In typical Red Bull Ring fashion, spectators were treated to 52 laps of NASCAR-style drafting, plenty of door-bumping, and race-deciding chaos as the night drew to a close.

With the championship race well and truly on, Drivers looked to solidify their status as genuine contenders with the icebreaker of Round 1 now in the rear view mirror.

Here’s what went down in Austria on Wednesday night!

Deith returns to spotlight in Qualifying

Evolution Racing Team’s Beau Albert led the train on the first run of laps, a role no driver wants to take when setting a banker at this venue. He would be tailed by Eclipse SimSports’ Damon Woods and Vermillion eSports’ Zach Rattray-White. The workload was high enough already for Albert, who was adjusting to a foreign rig with very little practice.

Championship leader Jarrad Filsell made his mark early for LOBS eSports, reminding the field once again of his calibre. He posted a 1:30.728 as his banker, enough to hold the top spot over Eclipse’s Kody Deith by just 0.071s.

As the session progressed, cloud cover began to roll over the Styrian hills to evolve track conditions ever so slightly. Major improvements trickled in with some drivers completing their first valid laps of the night.

Deith was able to wheel his Eclipse Mustang to the top of the timing board with a 1:30.663, while his teammate Woods etched himself into the top 5 on the same run of laps. Dylan Rudd and Brady Meyers also found their way into the top 10 by the halfway point of the session.

In the closing stages of qualifying, just one second covered 44 cars; If you were in 15th, three tenths of improvement would have you starting on the front row. James Scott was painstakingly close to Deith’s top time, getting the gap down to just 0.007s. That is just 42cm of difference – or about a sheet of A3 paper – separating the front row at the line.

With Deith returning to the top spot for the first time since his clean sweep in the Qualifying Series, the rest of the top 10 would flow as James Scott, Damon Woods, Jarrad Filsell, Zach Rattray-White, Ric Kuznetsov, Dylan Birse, Andrew Gilliam, Dylan Rudd and Robbie Gibbs.

Gloves-off race start boils over

Turn 1 at the Red Bull Ring is normally a hub for cars to be on their lid by the exit. To the surprise of many, things actually looked civilised for the 45-car field as they roared up the hill for the first time of the afternoon.

Establishing ground early was on the mind of Jarrad Filsell as he started his LOBS Camaro from fourth on the grid. He was down alongside Chiefs ESC’s James Scott by Turn 3, eventually getting past on the brakes at Turn 4.

Chaos erupted just behind, with 9INE5IVE’s Ric Kuznetsov tagging Damon Woods to send him tumbling down the running order. While a number of drivers had to take avoiding action, miraculously, no other cars were involved.

ERT’s Ethan Grigg-Gault stuck the nose of his Mustang alongside Dylan Rudd through Turn 9, forcing Rudd to drift down the hill before straightening out on the exit. Making it a two-for-one move, Grigg-Gault also snuck past Kuznetsov at the same corner … but Kuznetsov would soon return the favor.

Going into Turn 1 on the following lap, Kuznetsov tagged Grigg-Gault on the rear quarter, causing the ERT Mustang to powerslide all the way out to the painted asphalt on the exit. Two more ERT cars would find themselves in trouble there, with Hayden Veld and Lachlan Caple making contact to spin themselves across either side of the track on the exit.

Turn 1 was not done just yet, with one of the most significant incidents of the afternoon occurring a lap later. While it began with a collision between Christopher Ireland and Glen Postlethwaite, multiple bystanders found themselves tangled in the incident, including Wayne Bourke and Kobi Williams who both obtained significant damage.

Heated scrap for the lead

On the pre-race grid walk, Kody Deith said he didn’t want to be leading early with fuel save being such an important factor. The Eclipse driver’s motives seemed to have shifted when Jarrad Filsell began to fill his mirrors on lap 5, putting on a fight that could have left his Mustang with wheel damage.

When they met at Turn 4, the move looked to be done for Filsell on the drive out of the corner. But at the downhill of Turn 6, Deith launched to the inside to retake the lead. Filsell rode along the bumper of Deith’s Mustang until they were side-by-side once again at Turn 3 on the following lap.

At the same place he got past a lap prior, Filsell took the lead for real. When Deith attempted to turn into the corner, he made heavy enough contact with Filsell’s door to raise his own car into the air for a brief moment. In doing so, Deith allowed James Scott to slip by into 2nd.

Pit lane opens for business

By the time the first scheduled stops of the night began, the lead pack had thinned out to just five cars. At the end of lap 22, Zach Rattray-White would peel off as the first in that battle pack to pit. A lap later, the rest of the leaders followed suit. Robbie Gibbs stayed out an extra lap to take the lead.

While Jarrad Filsell would emerge from the lane with a comfortable margin over James Scott, a crucial pinching of the front on the run into Turn 3 saw the LOBS Camaro go straight on. With that, Scott was the new effective race leader on lap 25.

The order was hard to read at the halfway point of the race, with a number of different strategies tumbling the order. What was known, however, was that Scott and Filsell had significantly shorter stops than the cars around them beforehand.

Leaders jump the gun on Safety Car call

When Luke Rosella’s LOBS Mustang coughed to a halt with 19 laps to go, strategy minds began to tick. Before anything was called, Scott and Filsell peeled into the lane in anticipation of the field being drawn together under Safety Car conditions.

However, Rosella was able to peel off into an escape road far enough away from the racing surface to successfully request a tow. This race would continue under green flag running.

A number of the runners in high effective positions followed the leaders into the lane on the following lap, throwing a massive spanner in the works of track position. Dylan Birse emerged from the lane alongside Filsell, who was on warmer tyres. They remained side-by-side until the exit of Turn 4, where side-on contact unsettled the championship leader.

Filsell was now under threat from Kody Deith, who launched it from multiple car lengths behind into Turn 3. They traded paint all the way across the top of the hill before Filsell was forced to concede the position.

Scene is set with 10 to go

With everything straightened out, the run home was set to be a thriller. At the front, James Scott and Dylan Birse were separated by fractions; there was a small gap behind, where Kody Deith and Jarrad Filsell were also separated by next to nothing. One slip up from the leaders would quickly turn into a four-way fight for the race win.

Ric Kuznetsov and Hayden Veld tangled across the top, resulting in Veld hitting the right side wall at high speed. With that motor somehow holding itself together, Veld was able to continue and avoid bringing out a Safety Car.

Filsell was able to regain 3rd over Kody Deith with a strong run out of Turn 1, but there was a difficult gap ahead to catch the lead pair as they pushed themselves along in slipstream. With five to go, Filsell managed to get himself within touching distance of Birse, who was biding time himself to pull the trigger on James Scott for the lead.

With two laps to go, Birse needed to act before Filsell made his move. Shifting to the right before slamming on the brakes for Turn 3, he held his nerve and launched his Camaro down the inside of Scott … but he couldn’t pull it up in time.

With Birse going straight on, James Scott’s exit out of Turn 3 was compromised. Jarrad Filsell took the opportunity to buy a ticket for the inside of Turn 4, where he snatched the race lead from his former teammate.

With a massive kick of throttle to powerslide out of the last corner, Filsell claimed victory once again in the Logitech G Pro Invitational Series; a two-for-two start for the esteemed star.

James Scott would run home second, followed by Dylan Birse, Kody Deith, Zach Rattray-White, Joshua Anderson, Damon Woods, Robbie Gibbs, Jake Moloney and Andrew Gilliam rounding out the top 10.

Honourable mentions!

Driver of the day is a tough one to hand out here, with a number of drivers putting on some incredible performances in their journeys up the order.

It’s tough to look past Jarrad Filsell; he looks inevitable when presented with adversity and he put that on show today. While only moving up three places, this was easily one of the best drives throughout the field.

Griffin Gardiner was the biggest mover of the day, moving from 44th to 19th after connection troubles saw him join the race session late. Josh Anderson and Brenton Hobson were also big movers, jumping up 13 and 11 places respectively.