24H Le Mans: Only virtual, but exciting 🎥
SWISS WINNERS The first 24 Hours of Le Mans to be held virtually instead of in real life was not just sim racing. Never before have so many racing and sim professionals taken part in an event - and in the end, the Swiss won. The highlights of the 24H Le Mans Virtual. It's worth investing these four minutes even for non-simracing fans. [...]
The highlights of the 24H Le Mans Virtual. It's worth investing these four minutes even for non-simracing fans.
The numbers spoke for themselves. 50 teams, made up of 200 real racing drivers and simracing specialists from 37 nations in six continents, battled for victory and podium places in the LMP (30 digital Oreca 07s in their respective team colors) and GT (20 cars from different manufacturers) classes. The largest race of its kind to date was held on the rFactor 2 platform.
Still as real as it gets
I put it to the test myself to see if it could captivate me - and I did indeed keep my eyes glued to the monitor, which was switched on non-stop from Sunday morning.
The quality of the field of participants, the sound of the racing cars with the same engine in LMP2 and different engines in GTLM, the graphics, the live broadcast with presenters from a studio in Paris and broadcasts all over the world, the race strategies and the race management came closer to reality than any computer game to date, which is what sim racing is all about after all.
More exciting than the last real events
However, all the participants took it really seriously. The best racing was on offer, something that had been somewhat lacking at the top of the sports prototypes in recent editions of the real 24 Hours of Le Mans since Toyota became the only LMP1 works team.
The overall victory was decided between the strong real-life cars from Rebellion and the German team ByKolles, which had never made such a strong appearance before. A number of competitors from real motorsport teamed up with professional esports teams, whose specialists contributed a great deal to the respective successes and rankings.
Duel of the Simracers
After an interruption due to a server problem late on Sunday morning, the two Rebellion Williams Esports cars, also running in the real endurance races with the starting numbers #1 and #13, were only separated by 13 seconds at the front, with polesitter Bykolles - Burst Esports a further ten seconds behind.
In the final phase, their professional Simracers decided the overall podium among themselves, whereby the number 1 Rebellion could no longer be displaced from the top spot. Geneva's Louis Delétraz and Italian-Swiss Raffaele Marciello took the win with the two Polish Simracers Nikodem Wisniewski and Kuba Brzezinski.
Good omen for Louis Delétraz
None of them have ever competed in the real 24 Hours of Le Mans - Delétraz will be competing for Rebellion for the first time in the 88th running on September 19/20. A good omen and the best preparation.
Louis Delétraz: "That was an incredible experience and the longest night of my life so far. My last two hours were stressful, but now I feel really good. My thanks go above all to my team colleagues. We worked towards this every day for three weeks on our simulators and have been rewarded for it."
No hat-trick yet for Sébastien Buemi and Toyota
The 2018 and 2019-winning Toyota Gazoo Racing team competed with five of its six works drivers, who were supported by two Simracers. The quartet of Buemi/Hartley/Yamashita/Kasdorp finished eleventh and Conway/Kobayashi/Lopez/Brient 14th overall. In September, Buemi and Toyota are aiming for a hat-trick at the real Circuit de la Sarthe.
Fernando Alonso is also fast in sim racing
The best-placed of the numerous former or current GP drivers was Frenchman Pierre Gasly in fifth position. The Formula 1 elite was represented by Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.
Fernando Alonso, who won the last two real 24-hour races with Buemi and Toyota, set the fastest lap (9th) of the drivers who are not simracing specialists.
Early exit for Simona de Silvestro
In the GTLM, the Porsche Esports Team consisting of four teams with Nick Tandy (who celebrated his greatest triumph to date in the 919 Hybrid in 2015), Ayhancan Güven (2019 Supercup champion) and the two sim racers Joshua Rogers and Tommy Østgaard came out on top.
The Porsche driven by Simona de Silvestro got stuck in the gravel after an incident and retired after twelve hours. Only three of the 50 teams did not complete the full 24 hours.
The complete results with intermediate standings after each hour, all lap times and the lead changes (68 among six LMP teams) can be found here. Link to be taken.
