Round five of the second season for the E1 Championship proved to a difficult affair for our GT Radial Eurasia Motorsport pairing of Inigo Anton and Wakkeen Garrido. The former stayed in the hunt and battled hard for position at Motorland Aragon, ultimately yielding two hard-fought top ten positions from the self-proclaimed Joker weekend in the eSports series.
This round of the championship was never based on pure speed from the qualifying order. Instead, the series organisers opted to provide two 20-minute events for the field, the starting order based on championship positions, reversed, for the opening race of the day.
This penalised Inigo somewhat in placing him ninth on the grid for the first race, while it afforded Wakkeen the chance to shine from the front row of the field. Ultimately however, the field quickly took a more familiar shape with Inigo moving seventh on the opening few tours, with Wakkeen suffering contact from behind and ultimately retiring from the event.
Inigo made further gains to run fifth by lap five, but soon found himself under pressure as his harder compound of tyres faded, from Ayman Aqeem, Presley Martono and Muhammad Nabil. Having lost his race rhythm, he concluded the first race in tenth place.
The second race of the day offered potentially a good result from the reverse top 15 grid. Starting sixth, the initial getaway was strong once again, moving fourth overall in the opening stages. Contact from Jactin Chung lost him momentum, and by ap 11 he had slipped just outside of the top ten.
With others encountering issues in the final laps, Inigo retuned within the top ten with an eighth-place finish. Wakkeen recovered from 27th at the start to P18 at the chequered flag, despite late-race contact hindering his charge through the field.
The GT Radial Eurasia Motorsport team hope for a simpler and more rewarding event next time out with the E1 Championship.
