Octane Esports Racing

A weekend of heartbreak and triumph

Another weekend here at Octane and we had 2 races lined up, the prologue race at RMP which was a 4 hours endurance event around daytona and ARC’s world touring car championship where we raced at Watkins Glen. Both of the races had their ups and downs so we will get over them in this article.

Race Meeting Portugal

Race Meeting Portugal started out decent, car 357 driven by Arthur Bellen managed a P3 in qualifying and Mathew Webb managed to grab P6 in car 45. Until this point we thought we only had 2 cars to race with.

Now come race day our brand ambassador Fraser Hart asked if we had a seat available and we had space in our 356 GT3 car so he was able to team up with our new driver Dovydas Dainauskas but they had to start at the back. The race start went alright, Arthur lost a few positions and Mathew gained some, Fraser had a mega start and was able to get the jump on quite some GT3 cars to move up positions. The 357 car has quite some unfortunate errors, some were driver errors, some were out of Arthur’s control. Mathew in the 45 had some very nice moves and managed to get up to P3. In the GT3 Fraser managed to snatch a P5 before the 2 hour mark. The rest of the stints were managing tires and holding on for position until the driver swaps had to come through. This race they were all successful unlike PHRL the week prior.

Lorenzo took over in the 357 and it was clear pace was better for the last few hours, Sebastien had the honor of fighting for P3 for the rest of the race and managed very well against the fierce competition. Dovyas was in the GT3 and did amazingly for his first race with us. Sebastien stayed very clean on track limits but Dovyas sadly had to serve a drive through. The heartbreak however happened to the 357 car, Lorenzo cut 1 corner too many and usually you have to serve a drive through but somehow we got a stop go costing us P6 in the race.

After these 4 hours car 45 managed P3, car 357 ended up in P7 and car 356 went from last overall to P5 in class, a masterclass by our ambassador paired with our rookie! We are looking forward to the 8 hour race on the 22nd of march where points are up for grabs.

ARC:Watkin Glens

Now a triumphant race at ARC’s world touring car championship. After a late change from Indianapolis to Watkins Glen the team prepared a setup a bit later than usual but everyone was on the same boat.

Qualifying was very good, Mathew Webb got himself P4 with Arthur 2 spots behind in P6. Andronikos managed a personal best of P10? The formation lap went well until the server crashed so we restarted from the pitlane with a single file restart.

Green flag waved and we pushed on, except for Andronikos who got pushed off in T1. Arthur managed to get a jump on P5 but lost the position later but kept on pushing until he pushed the car a bit too far, turning the audi into a lawnmower so he lost a few seconds on the cars ahead. Mathew pushed well ahead and snatched up P2 after a car ahead DNF’d. Andronikos ran out of fuel so had to drop down a bit to be allowed to continue. Arthur picked up pace and passed P4 thus being close to tasting the champagne. Pit’s were open so Arthur went in after 30 minutes of driving for new tires. He came out back in P4 after a few laps when everyone else pitted, Mathew managed to stay in p2 for the rest of the race, sadly not able to catch P1. Arthur lost control of his car and got overtaken by the car behind losing a position but he was able to keep on going. P3 under-fueled his cars so Arthur got the motivation to get up to the podium and he pushed on overtaking P3 to grab that position for himself with 2 laps to go. Those 2 last laps were intense but Arthur got the academy car up onto the podium for a 2-3 Octane podium. Andronikos finished 17th.

Back to back podium weekends for Arthur and Mathew so that is really good for the team. We will be back in Sonoma next week and try to taste the champagne again around the windy track. We hope to see you guys then!!!