Building on their success last time out at Silverstone, GT Radial Eurasia’s Inigo Anton secured a second place finish, having started from pole, during this week’s E1 Championship race as the eSports series visited the USA for the first and only time in its inaugeral season. The Filipino-entered team secured solid results in both the Sprint and Reverse Grid races with Inigo finishing inside the Top 5 for both races, while teammate Joaquin bagged 13th place.
Inigo Anton and Joaquin ‘Wakkeen’ Garrido again represented GT Radial Eurasia Motorsport for the seventh instalment of the E1 championship – this time at the iconic Road America cicuit with a throwback to their performance at Spa-Francorchamps, where Inigo also claimed pole position and converted it to a podium finish.
Having snatched the prime grid position from championship leader Naquib Azlan in the final seconds of the five-minute qualifying session, Inigo lined up for the opening race at the Wisconsin Indycar circuit from pole – opting for hard tyres, with teammate Wakkeen starting from 8th position. However, Naquib who was running on soft tyres got the better start, pushing the Filipino down to third. Inigo reclaimed second following a minute of running as the championship leader disappeared off into the distance, which left Inigo to defend his position with the 22-strong field piling increasing pressure on the 16-year-old. He went on to take the chequered flag after 15 minutes P2, with teammate Wakkeen finishing a respectable 13th following significant contact at the start.
Inigo’s second-place finish converted to 11th on the grid for the 30-minute reverse grid race. This time on hard tyres, Inigo was able to climb up through the field, before diving into the pits late for soft tyres. A spectacular charge to the finish line saw Inigo furiously chase down Mika Hakimi as the leaders took the chequered flag, to finish side-by-side with Mika – although not quite ahead and therefore rewarding him with 5th place. Wakkeen’s efforts ultimately went unrewarded, managing less than five minutes of the race before retiring.
The GT Radial Eurasia team now look to conclude the season with another stellar performance next week as the E1 Championship visits Bathurst in Australia.
Talking about his success in Race 1, Inigo Anton said: “I’d like to thank our team, it was such a crazy race. I don’t know how I was able to stay in second place. Even at the starting grid and we were on pole and we had a quick car. I look back and three or four guys are on soft tyres and we’re on hards because we thought we weren’t going to last on softs – so I was kind of sweating but for some reason – and thank you to my engineer Han – we just made an amazing car and it was super quick even on hards which meant I was able to stay in front of everybody and fend them off. The others made mistakes getting too aggressive and fell back – just a crazy race and I really enjoyed it… It was good side-by-side racing with very little contact – nothing big enough to cause an accident”
