Because the 2023 Race of Champions looms, Tuesday noticed a random draw to set the brackets for each the Nations Cup on Saturday and the person match the following day. The draw was performed by Pite Havsbad Group executives Tobias Lindfors and Kristoffer Lundström.
Like the primary version in Sweden in 2022, the group stage format was dropped because the climate can simply manipulate a snow/ice course, which might lead to scoring confusion.
The primary spherical (a preliminary) and the Spherical of 16 might be decided through two heats, with the winner being whomever wins each or with the higher sooner time within the occasion of a tie. The Nations Cup could have 4 heats for stated rounds to account for there being twice as many drivers.
Group Nordic’s Petter and Oliver Solberg will start their Nations Cup defence towards Team Sweden‘s Johan Kristoffersson and Mattias Ekström. Sébastien Loeb, winner of the 2022 ROC individual tourney, takes on Thierry Neuville in his first race in that bracket.
Lucas Blakeley, Jarno Opmeer, Martin Palm, and Michael Romanidis will battle on Friday to earn the 2 slots on Team eROC, who will then open the Nations Cup towards Finland’s Valtteri Bottas and Mika Häkkinen. Opmeer and Blakeley comprised the sim racer workforce in 2022.
“I notice there’s not an ‘simple bracket’ at this occasion.. however wow,” remarked Team USA‘s Travis Pastrana. “I’ve by no means beat [Ekström] (arguably one of the best throughout driver on the earth) at something in my life.. and if I do, I’ll transfer up towards both my USA teammate [Tanner Foust] or 5 time world rallycross champion [Kristoffersson] .. oh effectively, needed to race these guys sooner or later if we anticipated to win.. time to get one of many many {dollars} again that I’ve misplaced to Mattias!”
2023 Race of Champions drivers
Group | Driver #1 | Driver #2 |
All-Stars | Felipe Drugovich | Thierry Neuville |
eROC | TBD | TBD |
Finland | Valtteri Bottas | Mika Häkkinen |
France | Sébastien Loeb | Adrien Tambay |
Germany | Mick Schumacher | Sebastian Vettel |
Nice Britain | Jamie Chadwick | David Coulthard |
Nordic | Tom Kristensen | Felix Rosenqvist |
Norway | Oliver Solberg | Petter Solberg |
Sweden | Mattias Ekström | Johan Kristoffersson |
USA | Tanner Foust | Travis Pastrana |