Rogers Keeps Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup Title Hopes Alive With Le Mans Win

Joshua Rogers’ chances at a second straight Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup championship may be somewhat slim, but the Australian kept them alive on Saturday with his third victory of the season at Circuit de la Sarthe. The win allowed him to gain precious points on Sebastian Job going into next month’s finale from Monza, ensuring that the championship battle will go to the very end.

“At the end of the day, it is a big gap, but we did the most that we could to try and maximize as best as we could,” Rogers said. “It’s an awesome result. Overall, I’m excited—I think the main goal this weekend was to keep the championship alive, and we have one more chance to turn something around. We’re going to push as hard as we can to try and close it up.”

The high-speed Le Mans circuit featured plenty of slipstreaming, with lead cars facing tons of pressure from their opponents throughout the event. Job and Rogers were attracted to one another like magnets throughout the day, clawing their way up from sixth and eighth on the sprint race grid after the eight-car qualifying inversion to finish fourth and second, respectively. The real intrigue came as the duo dealt with Rogers’ VRS Coanda Simsport teammate Tommy Ostgaard; Job had a much harder time getting past, and the duo made accidental contact in the final corner that dropped Ostgaard to 20th in the sprint race results.

“I was trying to make (Ostgaard) take a wider line into the final corner, but I kind of overshot a little bit, and we made contact,” Job apologized after the race. “So I’m very sorry for that—it ruined his two races, I think. But in reference to everything else, I’m pretty happy with that. I didn’t manage to wrap it up, but I was never going to do anything stupid today. I just wanted a couple of solid results to make it easier at Monza.”

Another Coanda car would start first in the feature thanks to Mitchell deJong’s sprint win, but Rogers completed his climb up after the qualifying inversion to finally see daylight for the first time and never looked back. He led all eight laps of the main event, with Job and deJong completing the podium behind him. The trio managed to break away from the first, but many of the top drivers stayed in a closely matched pack—in fact, fifth and 17th place were separated by just six seconds at the checkered flag.

In the Porsche Esports Sprint Challenge race earlier in the day, it was Antti Ahola who managed to get around Peter Berryman on the last of five laps to take his first super session win of the season. Berryman, Cooper Webster, and Moreno Sirica all crossed the line within a second of Ahola in the feature race for the Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport division.

Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup results from Le Mans were as follows:

Fin.

St.

No.

Driver

Laps

Interval

Led

Best

Pts.

1292Joshua K Rogers883:59.91682
2422Sebastian Job8-0.27203:59.81369
3124Mitchell deJong8-1.47603:59.78565
4957Dayne Warren8-6.49704:00.52357
5321Graham Carroll8-9.54104:00.03854
6698Kevin Ellis Jr8-9.92604:00.30346
7833Ricardo Castro Ledo8-10.03004:00.62941
815107Tuomas Tähtelä8-12.31004:00.02934
91028Alexander Thiebe8-12.61304:00.49835
101847Alejandro Sánchez8-12.79504:00.14625
11143Sindre Setsaas8-13.14104:00.43427
121223Aleksi Uusi-Jaakkola8-13.74604:00.84827
13165Martin Krönke8-14.02604:00.50721
14242Jeremy Bouteloup8-14.40804:00.31814
152058Tommy Østgaard8-14.69804:00.51917
16790Yohann Harth8-15.15904:00.76124
17516Mack Bakkum8-15.89704:00.01525
182836Joshua W Anderson8-20.95104:00.3968
192783Bobby Zalenski8-24.41904:01.1247
2011110Christopher Dambietz8-24.82904:00.48016
211731David Williams8-25.33404:00.3569
222110Jack Sedgwick8-25.72404:01.1194
233049Jamie Fluke8-26.02103:59.9063
242677Valtteri Alander8-26.28104:00.1072
251927Patrik Holzmann8-32.40004:00.8073
26294Marin S Colak8-41.00604:01.9730
272294Jarrad Filsell8-46.63804:04.4380
282518Antoine Higelin5-3 L04:01.3520
291329Carl E Jansson4-4 L04:00.4938
30237Jeff Giassi3-5 L04:00.1220
313143Brian Lockwood0-8 L00

 

Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup points after nine rounds are as follows:

  1. Sebastian Job, 590
  2. Joshua Rogers, 519
  3. Alejandro Sanchez, 432
  4. Kevin Ellis Jr., 361
  5. Maximilian Benecke, 351
  6. Dayne Warren, 323
  7. Tommy Ostgaard, 260
  8. Mack Bakkum, 249
  9. Jeff Giassi, 239
  10. Graham Carroll, 237

The Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup season reaches its conclusion on Saturday, October 10 at Autodromo Nazionale Monza. As always, the race will stream live at 10AM ET on the iRacing Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube pages. For more information on iRacing and for special offers, visit www.iracing.com.