Sanchez Scores First Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup Win at Silverstone; Benecke Breaks 11,000 iRating

July 18th, 2020 by

It was a massive day for all three podium finishers in the main event of Saturday’s Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup round at Silverstone Circuit. Alejandro Sanchez scored his first career main event victory and the first-ever iRacing World Championship win for a Spanish driver, Maximilian Benecke became the first driver in iRacing history to crack an 11,000 iRating in any license class, and defending Silverstone winner Sebastian Job rode a third place finish to the championship lead.

“It feels awesome to finally get a win after so much time in this championship and with such a high level field,” said Sanchez. “I’ve always liked Silverstone—I’ve always been quick here, and we’ve done a great job with the car. I just focused on keeping the tires in check and not making mistakes, keeping Max in check, but it was close.”

“Hitting that 11K mark is really great, and it was a great race,” added Benecke. “I tried to fight as much as I could to keep P2, and it worked out in the end. Hitting the 10K mark, to me I felt I was done, but we kept going onwards and it went up and up, and I don’t even know when that was. Silverstone is quite tricky, it’s hard to stick with the guy in front and you have a lot of dirty air, so you need to wait for a mistake. Alejandro did a very good job of not making a mistake—for 25 minutes or so, I was waiting and waiting, but I’m happy for a P2.”

Jeremy Bouteloup won the 15-minute sprint race by less than a second over Sanchez and Benecke to set up the feature, with Patrik Holzmann and Job completing the top five. All three podium finishers would get past the French driver on the very first lap of the main event, and held those positions throughout; most of the top 10 finishers were able to settle into their eventual finishing spots early on. Holzmann would defend the final spot in the top five from promising rookie Jeff Giassi, who climbed from ninth on the feature grid to sixth.

Incoming points leader Joshua Rogers would post the top qualifying time at Silverstone before the eight-car invert for the sprint race, and lined up seventh on the feature grid. Rogers’ chase for the overall win, however, would come to an early end after an incident that also involved Graham Carroll. Rogers would fight his way back to 17th at race’s end, falling to fourth in the standings, while Carroll would have to settle for 24th as his hard-luck season continues.

That shook up the points chase in a big way through four rounds, as Job inherited the top spot and now holds an 18-point lead over Benecke. Sanchez climbed to third, just three more points off the top spot, while Rogers slid to fourth. Rookie Dayne Warren completes the top five after another top-10 performance, finishing ninth at Silverstone.

“I’m quite happy with that—it was quite a different approach to previous rounds,” Job explained. “We went for it in qualifying, and then tried to make up places in the race, and it went pretty well. Obviously it’s not as good as a win, but I was happy with the pace, and I think that there was something to learn from the second race. It was a good, fun two races, and I really enjoyed it.”

Full results from the Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup feature at Silverstone Circuit were as follows:

Fin.

St.

No.

Driver

Laps

Interval

Led

Best

Pts.
1 2 47 Alejandro Sánchez 15 15 2:02.975 72
2 3 11 Maximilian Benecke 15 -0.347 0 2:03.005 69
3 5 22 Sebastian Job 15 -0.743 0 2:02.749 64
4 1 2 Jeremy Bouteloup 15 -2.878 0 2:03.089 62
5 4 27 Patrik Holzmann 15 -3.55 0 2:03.276 52
6 9 7 Jeff Giassi 15 -4.126 0 2:03.011 43
7 11 98 Kevin Ellis Jr 15 -4.677 0 2:03.006 38
8 10 33 Ricardo Castro Ledo 15 -4.992 0 2:02.910 37
9 8 57 Dayne Warren 15 -5.719 0 2:02.937 39
10 14 31 David Williams 15 -10.015 0 2:03.299 29
11 13 43 Brian Lockwood 15 -10.771 0 2:03.643 28
12 18 3 Sindre Setsaas 15 -11.211 0 2:03.428 21
13 12 110 Christopher Dambietz 15 -11.635 0 2:03.528 25
14 15 16 Mack Bakkum 15 -13.895 0 2:03.263 20
15 16 49 Jamie Fluke 15 -14.123 0 2:03.577 17
16 17 83 Bobby Zalenski 15 -14.473 0 2:03.309 14
17 7 92 Joshua K Rogers 15 -14.778 0 2:02.831 33
18 25 18 Antoine Higelin 15 -15.309 0 2:03.405 8
19 27 24 Mitchell deJong 15 -15.517 0 2:03.526 7
20 19 29 Carl E Jansson 15 -20.109 0 2:03.847 8
21 29 211 Thibault Cazaubon 15 -20.838 0 2:03.777 5
22 26 28 Alexander Thiebe 15 -21.092 0 2:03.693 4
23 32 5 Martin Krönke 15 -21.15 0 2:03.746 3
24 6 21 Graham Carroll 15 -21.329 0 2:03.647 23
25 35 23 Aleksi Uusi-Jaakkola 15 -22.936 0 2:03.590 1
26 30 107 Tuomas Tähtelä 15 -29.752 0 2:03.980 0
27 33 36 Joshua W Anderson 15 -32.288 0 2:04.062 0
28 20 12 Marcus Jensen 15 -33.911 0 2:03.680 1
29 34 71 Jonas Wallmeier 15 -35.473 0 2:04.361 0
30 21 10 Jack Sedgwick 15 -35.822 0 2:04.143 0
31 36 4 Marin S Colak 15 -47.116 0 2:04.347 0
32 23 94 Jarrad Filsell 14 -1 L 0 2:03.431 0
33 31 14 Marc Perez 6 -9 L 0 2:03.973 0
34 22 58 Tommy Østgaard 4 -11 L 0 0
35 24 90 Yohann Harth 3 -12 L 0 0
36 28 42 Matti Kaidesoja 1 -14 L 0 0

 

The Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup season continues on August 1 at Road Atlanta, the only American circuit on this year’s calendar. As always, the race can be seen live at 10AM ET on the iRacing eSports Network on Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube. For more information on iRacing and for special offers, visit www.iracing.com.

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