 43 points
- Jake Robertson – 32 points
- Killian Dallolmo – 29 points
- Jarno Leskinen – 29 points
- Rasmus Tuominen – 24 points
NEXT WEEK
The iRacing Rallycross World Championship Presented by Yokohama heads to the Brands Hatch Rallycross configuration next week. As always, the iRacing Rallycross All-Stars will take the field first. The All-Star field has popular streamers, professional racers, and some other people that are just there to have a good time.
Casey Kirwan showed up this week in the eNASCAR All-Star Car and waxed the All-Star field. The Traxion team didn’t make the feature for the first time, but at least we looked good.
The Brands Hatch broadcast next week will be available with multiple options for different languages. The main feed in English 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 while a Norwegian cast can be found on the Norwegian SimRacing Channel.
Tune in at 4:00 pm ET, 9:00 pm BST to catch the action!
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