Season 6 of World eX Bizz came to an end with a thrilling doubleheader, combining the first ever oval races of the sim racing series with the Super Final on the world’s longest and most challenging race track, the Nürburgring-Nordschleife.
It was a perfect occasion to showcase an interesting project currently worked on at the Nürburgring. Janina Flammann and Stefan Schiffer were guests of the latest Bizz Talk, explaining how an AI system developed by Fujitsu will improve the safety of the famous Nordschleife using Artificial Intelligence.
Before the Championship-deciding Super Final, the World eX competitors headed to the U.S. for two highspeed oval races at Indidnapolis Motor Speedway.
The entire grid was covered by just 142 thousands of a second in qualifying. Luca Munro secured his first pole position in the series with Hamish Easener completing an all British front row.
Both races delivered exciting pack racing and super-tight finishes.
Race 1 did not start well for the AM-class leading bspowersports team when all its three cars had contacts, dropping to the back of the field.
Tactics played an important role in the 20-lap race including tyre saving and securing the best position for the decisive final lap.
The group of leading cars was reduced shortly bedore the end when a slight contact with Julius Martin sent the eX ZERO of Chris Overend into the wall. The incident also involved Thomas Voigt who had to slow down and lost the contact to the leaders.
The incident handed the AM class win to rookie Lukas Wippermann on his first ever start in the series.
Leading the pack into the final lap proved to be a bad decision for Devin Braune as Nicolas Hillebrand and Hamish Easener were able to pass the Championship leader in a crazy photo finish.
Overend and Voigt had bad luck also in Race 2, both crashing out while fighting for the lead. Overend also collected the eX ZERO of Hamish Easener who had no chance to avoid the incident.
In the end it was almost copy-paste of Race 1 as Nicolas Hillebrand was again able to beat Devin Braune right on the finish line while former Bizz Champion Julius Martin secured a Top 3 spot in the overall standings of the series with a third-place finish.
Björn Skottke crossed the line in fourth, securing another class win and finishing the regular season as the best placed AM class driver.
But there was one more challenge waiting for the champion-elects – the Nürburgring-Nordschleife.
With the starting grid in the order of the championship positions of the regular season, all Devin Braune and Björn Skottke had to do was keeping their respective PRO and AM class competitors behind in the final two-lap shoot-out.
It worked perfectly for Devin Braune who showed a blistering pace on the Nordschleife, securing a commanding lights-to-flag victory ahead of Steffen Walter, Lucas Munro and Nicolas Hillebrand. Braune had been the outstanding driver of the regular season, winning 17 of the 20 races.
But there was huge drama in the AM class.
bspowersports’ Björn Skottke spun right after the start following a tap from Markus Martin. Just moments later, Thomas Voigt could not avoid crashing into Hamish Easener, badly damaging his eX ZERO and spinning again at “Flugplatz”. Bodo Kräling spun at „Wehrseifen“, handing P1 in the AM class to Frank Enger.
Kräling immediately started to charge back while Voigt and Skottke fiercely battled for P3. Skottke passed his good old fellow slotcar rival out of the slipstream at Döttinger Höhe but a small mistake from “Skottie” on the Grand Prix circuit allowed Voigt to regain P3.
This was supposed to be a title-deciding move as bspowersports teammates Bodo Kräling and Frank Enger came together in a spectacular way in the last corner of the race.
Voigt had reduced the gap just enough on lap two to pass both of the crashed cars, securing an unexpected AM class title. Enger (6 wins), Voigt (5) and Skottke (4) had been the most successful AM drivers of the regular Bizz season.
