Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc won his debut Virtual Grand Prix after dominating Sunday’s online esports race among F1 drivers past and present.
F1 is holding an online race in lieu of every postponed or cancelled grand prix this year, and Leclerc was among six current F1 drivers taking part on Sunday evening.
But once again, it was the antics of McLaren’s Lando Norris, who was kicked out of the game due to a system error before the start, that stole the show. Norris was relegated to the role of commentator when his connection dropped out and was forced to watch the race on his Twitch stream rather than participate.
As a fairly dull affair panned out on the screen, Norris — who also struggled with his connection at the inaugural Virtual Grand Prix two weeks ago — kept his followers entertained by making a phone call to Max Verstappen. The Red Bull driver has not been keen to join F1’s official gaming action as he devotes his online racing to the R-factor 2 game, and on Sunday joked Norris should quit too.
“Take the game off your P.C. and throw it in the bin,” he told the McLaren driver Verstappen signed off from the phone call with Norris, by adding: “Have fun racing and I will never join that [event]! Bye bye!”
Norris later took Verstappen’s advice and uninstalled the game live on his Twitch feed.
Meanwhile, Leclerc was dominating the race ahead of Renault-backed F2 driver Christian Lundgaard. Lundgaard had qualified on pole but a bizarre penalty saw him dropped down the grid and gave Leclerc a free run at victory, which he took by 14 seconds from Lundgaard by the virtual chequered flag.
“I’m sweating like crazy,” Leclerc said afterwards. “The muscles are not hurting, but the concentration level is high and I have been sweating quite a lot.”
Leclerc revealed he only took up the official F1 game eight days ago, but had been spending five hours a day practicing as well as joining online sessions with fellow F1 drivers George Russell, Alex Albon, Norris and Nicholas Latifi.
Williams driver Russell managed to claim third on the podium, holding off Arthur Leclerc, who finished fourth after being signed up to driver alongside his brother, Charles, for Ferrari. Other notable results included 2009 F1 world champion Jenson Button finishing 11th and England International Cricketer Ben Stokes in last place.
F1 next Virtual Grand Prix is due to take place over the Chinese Grand Prix weekend in two weeks time.