The third part of the 2022 mid-season Formula Virtual driver rankings. Featured here are some outstanding midfield performers, and a pair of race winners. 12. Will TaylorAs a rookie who has often matched and on occasion beaten team mate Allar Kangur this season, it's arguable Will Taylor should be rated higher. However on further inspection, whilst he's had a reasonable number of performances, the fact can't be ignored that he's gone on the missing list on occasion too, no more so than at Silverstone to cap what was an utterly woeful maiden home race in which he finished plum last. Rolling back the races to Japan, Taylor arguably stunned the paddock. Despite qualifying five places back from Kangur - famously not the best over a single lap - Taylor raced superbly to finish two seconds up the road from his more illustrious team mate. While both cars fell foul of mechanical failures in Australia, another excellent drive by Taylor in the wet at Sepang yielded his and the teams first ever podium, a result that looked on even before Zetticci's late retirement as he held off early Championship leader Klaas van Snelheid. All that, despite a disappointing qualifying performance on Saturday that saw him 11 places behind Kangur - who was arguably on to finish ahead too before another mechanical failure. After beating Kangur again in South Africa however, Taylor has somewhat tailed off. Silverstone was a shocker and he scraped a sole point in Germany while Kangur stood on the podium, but he was back on form in Brno, completing the teams first ever double podium finish. Taylor has done very well for a rookie against a strong team mate, but needs to work desperately on his consistency. 11. Finn SchnyderAfter two seasons of battling to even qualify for a race, AMR finally took that first step forwards last season, and looked to build on that this year - especially with promising pace in pre-season. It didn't quite materialise come Japan however, and AMR have spent another season fighting in the first part of qualifying to make the race for the majority of the season. Finn Schnyder though has rarely looked close to missing the cut, meanwhile team mate Oleksandr Zozulya failed to qualify for two consecutive races in the first three. Despite this, Schnyder had to follow his team mate home in France as the Ukrainian scored the teams first point on a superior strategy - marking only one of two times Schnyder has been beaten in a competitive session so far this season. The other was Silverstone, when again Schnyder was on an unfavourable strategy, meaning he's not once been bested by Zozulya on pure pace. His cumulative qualifying gap of 3.042 seconds is also the second largest of any team mates, while Schnyder ranks an impressive 8th on both qualifying and race performance - albeit both aided by his hammering of Zozulya. Nonetheless, the performances Schnyder had turned in were lacking the results they deserved, until a sublime drive in Brno - aided admittedly by the difficulty to overtake - was rewarded with a 7th place as he and the team steered clear of the drama. The car has shown increasing pace in recent races, and Schnyder will be looking to utilise this more over the second half of the season. 10. Thierry XylanderThierry Xylander may only have one points scoring finish to his name this season - and admittedly that came in the rain-affected race of Malaysia - but that is still one more than anyone expected, especially considering the Highwind looked like a car that was unlikely to get out of pre-qualifying in pre-season testing. Since turning up in Japan however, Xylander has put in exceptional performance after exceptional performance, building on the strong season he had last year with Phoenix. Whilst - as a rookie - team mate Zientek may not be the best of bench marks, in the opening five rounds where Highwind were in pre-qualifying, Xylander qualified for every race (or would have done bar Highwind missing the strategy deadline in France) ahead of a number of rivals on each occasion, whilst Zientek failed to even make the main part of qualifying. Since the team have pulled themselves clear of pre-qualifying however - thanks to Xylander's brilliant wet weather drive in Malaysia - Zientek has been way more on pace, outqualifying the Belgian in both Britain and Germany, though those remain the only two competitive sessions in which Xylander has been bested. Despite an average qualifying position of only 20.4, the variation in this compared to where it's expected the car should be gives Xylander a qualifying rank of 12th, whilst his race progression and results put him equal 8th in terms of his race rank. There have been some blips along the way - a clumsy mistake on the opening lap in South Africa cost him any chance in the race - but for the most part Xylander has consistently extracted more than the maximum from that car, and while it doesn't look close to point scoring pace, don't rule out the Belgian to add to his tally if we have more unusual races. 9. Adrien SimonAdrien Simon has just eight races left in his Formula Virtual career now, having confirmed he will retire at the end of the season when Mathershaw also exit the sport. He'll be hoping those eight races go more the way of Silverstone than the other seven we've already had this season. This is now the third season that Simon has shared a team with Ruiz, and he's been soundly beaten in all of them, however he did finally score another win this year - his first since Porsche joined the team - with an excellent drive at Silverstone, outpacing Ruiz throughout the race and defending superbly from Klaas van Snelheid. Unfortunately for the experienced Frenchman however, these performances that echo the glory days of 2016 are infrequent at best. Despite an average qualifying position of 2.1, his qualifying rank is only 9th due to the number of times he's been beaten by Ruiz. His race performances make for even more grim reading, with an average finish of 5.6 placing him equal 19th. To put that into perspective, the difference of 3.5 positions down from his average qualifying result to average race finish is the biggest difference on the grid. There's no doubting that on his day, Simon is still every bit the driver he used to be, and he's still amongst the best over a single lap - only being three tenths away cumulatively from arguably the best qualifier ever to grace Formula Virtual is no mean feat - but come Sunday he's just not quite at the races anymore, and will likely spend the last few races of his career playing a supporting role to his Championship contending team mate. 8. Matteo ZetticciMatteo Zetticci arrived in Formula Virtual to a tremendous fanfare. A glittering junior career meant expectations were high for the young Italian - indeed, he joined straight in at the most decorated team in FV history, replacing the most decorated driver - and he delivered from the off, utilising a great strategy to win his maiden race in Formula Virtual at Fuji, becoming the first driver ever to achieve the feat past the series' inaugural race at Australia in 2013. It's fair to argue however that he hasn't really looked likely at repeating that performance since - with the notable exception of what should have been a second victory in Malaysia, before he was cruelly denied by a penultimate lap engine failure. Like Simon, he has twice outpaced his championship contending team mate in qualifying, but the win in Japan remains the only time Zetticci has reached the line before Klaas van Snelheid. A few of these have been duff strategy calls - hards in Australia left him with no pace, and everyone on softs at Silverstone struggled to make progress, though in the latter his lack of committing to moves saw him finish behind the man he replaced, now racing in a slower car, yet on the same strategy. There's no doubting Zetticci is an absolute star of the future - even now he's less than two tenths behind van Snelheid on cumulative qualifying pace - but he's also evidently not on the level of van Snelheid or Ruiz just yet, and is having a fairly typical rookie season, some scintillating performances punctuated by a number of mistakes and hesitation in racing situations. He'll be looking to dial these and perform more consistently over the second half of 2022. 7. Puccio GiodanoYou'd be forgiven for questioning why Puccio Giodano features in seventh place on this list, given it's difficult to really recall a single session where he's stood out - either for the right or wrong reasons. But that's the exact reason he is here, because it's difficult to argue Giodano has really done anything other than extract pretty much the maximum from his car in more or less every competitive session. Having been beaten last season, he's fought back against Hunter Ryan and battered his team mate in both qualifying and the races - being beaten in both only once, and the race was France in which he made a rare error and ruined his strategy, yet still finished only four places behind his team mate. His average qualifying position of 9.3 matches his average race finish, and this - combined with his performances over Ryan - see him ranked within the top six in both categories. He also arguably deserves a much bigger advantage over his team mate in the Championship than the 12 points it currently sits at, but unfortunately for Giodano, Ocelot appear to be sat in a rather significant gap in the midfield behind the teams scrapping for third, but ahead of the chasing pack. The fact therefore that he is frequently putting his car in amongst that third placed battle is testament to how well he's driving, especially considering Ryan is often finding himself amongst the teams struggling to get into the points - a fact highlighted by the cumulative qualifying margin of over 3.2 seconds, the largest in the field. 6. Brock KiddIf Johan Halvosen has been one of the shocks of the season for all the wrong reasons, then team mate Brock Kidd has absolutely been the same, but for all of the right ones. His maiden season in Formula Virtual last year saw him more or less on pace with Halvosen - which in itself was a great effort given the Dane's reputation - but it isn't unfair to say that so far in 2022, Kidd has absolutely wiped the floor with him. Against the expectations of nearly everyone, Kidd is siting at a score line of 8-0 in the qualifying battle, and combined with an average qualifying result of 12.0, that ranks him as the third best qualifier so far this season. The race stats at North Star are far more volatile, as due to the number of mechanical failures they've only had both cars reach the end on two occasions, and in this battle it's one apiece, but to anyone who's followed the races it's clear to see Kidd has had the upper hand. While the paddock were stunned into silence at the opening race in Japan as Halvosen failed to qualify, Kidd put his car 14th and forced his way into contention for a point before gearbox failure ended his day. It appeared as though Halvosen had recovered from his blip in Australia, but in Malaysia Kidd turned it up again, qualifying eighth to Halvosen's 13th and being well on course for a huge haul of points before again being denied by a mechanical failure. In South Africa the drought was finally ended though, as Kidd fought hard to a ninth place finish in a race where - once again - his team mate failed to even start. More points followed in France as he finished eight places ahead of Halvosen having started only two in front, and though neither North Star has quite been in contention since, Kidd has still been by far the closer of the two. The American has had arguably the biggest hard luck story of the season and should have considerably more points to his name for the performances he's been putting in, and will be hoping his car starts to hold out a bit better to give him a finishing rate of higher than 50% as we get to the business end of the campaign.
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