Pressiteade
Caio, whowas making his debut in the Virtual Grand Prix series surrounded by seasoned gamingveterans, immediately got to grips with the 4.3km circuit in Montreal andturned in an impressive qualifying performance to claim fifth on the grid.
The18-year-old Brazilian followed up his strong one-lap pace with a clean start tothe race and opted for a two-stop strategy. Caio ran into some trouble duringhis second stint when lapping backmarkers, but quickly moved on from this minorsetback and climbed to fourth place by the chequered flag.
Zhouracing in his third Virtual Grand Prix - having previously secured a win at theinaugural race in Bahrain and a podium in his home race in China – foundhimself slightly hampered by an early technical glitch at the start of therace, which demoted the Chinese driver a few places from his original starting positionof sixth.
Zhou usedall his experience in virtual racing to overcome these issues, and unlike manyof his competitors opted for a one-stop strategy in the race switching to theharder compound tyres. He completed 26-laps in total on these tyres and wasable to bring the car home in sixth position.
TheVirtual Grand Prix series has seen Renault DP World F1 Team field multipledriver line-ups across the eight-race calendar and rack up three podiums andone win. These have included race driver Esteban Ocon, five of the six 2020 Academydrivers, former Formula E driver Nico Prost, as well as Manchester City starAymeric Laporte, golfing legend Ian Poulter, and former World Rally ChampionPetter Solberg.
In theearlier Exhibition race, Fabrizio Donoso secured tenth place and NicolasLonguet eighteenth on a soaking wet Montreal circuit, as the professionalscontinued their preparations for the new season.
Caio Collet:“It was a good result especially for my firstVirtual Grand Prix! I thought my qualifying could have been a little betteractually, but in the race I got a clean start and had a strong first stintwhere I was fighting with the guys ahead, which was fun. On my second stint onthe medium tyres I hit a backmarker and spun from that, so my fight for thepodium was over, but I was able to recover well and finish in fourth. It wasfun to race from Enstone and have Zhou beside me for the race.”
Guanyu Zhou: “It was a tough race for me. There was a lot ofpotential from qualifying and I felt I could have been nearer the top. Thenduring the first few laps of the race, I had a technical issue with the game, soI lost some ground. After that it was smooth, and I opted for the one-stopstrategy, which meant I had to battle some heavy tyre wear towards the end andsixth place wasn’t too bad. I would like to thank Renault DP World F1 Team forthe opportunity to enter three races in total over the series, I had some goodraces, especially looking back to Bahrain and China and it was really fun.”
