Padayachee and Tse eyeing Real-PRO & AM race win hat-tricks
Three points cover Sim-PRO’s top-four; Petersen and Rayton renew AM rivalry
GT World Challenge Asia Esports Championship Presented by Tarmac Works’ 2020 season reaches its halfway mark with two more virtual 60-minute races at Silverstone.
The home of British motor racing regularly hosts several SRO Motorsports Group series but now welcomes the Asia-Pacific region’s best real and sim racers for the first time thanks to Assetto Corsa Competizione – the official game of GT World Challenge Powered by AWS.
The incredibly close Sim-PRO & AM standings are in stark contrast to their Real equivalents where double race winners Duvashen Padayachee (PRO) and Kevin Tse (AM) have collected the maximum 50 points available thus far.
Padayachee was a runaway Real-PRO class winner at Monza but had to work his way through from ninth to make it back-to-back victories two weeks ago at Laguna Seca where other contenders fell by the wayside. As such the Tarmac eMotorsports Mercedes-AMG driver enjoys an imposing 30-point advantage over Tengku Ezan Ley (Tedco Racing, BMW), while Craft-Bamboo Racing Mercedes-AMG team-mates JiaTong Liang and Melvin Moh are both two points further back.
Tse has also amassed maximum Real-AM points thanks to a methodical, fault-free approach in rounds one and two. The Craft-Bamboo driver enjoys a 25-point buffer over Yuke Taniguchi, whose consistency has kept KCMG’s Nissan just ahead of Antares Au (Modena Motorsports, Porsche), Alex Au (Ryzen Racing, Lamborghini) and Kai Fung Lo (Audi Sport Asia TSRT).
Sim-PRO on the other hand remains incredibly tight after two rounds, largely thanks to both race winners only scoring once. Indeed, Wako’s Fliptable Racing’s Kin Long Li leads fellow Mercedes-AMG driver Andika Rama Maulana (Legion of Racers) by one point, while Joseph De Jesus (Tarmac eMotorsports, Mercedes-AMG) and Andrew Laurenson (Laundry House, Porsche) are two further back after winning at Monza and Laguna, respectively.
Sim-AM is also close with Laundry House team-mates Karl Petersen (Mercedes-AMG) and Terry Rayton (Lamborghini) separated by three points. Championship leader Petersen was forced to qualify via public hot lap selection after an early collision prevented him from finishing amongst the top-five at Laguna, which would have secured an automatic entry for Silverstone.
Mia Rose (privateer, Aston Martin) lies third after becoming the first woman to win a SRO-sanctioned esports race at Laguna, while another Laundry House representative, Philippa Boquida (McLaren) is just one point further back in fourth.
Both races will be livestreamed back-to-back on GT World Challenge Asia Powered by AWS’s Facebook page and SRO’s Youtube/Twitch channels later today at 19:40 and 21:00 HKT. The same coverage is also available with native commentary on Chinese digital platform, Huya.
