Sebastian Vettel won the Nations Cup on his own in 2017 but isn’t competing this year, so Team Germany had to go with a pair of rookies in the form of DTM champ Rene Rast and WEC champ Timo Bernhard.
Despite the inexperience, the pair of them managed to cruise through to the final reasonably comfortably, where they faced off against Team Latin America – who only had only just squeezed into the semi-finals after some confusion over the times.
Rast beat Montoya in the first round before Castroneves took it to a tie-break by putting one over on Bernhard. In the winner-takes-all showdown, however, Castroneves tried a bit too hard and Rast was able to take the victory, the eighth for Team Germany in the Nations Cup.
Earlier in the competition the sim racers performed incredibly well, with World’s Fastest Gamer winner and McLaren simulator driver Rudy van Buren taking two wins in the first round, one of which was over Lando Norris. Not bad at all!
The combination of cold temperatures and a dusty surface made conditions tricky but despite that the event was rather free of incident, although Joel Eriksson did suffer a bit of a shunt.
Joel Eriksson, meet wall. Wall, meet Joel Eriksson. 🙈 #ROCRiyadh pic.twitter.com/FAeP969pJ6
— #ROCRiyadh (@RaceOfChampions) February 2, 2018
Still, not as bad as Pascal Wehrlein’s crash from last year!
The Race of Champions isn’t over yet – tomorrow comes the individual competition, which last year was won by Juan Pablo Montoya. Can he do it again?
