Williams Esports wins Event 2 of F1 Sim Racing World Championship

Williams Esports rookie driver Ismael Fahssi made a sensational impact on the F1 Sim Racing World Championship by claiming overall victory in the ‘Event 2’ segment, during the LAN event in Stockholm this week.

Fahssi, 17, is making his debut in the series this season, having joined the Williams academy program last summer. His testing performances earned him a place on the roster and he scored points on debut in the opening round at Bahrain back in November.

The season resumed with a triple header at the ESL studio in Sweden this week, and the young Spaniard burst out of the blocks on day one to claim back-to-back podiums in the Saudi Arabia and Austria races - the latter an incredible drive through the field from 16th on the grid after a mistake in qualifying.

Fahssi followed those podiums with fourth place at Silverstone and his fifth consecutive points finish of the season with 8th at Spa, to lie fourth in the Drivers’ Championship going into the final races of this week on Friday evening.

The F1 Sim Racing World Championship season is broken into five segments, each containing either two or three races. Each in-season Event carries its own prize pool, so Fahssi scoops $5,000 as the winner of Event 2.

He secured the Event 2 win, one point ahead of two-time F1 Sim Racing World Champion Jarno Opmeer and Ferrari’s Nicolas Longuet.

After being labeled ‘The Artist’ by the F1 commentators after his performance at Jeddah, Fahssi said: “To be honest, I’m speechless. It’s an amazing feeling to be on the podium in my second ever race. It was very tough, at some points I was nearly going to crash. On the last lap it was on the limit that I didn’t touch Lucas [Blakeley, McLaren]. So I’m super happy, but it’s a long season. I just want to perform well and show that we deserve these results. I’m sure that we will battle for big things soon, we just need to keep working hard.”

The series carries a $750,000 prize pool, with $60k paid out for the Drivers’ Championship, $640k for the Teams’ Championship and $50k for the in-season Events.

After a fractured beginning to the 2023/24 season, the F1 Sim Racing World Championship returned to a huge and hungry audience, with more than 970,000 viewers watching Fahssi’s podium-chasing exploits on Wednesday, across F1’s YouTube and Twitch channels.

The week’s racing had already surpassed 1.7 million views, with Friday’s final double header providing even more incredible edge of seat action.

Veteran driver Alvaro Carreton, 22, now in his sixth season with Williams, narrowly missed points on Wednesday with 11th place in Austria, and had to miss Thursday’s races due to illness. He was replaced by another rookie and product of Williams’ academy program, Briton Will Lewis, 18, who did an excellent job to claim 16th at Silverstone having not expected to be racing, and gained 5 places at Spa from P20 to P15 before retiring the car close to the end.

Carreton had recovered to take back his seat, alongside Fahssi, for Friday’s races at Zandvoort and COTA, where at first found himself last in Zandvoort qualifying and missing Q2 by just over a tenth but bounced straight back in the race to fight through the grid to P12 with Ismael also advancing from P10 to P9 and winning the DHL Fastest Lap Award, adding another extra point to our championship standing.

Alvaro’s focus for the whole week was to achieve the points he deserved, and at COTA, the experienced Spanish maestro took full hold of the car and stuck it P4 in quali to set his race up in an incredible position for the chance to score a great haul of points!

Unfortunately, Ismael would start P20 and finish P20 after a penalty demotion and far different strategy to others, but showed a true display of teamwork, dedicating his race to help Carreton achieve a top 10 and would successfully do this, defending against the pack by completing an almighty undercut from the back of the grid to P6. Alvaro would battle closely amongst the top 5 and at the chequered, come home with a huge P6 and 8 more points for the team.

Jeddah Qualifying - Ismael P4, Alvaro P12 Austria Qualifying - Alvaro P14, Ismael P16

Jeddah Race - Ismael P3, Alvaro P18 Austria Race - Ismael P3, Alvaro P11

Silverstone Qualifying - Ismael P5, Will P19 Spa Qualifying - Ismael P16, Will P20

Silverstone Race - Ismael P4, Will P16 Spa Race - Ismael P8, Will DNF (was P15, gained +5 places)

Zandvoort Qualifying - Ismael P10, Alvaro P20 Austin Qualifying - Alvaro P4, Ismael P20

Zandvoort Race - Ismael P9, Alvaro P12 Austin Race - Alvaro P6, Ismael P20

P1, 27 points - Ismael Fahssi, Williams P2, 26 points - Jarno Opmeer, Mercedes P3, 26 points - Nicholas Longuet, Ferrari

After seve of the season’s 12 races done, Williams now look ahead to the finale event in a few weeks time between 7th - 9th May where they’ll be motivated to push even further up the Championship standings and continue the success.

They now lie P6 in the teams’ standings with Ismael Fahssi P6, Alvaro Carreton P16 and Will Lewis P26 out of 30 in the drivers’.