S62 ELITE OFZ write up
written by Cameron P
For this season of Official Formula Zero, Peter S was targeting an incredible 20th consecutive elite title! Due to that record, his wins had become the usual, even if the quality of the victories had not dropped at all. Just as the question is asked before every season; Could anyone topple the most dominant champion of FZ?
It was certainly an unconventional start, with Peter only managing 3rd position by committing to the 1 stop, while Joshua and Hannu battled for the lead, but it was the American who took the spoils, but it was a great day for Hannu with his first podium! Hurmet scored well with 4th and 6th, while Tommy took a solid 7th to kick start his season! But Peter was back on top in Belgium, taking a dominant 1-2 ahead of Oliver and Joshua, all on the softs while the supersofts struggled on a track where it had previously been the winning strategy. The result was enough to put Peter into the lead of the championship, but there were still plenty of races to go for the challenging pack to make their mark!
Forward to the Spanish GP, and it was Peter on the top step to take his second win in a row, ahead of Nilvio and Oliver, who had made a good start to the season. Joshua was able to take 5th ahead of Hurmet, who hadn’t scored a podium yet this season! And that wouldn’t change for the Malaysian GP, where a wet battle between a 1 stop or a 2 stop on inters raged, and the 1 stop was victorious in the form of Peter, who took 1st and 3rd with the 2 stopping Oliver in the middle. It was an excellent race for Tommy and Jamie, who took 5th and 7th respectively on the 1 stop, taking full advantage of the damp to pull in a great points haul!
But after 3 consecutive wins, Peter’s streak would come to an end in a drenched Russia, where Oliver strode home to victory by 9.2 seconds! Peter would take the other podium positions, while Taurz had a fantastic race to grab 4th, beating Hurmet and Oliver’s second car! And was another different winner in Japan, as Hannu continued a great season with 1st and 6th to haul in a huge chunk of points! Peter was 2nd and 4th, while Junior had a great race to take a podium with 3rd! It wasn’t as strong from Oliver as in Russia, but he was still able to score solid points in 5th. Onto USA, and Peter pulled out an undefeatable 3 second to beat Oliver to the win, but his rival scored 2nd and 3rd, while Jamie drove a fantastic race to claim 4th place, ahead of Peter’s 2nd car!
The race in Bahrain marked the first race in the super cup for this season, and Peter made sure he would have taken a point regardless of his match up, taking a dominant 1-2 ahead of Joshua and Taurz. Nilvio was 6th ahead of Hannu as they both went 1 - 0 up in their fixtures! And in the following race in Italy, Peter took a 1-2 by 1 second, a decently large gap for the Italian GP! Junior and Taurz had another strong outing, finishing 3rd and 4th ahead of Oliver.
In France, Oliver took pole position, and was hoping to use it to prevent Peter from taking a 4th victory in a row. But the reigning champion prevailed once more, coming home just ahead of Nilvio, who filled out the podium as Oliver had to settle for 4th. The race marked the end of the first round of super cup matches, and there was one main surprise; Hurmet was out, beaten by Taurz after his great streak of results! As usual, the quarter finals were set up to be more exciting, the highlight being Joshua v Oliver!
We were getting settled into the season, and expecting Peter to win had become almost a formality (Even I’m expecting it looking through the results :joy:). But Junior would put a stop to the winning streak, pulling off an incredible 1 stop strategy to beat Peter to victory in Brazil! Peter still took an impressive haul of points in 2nd and 3rd, while Oliver took 4th just ahead of Joshua to go 1 - 0 up in the super cup! But Peter was immediately back on the top step in Monaco, turning a 1-2 on the grid into the same result at the end of the race! Nilvio was an impressive 3rd after qualifying only 8th and 9th, while Oliver finished 4th ahead of Hurmet and Joshua. The next race in Singapore was due to be the 13th race of the season, but perhaps due to the number (unlucky? :joy:) technical difficulties struck and forced the GP to be cancelled. Therefore at the end of the super cup round, Taurz and Nilvio would face each other in the semi finals, while Peter and Oliver would do the same!
In Germany, Peter would only need to score 17 points to guarantee the championship with 5 races to spare, and he did so in style, taking a dominant 1-2 ahead of Joshua and Hurmet! After his poor start to the season, Hurmet had started to claim more points as we reached the latter stage of the season, possibly setting us up for a battle for 3rd in the championship late on! Even after securing his 20th consecutive championship in style, Peter wasn’t going to let off the gas. He stormed to another 1-2 in Australia, beating both Nilvio and Hurmet, while Joshua and Oliver finished in 7th and 8th to collect some points for their respective championship campaigns. In the super cup, Peter and Nilvio had secured victory in their semi final fixtures, setting them up for another final face off!
But Peter wouldn’t be winning every race until the conclusion of the season, as Joshua pulled off an excellent 1 stop to snatch victory from the champion’s hands. However as always the Dane was still high up the table, finishing in 2nd and 3rd ahead of Hurmet. It was once again an extremely close finish, with the top 10 separated by only 4.1 seconds! It wouldn’t be so close in the following race in China, as Peter took another dominant 1-2, but this time Hurmet was on the podium to claim some valuable points, edging out Joshua for the position as they both finished ahead of Oliver! And Hurmet’s strong finish to the season was shown in it’s full effect in Hungary with a win and 3rd in the wet, as Peter finished in 2nd and 4th. It was a surprisingly normal set of results for a wet race, but Junior and Tommy managed to jump into the points to end a small drought for them. Despite not winning, the 2nd place meant that Peter had taken victory in the super cup, adding another trophy to his cabinet!
And so we travelled to Azerbaijan for the final race of the season, and it seemed only fitting that Peter would round off this incredible season with another 1-2 to reach 657 points, finishing ahead of Nilvio, Oliver and Hurmet. Despite the lack of closeness in the championship battle, it was relatively close behind, as Oliver claimed second, with Hurmet pipping Joshua to 3rd in the late races of the season!
Congratulations to Peter for such a dominant season, and on winning the super cup! The season was an extremely competitive one throughout the field, with some really fantastic races! Well done to everyone who made this season excellent, we look forward to the next one!
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