The Dutchwoman won the women-only W Series Esports League with one round still to go.
Photo credit: W Series
Beitske Visser is the winner of the inaugural W Series Esports League 2020 held in iRacing. Even though there is still one round before the end of the season, the Dutchwoman can’t be caught by her pursuers. Visser secured her title with a dominant performance at the Nürburgring Nordschleife on August 6.
Before the penultimate round, Visser had a comfortable advantage of 57 points over Marta Garcia, the only contender still able to catch her. With a maximum of 63 points per round, Visser had to score six more points than the Spaniard to grab the championship.
Visser owns the Green Hell
Each round of the W Series features three races. Visser secured pole position for race one, being two seconds faster than Garcia in qualifying. The Dutchwoman had a great start to the race and the rest of the field was unable to stay in her slipstream. She dominated the two-lap race and finished 4.796 seconds in front of Garcia.
In the second reverse-grid race, both Visser and Garcia made an incredible run through the field. While Visser was able to get to the podium and finish third, her pursuer once again finished one place behind her.
This meant that Visser had built up a 66 point lead before the last race at the Green Hell. Garcia had to finish in front of the series leader to keep her championship hopes alive.
Garcia laid the foundation for her fight by ending Visser’s run of seven straight pole positions. But she could not defend the lead for long as Beitske passed her just one minute into the race. By the end of lap one of three, she already had an advantage of more than two seconds. Garcia tried everything to come back and pass the leader, but it was not enough.
Beitske Visser won the race and was crowned the first W Series Esports Series Champion.
“I want to win it all”
In our Nitro Nights show, the Series champion spoke about the challenge of switching from real to esports racing. She felt that she had to get used to not feeling the car at first, which initially ended up in a lot of spins. But with practice, she gradually became faster and faster, saying: “You start to get up there quite quickly.”
She took the virtual series very seriously from the beginning, and said in the post-race interview: “Racing drivers want to win everything. No matter what I do, I want to win it all.”
While Visser and Garcia are locked in first and second places in the championship, the fight for the last place on the podium is still on. Irina Sidorkova currently holds third position, but Nerea Marti, Tasmin Pepper and Caitlin Wood are close behind. The stage is set for a gripping final.
With @beitskevisser securing the #WSeriesEsportsLeague title, we now look to the rest of the leaderboard for the final round of the season. Anything could happen at Silverstone! pic.twitter.com/vs8iACvtgT
— W Series (@WSeriesRacing) August 6, 2020
The last round of the women-only racing series will take place at Silverstone on Thursday, August 13.
