Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup Race Preview: Nurburgring
May 5th, 2023 by Chris Leone
The 2023 Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup season continues to sprint towards its conclusion, facing its longest venue of the season this weekend with the combined Nurburgring layout. Live streaming of the iRacing series for top esports pros will kick off on Saturday at 19:00 GMT (3PM ET) via Porsche’s channels on YouTube and Twitch, while the All-Star series will directly precede it at 18:00 GMT (2PM ET).
Last Race: Championship leader Jordan Caruso of Altus Esports flexed his muscle at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps by leading all 12 laps of the most recent feature race, taking advantage of a seventh place finish in the sprint to invert onto the front row for the main event, getting past 2020 series champion Sebastian Job, and never looking back. The win allowed him to extend his points lead to a whopping 86 over Zac Campbell, more than a driver can score in any invidivual event.
Williams Esports driver Alessandro Bico would take the TAG Heuer Pole Award and lead all six laps of the sprint ahead of Lasse Bak and Campbell before settling for seventh in the feature. In a three-way battle for the final two feature podium spots, Oskari Rinne and Campbell would poke just ahead of Luca Kita. Meanwhile, neither Diogo Pinto nor Charlie Collins—previously Caruso’s closest title challengers—could crack the top 10 in either race, allowing both Campbell and Job past them in the standings and getting caught in a battle for fourth with Alejandro Sanchez.
Last Season: Job and Collins were the drivers to beat in last year’s visits to the Nurburgring, splitting the sprint race and feature. It was Job’s fifth win of seven overall across the 20 combined sprint and feature races in 2022, and it was Collins’ second win of three. Pinto, the eventual series champion, scored his only double podium of the season in the event, finishing second in the sprint race and third in the feature.
Track Facts: Few race tracks in the world are as iconic as the Nurburgring Nordschleife, a dizzying maze of straightaways and more than 150 challenging corners that totals nearly 13 miles. Once the home of the German Grand Prix, the venue was removed from the World Driver’s Championship over safety concerns until a new GP-Strecke was built in 1984. However, the new course was built close enough to the Nordschleife to complete a massive combined layout that stretches for more than 16 miles, and it’s on that layout (the “Gesamtstrecke”) that PESC competes each season.
Next Up: Following the Nurburgring, the Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup heads from its longest venue of the season to its second-longest with a trip to the Circuit de la Sarthe in France. Coverage will kick off on Saturday, May 20 at 18:00 GMT (2PM ET) with the All-Star action, before the pros do battle at 19:00 GMT (3PM ET).
For more information on the 2023 Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup season, visit www.iracing.com/pesc. For more information on iRacing and for special offers, visit www.iracing.com.