Tomorrow (Friday) at 7pm UTC the Zwift Grand Prix’s final round kicks off with the men’s teams racing the “Last Team Standing” format. Women will race the same format next Friday. Here are the current men’s rankings:
And the current women’s rankings:
It’s important to note that only 5 men’s teams and 5 women’s teams will move on to the finals, so the big fight of this final round is to get (or keep) yourself into the top 6!
“Last Team Standing” Race Details
Previous Grand Prix rounds consisted of multiple smaller races, but this final round is just one race across 3+ laps of the Watopia Hilly route, ending atop the Hilly KOM. Total course length is 29.4km with 384m of elevation gain, but many riders will be eliminated before completing the full course.
60 riders (12 teams of 5) will take to the start line. The overall aim of the race is simple – make sure your team gets to the finish line without being eliminated, because the finish line is the only place where riders can score points.
There will be 6 elimination arches – at these arches, teams must ensure at least one of their riders is highly paced over the line, otherwise the entire team will be eliminated from the remainder of the race.
During the first lap of the race (arches 1-3) there will be no eliminations. From there
eliminations will occur as follows:
- Arch 4 (KOM) – must get a rider in the top 9 or whole team eliminated
- Arch 5 (Sprint) – must get a rider the top 8 or whole team eliminated
- Arch 6 (Downtown) – must get a rider in the top 7 or whole team eliminated
- Arch 7 (KOM) – must get a rider in the top 6 or whole team eliminated
- Arch 8 (Sprint) – must get a rider the top 5 or whole team eliminated
- Arch 9 (Downtown) – must get a rider in the top 4 or whole team eliminated
- After arch 9 the remaining teams will race to the finish line (Zwift KOM) where 10 points scoring opportunities will be available.
This race format is interesting on several levels:
- More than one team can be eliminated at any arch, so riders must push to finish highly at arches 4 and following
- Placing more than 1 rider from your team in the required top riders at an arch effectively eliminates other teams
- While the maximum number of teams that can fight for points at the finish line is 4, the race can end before the finish line if one team takes all the top spots at arches 8 or 9, becoming the “Last Team Standing”
Watch Live
Each Friday’s races are livestreamed with commentary on Zwift’s YouTube and Facebook channels. Watch tomorrow’s event below:
The women’s race on January 20th can be watched here:
Questions or Comments?
Share below!
your overall team standings are wrong
Fixed.
Unfortunately zwift doesn’t make it easy to find the overall standings but here are the correct ones.
Updated images above, with standings through round 5.