The F1 Esports 2022 season got off to a good start for our team, thanks to a strong showing from our sim-racers. Here are the results and what our trio of drivers, Sebastian Job, Josh Idowu e Joni Törmälä had to say after the first three rounds.
Round 1: Sakhir, Bahrain (29 Laps)
Sebastian Job: P6 – Josh Idowu: P10
A great start to the season, as both our drivers finished in the points. Qualifying was extremely close with the entire field all within the same second! Englishman Sebastian Job made it to Q3 and qualified tenth, while on his debut with our team, Welshman Josh Idowu was 13th. Josh actually got off the start line better than Seb, moving up to 9th, while Seb dropped to 11th. There was a long DRS train which made overtaking difficult. Along with most of the field, our pair were on Hard tyres and maintained a good pace until switching to Mediums at half-distance. In the last two laps, Job had a thrilling duel with Ferrari’s Brendon Leigh, who was chasing on much newer Soft tyres. Sebastian kept it together to keep his fellow countryman behind him, taking the flag in seventh and later promoted to sixth as another driver ahead of him was penalised. Idowu came home tenth, while Lucas Blakely converted pole into the win for McLaren.
Round 2: Imola, Italy (32 Laps)
Josh Idowu: P12 – Joni Törmälä: DNF
This time, Idowu was teamed with Törmälä, but the home race did not go particularly well, starting with qualifying as Joni and Josh lined up P14 and P16 respectively on the grid. Things got worse in the race, as our Finnish sim-racer had to retire with a hardware problem in his pedals and his Welsh team-mate could do no better than 12th. McLaren’s Blakeley made it two wins in a row.
Round 3: Silverstone, Great Britain (26 Laps)
Sebastian Job: P4 – Joni Törmälä: P19
For the third round of the first event of the year, we fielded Job and Törmälä. The Englishman was on fine form at his home track and started on the front row alongside pole sitter, Oracle Red Bull Racing Esport’s Rasmussen who went on to win. Sebastian scrapped with the best all the way to the chequered flag, coming home a strong fourth. Joni was out of luck, dropping to the back after the start. He tried to come up with something different in terms of strategy, but it didn’t come off and he finished P19.
Sebastian Job
“Generally, a very good event for me with a P6 in Bahrain and a P4 at Silverstone, even though I messed up Bahrain qualifying. Silverstone could have been even better than fourth, as I feel we made a bit of an error in terms of race set-up, which limited our strategy options so I was undercut, when at least a podium was possible. However, it’s been a good start to the season and hopefully we will only get stronger from here.”
Josh Idowu
It was great to score points in Bahrain on my debut with Scuderia AlphaTauri Esports. Unfortunately, I was unable to repeat that in Imola, where I finished just outside the top ten. Now I can’t wait to be back on track when I hope to do better in the next event. Overall, the team has done very well and we are currently fifth in the Constructors’ standings, so we can be pleased with that.
Joni Törmälä
“Imola did not go well for me. I struggled in Quali, only P14 and then in the race it got worse as I noticed my brake was permanently stuck on. I was P11 at that point. It was impossible to drive and I had to retire in the pits. For Silverstone, I topped the practice session before qualifying, so I was really confident and got through Q1 easily, but in Q2 I drove a bad lap, which wasn’t good enough to get to Q3 so I started P13 when I should have been much higher looking at my pace. In the race, I lost the car at Turn 4, which was my bad. I couldn’t get back into the points, so I tried for the fastest lap instead. I will try to come back stronger at the next round.”
