F1 Esports Round 4: Ronhaar realizes his potential

2nd in the driver’s championship, Frederik Rasmussen managed to secure pole position. The relatively short layout of Spielberg had allowed for extremely close lap times between all the drivers. The top 7 on the grid were separated by only 64 milliseconds. With the numerous straight sections of the Red Bull Ring, it was going to be challenging for Rasmussen to maintain the lead of the race. Positioned behind the exhaust of the Red Bull in front of him, Thomas Ronhaar, who had been only 6 milliseconds slower than the pole-sitter in qualifying, made a move in the mirrors of the race leader approaching the third corner. Disturbed, Rasmussen locked his front tires, allowing the Haas driver to take the lead of the race two corners later.

Leading the race since the 1st lap, the Dutch driver had to abandon it on the 14th lap when it was time for him to pit. Indeed, the first part of the race was held in the rain with intermediate tires, but the track had dried enough to switch to dry tires. This situation forced all drivers to stop at the same time, preventing some drivers from stopping in order not to get stuck behind their garage neighbor. This was the case for Dani Moreno at Mercedes, and Marcel Kiefer at Red Bull. While Bari Boroumand was leading on track, McLaren decided to bring in Lucas Blakeley before the Iranian driver. The British team wanted to give every chance to the current championship leader.

On the 18th lap, Rasmussen dove inside at turn 3 to regain the lead of the race from Ronhaar. Two laps later, the two simracers exchanged their positions once again. This same turn 3 would be the stage for their duel in the last two laps of the race. On the 35th lap, Rasmussen tried again to overtake Ronhaar on the inside, but the latter took advantage of the DRS and a better exit from the corner to stay in first place. Knowing that opportunities for victory do not come every day, Thomas Ronhaar showed excellent racecraft to maintain the lead on the final lap. Blocking the inside of turn 3, the Dutchman did not use his ERS to allow Rasmussen to be ahead of him at the DRS detection point. Braking late, the former FRA team driver took the Red Bull of the Dane off-track, onto the curbs. With a poor exit and no DRS, Thomas Ronhaar had to avoid making any mistakes for the remainder of the lap to cross the finish line in first position.

Poleman in Imola, never outside the Top 3 in qualifying since the beginning of the season, 3rd in Silverstone, and now a winner at the Red Bull Ring, rookie Thomas Ronhaar is having a near-perfect start to the season against his more experienced opponents.

Frederik Rasmussen, who finished second, may have lost the victory in Austria, but this strong performance allowed him to gain a lot of points for his title rival, Lucas Blakeley. The Scottish driver couldn’t do better than sixth in the fourth round of the F1 Esports Pro Championship. This is the first time this season that the McLaren driver did not finish on the podium.

Nicolas Longuet the party pooper

Finishing in 6th position, Nicolas Longuet was able to take advantage of his team’s good strategy to contend for the podium during the race. Indeed, while most of his rivals stopped to put on hard tyres, Alfa Romeo took the gamble of choosing medium tyres. These significantly faster tyres at the start of the first stint allowed Nicolas Longuet to catch up to the leading pack. Overtaking Josh Idowu on the 20th lap of the race, the French driver took third position. The former Renault driver even managed to get alongside Rasmussen’s Red Bull, but without success. Unfortunately for Longuet, his yellow-banded tyres were completely worn out towards the end of the race, causing him to lose two positions consecutively to Josh Idowu’s AlphaTauri and Jarno Opmeer’s Mercedes. This fifth place is the Frenchman’s best result this season.

Jarno Opmeer’s comeback

Once again this season, Jarno Opmeer struggled with his pace in qualifying. Starting in 9th position on the grid, the reigning champion made a series of overtakes to finish in 4th place. The Dutch driver notably executed a superb maneuver on Lucas Blakeley during the 35th lap of the race. Hindered by the struggling Alfa Romeo of Nicolas Longuet in front of him, Blakeley had a poor exit from the turn before approaching the penultimate corner. Jarno Opmeer took advantage of this opportunity to shift to the left of the McLaren and wrap around it on the outside. It was a courageous overtaking maneuver that allowed him to move up to 5th place at that moment in the race.