27-04-2010, 11:43 PM
É sempre bom ver pilotos portugueses nas notícias do iRacing:
Para além do João Vaz, o Paulo Stella venceu a Div.2 do Lotus, juntando a isso um excelente 6.º lugar no agregado das divisões*. Mas sobre isso falarei mais tarde
(*E eu fiquei logo atrás dele, tendo juntado a isso a vitória na Div. 3
)
Quote:
Despite not competing in the final round at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Club Iberia driver Joao Vaz has taken the championship in the iRacing IZOD IndyCar Series for Season One of 2010. To win he entered 31 races, started from the pole 22 times and won a total of 16 races, most of them against stiff competition from the other top sim racers of the series.
At Homestead, IndyCar oval specialist Yang Ou from Club Scandinavia took home the most points at 140 from his wins in both his online races of the week. The rest of the Top Five was nearly completely filled with drivers whose expertise lies in the oval side of racing. Jordan Hightower, competing in the NASCAR iRacing Series World Championship every other week, made an appearance and took home 128 points for his efforts. The most wins, however, were scored by Niles Anders, who won nine of his 17 races, starting every one of them from the pole. He was also the busiest driver of the week, along with Fabrizio Volpe and Tim Doyle, who started 15 and 13 races respectively. From the Top 10 drivers in the overall championship, only Neil Stratton and Matteo Bartolotti managed to score upwards of 100 points.
Vaz
The iconic image of the season – Joao Vaz leading the field at Road Atlanta.
Vaz could afford an off-week to start practice in the Daytona Protoype with a safe gap of 62 points, which also proved to be the final points margin between first and second place in the season standings. The Top 10 in fact proved stable, with only slight variations in points between drivers but no exchanging of positions during the last week of racing.
Division One was predictably taken by Klaus Ellenbrand in front of Milos Miljkovic by a whopping 137 points, with Klaus Kviekäs coming in third despite only competing in six weeks. Division Two was a bit closer going into the week, but Italian Carlo Labati comfortably defended his lead to win the division against competition from Aritan Maia of Club South America and fellow-Italian Matteo Bortolotti.
With the overall champion Vaz hailing from Division Three, the division title is probably the smaller achievement for the Iberian. Frenchman Joel Guez and Australian Paul Luck finished second and third, respectively, while your author managed to clinch the Division Four title ahead of Stratton and Texan John Payne.
Division Five went to Englishman Simon Gymer, ahead of Robert Hedan, closely followed by Gerard van Langevelde of Club Benelux in third. A close battle was fought for Division Six, where Italian Paolo Prestipino came from 30 points down to pass Club Florida driver Scott Keating by a mere 2 points.
Division Seven saw Henrik Müller unable to make up enough points on Benjamin Goyette. Despite Müller’s good oval racing, Goyette provided an equally good week and only lost a single point of his previous eight point gap. In the end the Eastern Canada driver won out and Müller had to be content with second position.
Division Eight had presumably the tightest battle, with Laurent Gouviez of France 21 points ahead of James Legault from Indiana going into the week. Legault and Gouviez scored 92 points each at Homestead, but Legault had the benefit of dropping a worse week to improve on his season points enough to pass Gouviez by a single point. In contrast, Division Nine was the clear affair it looked to be, with Damian Bou Ghosn of Australia taking the division by 61 points in front of Matei Beratco and Emil Roma, while Andre Job of Club Celtic took Division Ten by 34 points from Andrew J Short of England.
In the Season Time Trial standings, Club England claimed the two top positions thanks to the efforts of Richard Walker and Stratton, with Walker scoring a nearly perfect 799 points from a possible 800. Australia’s Bruce Joy finished third, Rob Kodey from Club Virginias was fourth and Jeff Antley from Carolina fifth.
In the regional standings, Italy defended its lead and finished as the best club with 36,77 gross club points from IndyCar races. DE-AT-CH passed France to come in second with 3231 points, 82 ahead of their geographic neighbors. Plains moved into fourth at 2758, relegating Celtic to fifth at 2670 points with Benelux, Iberia and Michigan following in sixth, seventh and eighth respectively. Eastern Canada beat Australia for ninth by only three points. And, saving the most remarkable for last . . . Club New Jersey finally scored their first points of the season at Homestead, taking them from 0 to 40 and past Club Northwest who finished last with 26 points.
All in all, there were 597 drivers involved in the series, with 96 drivers scoring at least one race win during the course of the season.
![[Image: screenhunter_09-apr-27-1024.jpg]](https://www.inracingnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/screenhunter_09-apr-27-1024.jpg)
Para além do João Vaz, o Paulo Stella venceu a Div.2 do Lotus, juntando a isso um excelente 6.º lugar no agregado das divisões*. Mas sobre isso falarei mais tarde
(*E eu fiquei logo atrás dele, tendo juntado a isso a vitória na Div. 3
)
![[Image: 9728Glide.gif]](http://hosting05.imagecross.com/image-hosting-13/9728Glide.gif)