F1 News

Dominant Leclerc wins in virtual race with only eight days of experience

6 April 2020 at 06:57
  • GPblog.com

Where on Sunday the Vietnam Grand Prix was supposed to take place, now there was something different for the F1 fans: The Virtual Grand Prix of Formula 1, but not on the circuit of Hanoi and without Max Verstappen.

Dominant Leclerc

Where the first time seemed like a big flop with only Lando Norris as a real F1 driver at the start of the official event, this time it was a little better arranged. With Charles Leclerc, George Russell, Lando Norris, Alexander Albon, Nicholas Latifi and Antonio Giovinazzi there were no less than six F1 drivers at the start, with many more juniors and veterans taking part in the race.

However, the broadcast didn't go entirely smoothly, because the timing of the qualifying session was rather odd. In the end we got the result and Christian Lundgaard took pole, but wouldn't leave pole later due to a penalty of five places on the grid. That's why number two Leclerc moved up to pole and he took advantage of that.

Bad luck for Norris and Albon

On the circuit of Melbourne it's hard to overtake and that also proved to be the case for the menace of the Monegask. Despite a pit stop Lundgaard and Russell never really came close to win and so Leclerc managed to win the race. A great achievement, since the Ferrari driver has only had the game for eight days.

Lando Norris had less luck. He wasn't allowed to race after a ninth place in qualifying. The game threw him out of the game and the Brit couldn't return either. Albon fought his way back to eighth place, after ending up in a spin from P3 in the first lap and had to start from the back again.