As explained in a previous post, this season’s top-level Zwift racing look very different from previous years. Now decoupled entirely from Zwift Racing League, the “Zwift Grand Prix” series is happening each Friday at 6pm UTC, with men featured one week and women the next over 6 rounds.
Tomorrow (Friday) at 6pm UTC the Zwift Grand Prix kicks off with its first race for the men, in a format named the “Parcours Picker”. (Women will race their Parcours Picker next Friday.)
This race actually consists of 5 different events. Teams will select 5 riders to take part in 5 different races (one rider per race) on different routes utilizing different formats. The winning team will have the highest total points across all 5 races.
Each race will feature one rider per team, so a total of 12 riders overall per race. Where applicable, PowerUps will be available to add further strategy to the races – but information on PowerUp structure is being furnished to the teams directly and wasn’t available at the time of this publication.
Race Details
Race 1: Neokyo Crit Course
- Points Race
- Distance: 8.58km
- Points will be available for the first 3 riders (each lap) across the Alley and Castle Park sprints
- Alley Sprint (3,2,1) x 2
- Castle Park Sprint (3,2,1) x 2
Race 2: Sea To Tree
- Scratch Race
- Distance: 3.84km
- Points will be available at the finish line only
- Finish Line (12-1 for 1st to 12th place)
Race 3: Tour of Tewit Well
- Scratch Race
- Distance: 10.74km
- Points will be available for the first 6 riders across the line at the climb arch and finish line.
- Climb Arch (6,5,4,3,2,1)
- Finish Line (6,5,4,3,2,1)
Race 4: Innsbruckring
- Individual TT
- Distance: 9.03km
- Points will be available based on overall time and for the fastest through the sprint segment
- Overall Time (12-1 for 1st to 12th place)
- Innsbruck Sprint (2 bonus points available for the fastest rider through the segment)
Race 5: Downtown Dolphin
- Points Race
- Distance: 9.38km
- Points will be available each lap at the Climb Arch and then once at the finish line
- Climb Arch (4,3,2,1) x 5
- Finish Line (4,3,2,1)
Note: total race points will accrue across the 5 races and series points will be awarded according to each team’s final points tally.
Watch Live
Each Friday’s races will be livestreamed with commentary on Zwift’s YouTube the Zwift Live Facebook channels. Watch tomorrow’s event below:
Some of the racers will also be livestreaming their races. Tuning into these personal streams can sometimes be much more interesting than the main broadcast! Here are the links we know of:
- Velocio Team Stream (English) – twitch.tv/Bouchard
- Hexagon pb Saris (French) – twitch.tv/styrostv
- Team Italy Live (Italian) – twitch.tv/teamitalylive
- TSBiker (Dutch/Flemish) – twitch.tv/tsbiker
- PTz Live (Portugese) – facebook.com/bjafonso
- タムロリエ-Rie Tamuro – youtube.com/channel/UC3Dw1nzbYi9DLcE0RaXcRDQ
- NeXT pb Enshored (English) – twitch.tv/barney_nz
Full Season Schedule
Round 1 – Parcours Picker
Men: Friday, September 23 @ 6 pm UTC
Women: Friday, September 30 @ 6 pm UTC
Round 2 – Team Elimination Omnium
Men: Friday, October 7 @ 6 pm UTC
Women: Friday, October 14 @ 6 pm UTC
Round 3 – Squad Skirmish
Men: Friday, October 21 @ 6 pm UTC
Women: Friday, October 28 @ 6 pm UTC
Round 4 – Points Elimination Reverse
Men: Friday, November 18 @ 7 pm UTC
Women: Friday, November 25 @ 7 pm UTC
Round 5 – Team Elimination Omnium
Men: Friday, December 2 @ 7 pm UTC
Women: Friday, December 9 @ 7 pm UTC
Round 6 – Individual Relay
Men: Friday, January 13 @ 7 pm UTC
Women: Friday, January 20 @ 7 pm UTC
Finals
Men and Women: Late March (TBD)
Men and Women: Late March (TBD)
Questions or Comments?
Share below!
5 races, how long will this last in the evening, please ?
An hour or less I’d wager. I think the goal of these events is to keep them under an hour.
I still miss the ZRL Premier Division. I found it super exciting and inspiring to watch the “pros” take on the course we would race the next day in the community. It also gave a great sense of progression through the community and into the elite levels.
That said I do like that Zwift is trying to be creative with race formats and race types.
We really need more race types in the game for the community. Would be great to have native points races, elimination races, madison races and more. (Both on track and road).
100% agree … it would be great to have different race formats on Zwift, especially in a Velodrome : sprint tournaments, elimination races and MADISON events !!! … hopefully ZHQ is working on this … dreaming is allowed 😎
Looks like “tiny races” format to me 😉
Great minds think alike!
I thought the same … like a Team Omnium … but it worked well yesterday because now breakaways made sense and had a much better chance to be successful … was fun to watch
Seems like ridiculously short races for pro level riders, surely they can all pretty much ride at max power/hr for 3-10km, and only 12 riders per race sounds pretty sparse.
Will maybe check it out over the weekend, but Friday evening racing with tiny distances and virtually no racers probably won’t be grabbing too many people to watch live
It’s all about making it more interesting to viewers. Nobody wants to watch a long Zwift race. And nobody wants to watch a mob of 100 riders make their way around Watopia, either.
At least, that’s how I feel. And it appears that’s also what Zwift is hearing from others.
Racing on Zwift opens up a completely different set of race scenarios compared to IRL racing. It seems this season Zwift is really leaning into that and trying to come up with some uniquely esports propositions. I think the first week went well.
Having watched the new format last night I thought it worked well. The differing races, styles needed and mix of riders seemed to me to make things more exciting than 1 race of 30k+. Seeing differing strategies play out due to the short length of races was interesting and also the fact that all riders were on their own, feels like it gives more chance to everyone rather than teams that have lots of strong riders in 1 race. Added to the wider strategy element where teams have to pick which rider for which event, it does give more options… Read more »
Having given it a watch I must admit it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, however: 1) 3 of the 5 races they couldn’t even organize showing from the start/gun and we joined with it already going 2) It only took 1500m of the first race for Zwift to start handing out the wrong power-ups 3) Dropped connections still affecting even the ‘Pro’ races where they’re all using wired connections so the 1 rider per team approach doesn’t work unless they sort that stuff out for all of us 4) There were a multitude of… Read more »