After the tightly fought battles of Saturday’s Manufacturer Series, the World Series Showdown in the 2021 FIA Certified Gran Turismo Online Championship moves on to the individual Nations Cup event.
As with the Manufacturer Series, the Showdown is a crucial point in the Nations Cup — probably more so. The prize for winning is 10 World Series points, which is almost as much as you’d get for a perfect record in the other four World Series rounds.
Importantly though, it acts as a qualification event for the World Series 3 and 4 rounds later in the year — miss out here and you miss out on those events too — and the World Final, along with Online Season Two.
The Showdown unites the 14 drivers who’ve raced in the first two World Series events with the 16 best online qualifiers from Season One. This means we’ll get to see some familiar names, some with points already to their name, and some new drivers too — including some who’ve never taken part in any live finals event.
As you’ll see from our driver rankings, there’s already an established pecking order. That’s headed by veteran Gran Turismo driver Patrik Blazsan, who’s taken five points from a possible six so far — and was barely four-hundredths of a second from making it six from six at Monza.
Just behind Blazsan is Valerio Gallo, the winner at Monza and also the Olympic champion. He’s ahead of Baptiste Beauvois, who was on for the Olympic title himself but ended up third after a collision removed him from contention.
Leading the online qualifiers is newcomer Nikita Moysov. He represented the Czech Republic in the Olympics, and his consistent form in that event sees him ranked fifth overall, alongside being the top qualifier from EMEA.
There’s several well-known names among the online qualifiers, including Randall Haywood, Team Subaru world champion Daniel Solis, Tatsuya Sugawara, and Jonathan Wong, but perhaps the most familiar of all is Igor Fraga.
The first Nations Cup champion, and 2019 Manufacturer Series champion with Toyota, Fraga has qualified top of the South America group, and put in an excellent performance in his one and only Olympic race before a disconnection removed him from the competition. He’s back with a reinforced connection — apparently with built-in redundancy — and after a dominant race in the Toyota Supra yesterday shouldn’t be counted out.
In order to determine a winner, the 30 drivers will split into two 15-man semi-final groups, with the top eight from each heading into the final. Semi-final qualifying has already taken place, and the men on pole position are Jose Serrano and Valerio Gallo respectively.
Nations Cup will be broadcast on August 22, with the stream starting at 1400 UTC, and you can catch it in full below:
Race Schedule
- Semi-Final A: Tokyo Expressway South Inner Loop, 10 laps – Alpine VGT Race Mode – Racing Medium/Soft
- Semi-Final B: Autodromo de Interlagos, 13 laps – Renault Sport R.S.01 GT3 – Racing Medium/Soft
- Final: Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, 17 laps – Ford Mark IV Race Car – Racing Medium/Soft
Non-English Streams
- French language stream
- German language stream
- Italian language stream
- Japanese language stream
- Portuguese language stream
- Spanish language stream
Competitors
See more articles on 2021 FIA GT Championship.
