Zac Campbell Scores First Career Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup Victory at Interlagos

Images via Justin Melillo

American racer Zac Campbell became the third different feature winner in three events to kick off the 2022 Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup season on Saturday, holding off former teammate and defending track winner Kevin Ellis Jr. in a charge to the finish at Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace, better known as Interlagos. After an intense battle for the top spot in the closing stages of the feature, Campbell followed Ellis past Dayne Warren with just a handful of laps to go before finally making his move for the win on the final lap.

Interlagos was chosen to host the third round of the 2022 season after defeating three other tracks in a fan vote that ran through the opening two rounds of the season. Host of last year’s opener, the Brazilian track is popular the world over for its many elevation changes and mix of lengthy straightaways and tight corners, each of which can push drivers to their limit.

Red Bull Racing Esports’ Sebastian Job, the 2020 series champion, was the top qualifier, and led a train of a handful of drivers throughout the sprint race. While Apex Racing Team’s Jamie Fluke finished just .062 seconds back in second, and the entire top five was separated by under a second, Job led all 10 laps of the sprint race, scoring maximum points but dropping to eighth on the grid with the invert for the feature.

Barcelona sprint winner and incoming points leader Diogo Pinto of Team Redline would take over the pole for the 20 lap main event, leading the first five laps before Ellis finally pushed his Apex Racing Team entry ahead. Coanda Simsport’s Dayne Warren would get around Ellis on lap 13 and lead four laps of his own before Ellis, Campbell, and Pinto would get back around him; Warren would later need to pit and ended up an unrepresentative 19th place in the final results. But Campbell, once Ellis’ Apex teammate and now Warren’s teammate at Coanda, would stalk the lead in the closing laps before making a calculated move for the win, leading just one lap all day long—the most important one.

Pinto would maintain a four-point lead on Jeremy Bouteloup, who finished sixth in the feature, while Hockenheim winner Ayhancan Guven sits third thanks to a top-five result of his own. The top five in the standings head into back-to-back weekends at Silverstone and Red Bull Ring later this month split by just 20 points.

Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup feature results from Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace were as follows:

Fin.

St.

No.

Driver

Laps

Interval

Led

Best

Pts.

1515Zac Campbell2011:34.00072
2298Kevin Ellis Jr20-0.081101:34.18359
3144Diogo C. Pinto20-0.24651:34.15053
464Salva Talens20-0.63901:34.16863
5353Ayhancan Guven20-1.46101:34.02449
6977Jeremy Bouteloup20-3.80701:33.90843
7822Sebastian Job20-4.32601:34.07863
8749Jamie Fluke20-4.74301:33.98856
91137Cooper Webster20-5.20701:34.05234
101550Peter Berryman20-6.46601:33.85128
112590Yohann Harth20-7.30701:34.10120
121669Moreno Sirica20-7.52501:34.20923
131731David Williams20-9.50301:34.18820
143270Gianni Vecchio20-10.42601:34.81714
151093Charlie Collins20-10.79601:33.91423
162197Tuomas Tähtelä20-10.86201:34.59610
173179Oskar Biksrud20-10.87801:34.6399
181883Bobby Zalenski20-11.50501:34.53511
19457Dayne Warren20-13.82441:33.98325
202711Maximilian Benecke20-14.06401:34.2476
212810Jack Sedgwick20-14.10001:34.9995
223495Kamil Grabowski20-15.21201:35.3594
232951Josh Thompson20-15.99101:34.4663
243543Brian Lockwood20-16.12401:34.7332
252217Matti Sipilä20-17.67501:34.0951
263316Alexander Wolters20-19.70801:34.7650
273078Alessandro Bico20-26.03101:34.8540
282321Graham Carroll20-40.70601:34.2600
29127Jeff Giassi20-43.21301:34.1189
301413Dino Lombardi20-45.39301:34.1527
312081Quentiin Vialatte20-45.82401:34.2811
321940Julien Soenen20-50.80101:34.1412
331347Alejandro Sánchez10-10 L01:34.0808
342428Sam Kuitert10-10 L01:34.5430
352612Jordan Caruso5-15 L01:35.0150

 

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

  1. Diogo Pinto, 155
  2. Jeremy Bouteloup, 151
  3. Ayhancan Guven, 148
  4. Zac Campbell, 138
  5. Jamie Fluke, 135
  6. Kevin Ellis Jr., 130
  7. Cooper Webster, 120
  8. Sebastian Job, 101
  9. Maximilian Benecke, 78
  10. Dayne Warren, 78

The 2022 Porsche TAG Heuer Esports Supercup season continues on March 19 at Silverstone Circuit, where Job led seven laps on the way to his second of three feature victories last year. As always, the action kicks off at 12:30PM ET with All-Star competition, before the Supercup goes green at 2PM ET, and all the action streams live at twitch.tv/Porsche. For more information on iRacing and for special offers, visit www.iracing.com.