Bari Boroumand started F1 22 with a bang as he took victory in Premier Sim Gaming League’s Esport Invitational on Wednesday night (29th June 2022) ahead of next week’s opener of Season 31 in Bahrain.
The Iranian started a lowly seventh for his usual qualifying standards but carved his way through the field on the mediums at the start before hanging at the end to take his second pre-season win in a row.
Frede Rasmussen, who won at Silverstone in the 2021 F1 Esports Pro Series, finished second, with pole sitter Alvaro Carreton completing the podium spots.
PSGL Pre-Season: Qualifying
With the likes of Jake Benham, Wilson Hughes, and Tomek Poradzisz absent due to the 2022 Pro Exhibition, it was a chance for some drivers to impress, with Lucas Blakeley and the current PSGL champion, Jarno Opmeer, also missing out from the action.
One driver who impressed early on was former F1 Esports driver Floris Wijers, who finished Q1 in third place. Louis Welch ended up in last place after struggling to adapt to the new game on the controller.
The F1 Esports drivers upped the pace in Q2, all of them making it into the final part of qualifying. The impressive Wijers missed by half a tenth to his fellow Dutchman Matthijs Van Erven.
In the final runs of Q3, Fabrizio Donoso rose to the top again after topping Q1 with his new Ferrari teammate and title rival during the first year of F1 Esports, Brendon Leigh, only managing sixth at best.
After being on the verge of elimination in the previous two sessions, Van Erven moved to an impressive third, with Josh Idowu just behind in fourth. Alvaro Carreton smashed Donoso’s pole time: beating the Chilean’s attempt by just under a tenth of a second.
Boroumand could only manage seventh, leaving Frede Rasmussen as the only driver remaining to deny the Spaniard pole at Silverstone. Unfortunately for the Dane, he agonizingly missed out by five-thousandths of a second but moved onto the front row.
After all that, Donoso had slipped to third and was alongside Patrik Sipos, whose first run was good enough for fourth place. Van Erven and Idowu were on Row Three, with the McLaren Shadow duo of Boroumand and Dani Bereznay next on the fourth row and Brendon Leigh and Marcel Kiefer rounding out the top 10.
PSGL Pre-Season: Race
With the brand-new F1 22 tyre compound rules in play, all three sets featured inside the top 10: Sipos and Kiefer on the red-walled soft tyres; Boroumand on the mediums; the remaining drivers on the hard tyres.
Sipos got off the line brilliantly from fourth but was boxed in by the front three and dropped back to eighth and behind the fellow soft runner Kiefer in seventh.
Donoso managed to make his way past Rasmussen at Abbey and produced a Charles Leclerc-style move around the outside of Farm to take the lead of the race.
Boroumand’s tyre grip of the start paid dividends as he passed Idowu, the slow-starting Sipos, Van Erven with a brave move at Brooklands, and a clinical move at Stowe on Rasmussen to move into the podium positions.
Sipos’ day went from bad to worse as he was hit into Vale by Jack West, spinning the Race Clutch driver around: the Hungarian retired shortly after. Those on the softer compounds were making significant progress. Kiefer was let go by his Red Bull teammate whilst Boroumand took the lead with two easy moves on Carreton and Donoso.
The Iranian swiftly broke the DRS and built up a two-second lead in the next few laps whilst those on the softs started to struggle. The drop-off of the soft tyres caused a bizarre moment, something rarely seen in Formula 1. Van Erven was pressuring Kiefer down the Hangar Straight after letting his teammate pass down the previous DRS straight.
The Dutchman got a switchback at Stowe and was on the right of the German. With Kiefer wanting to pit, he forced Van Erven into the pits and the Haas driver, who was seemingly furious, left the session.
The order remained the same before the leading contenders started to pit. Boroumand and Leigh boxed at the end of Lap 13 to trigger the undercut with the drivers who stayed out pitting the following lap apart from Carreton.
Donoso, who inherited the net lead after Boroumand’s pit stop, suffered a slow pitstop due to an in-game glitch and filtered to a net sixth and over six seconds off the race lead. Carreton re-joined ahead of Rasmussen initially, but the Dane made an easy move between Village and Farm as the Spaniard struggled for tyre temperature.
The order with nine laps to go was Welch, who was yet to stop, so Boroumand had the net lead from Rasmussen and Carreton. Leigh’s undercut paid off and moved up into a net fourth from his former Mercedes teammate Bereznay, Donoso, Idowu, and Wijers completing the top 10.
The Dane was putting heavy pressure on the Iranian, constantly getting within two-tenths of a second at the end of each DRS straight. But with a lack of a heavy braking zone, the Red Bull driver could not take the risk of sending it up the inside.
After being under immense pressure and the only driver to start on the medium tyres, Boroumand made the correct call and took victory at Silverstone in PSGL’s pre-season race.
Rasmussen and Carreton completed the podium from Leigh, who fought brilliantly from tenth. Donoso finished ahead of Bereznay thanks to the Hungarian’s 5-second penalty for speeding in the pits. Idowu, Wijers, Presnajder, and Bence Szabo-Konyi rounded out the top 10 spots.
Boroumand will take momentum into the first round of the season next week at Bahrain when the likes of Opmeer, Blakeley, Dani Moreno, and others join the field.
Make sure to catch our preview early next week, and tune into the opening race next Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. BST on the PSGL YouTube Channel.
