Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen will race in next weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual endurance simracing event.
The Red Bull F1 driver and current world champion will compete with Team Redline in the LMP class, alongside IndyCar driver Felix Rosenqvist, iRacing Porsche Esports Supercup racer Maximilian Benecke and iRacing World Championship Grand Prix race winner Atze Kerkhof, who is also a driving consultant for the Alfa Romeo real world F1 team.IndyCar champion Alex Palou is also one of the 200 drivers who will compete in the 24 hour endurance event officially sanctioned by the World Endurance Championship.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual race will take place over Saturday 15th to Sunday 16th of January and broadcast live on YouTube. Racing on the rFactor2 simulation platform, the event forms the finale of the Virtual Le Mans Series Cup, with a prize fund of $250,000 (£184,000) awarded to the event winners.
A total of 50 entries have been announced for the race, made up of 29 LMP and 21 GTE entries. All cars will be shared between four drivers each, who will swap control of their cars during pit stops throughout the endurance race.
Other notable driver include former F1, IndyCar and NASCAR racer Juan Pablo Montoya, who will be racing alongside son Sebastian for the LMVS team. Two-time F1 Esports world champion Jarno Opmeer will compete for Mercedes Esports alongside Daniel Juncadella, while the W Series will enter an official all-woman driver team of Fabienne Wohlwend, Ayla Agren, Lyubov Ozeretskovskaya and veteran Australian simracer Emily Jones.
Fernando Alonso will oversee Alpine Esports’ LMP class entry as team manager, while former F1 and IndyCar driver Romain Grosjean’s team R8G Esports will also participate in the race.
The event will be the second officially-sanctioned virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans race. A one-off simrace was organised during the initial spate of lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020 that saw motorsport events cancelled across the world, including the annual Le Mans 24 Hours.
Verstappen competed for Team Redline in the 2020 event alongside McLaren driver Lando Norris. The team were leading the race in the night before a lag spike resulted in a collision with the Rebellion-Williams entry and took them out of contention. Rebellion-Williams eventually claimed the overall race victory.
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Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
7th January 2022, 17:24
Flippin heck guys.
As I started to read the headline I was like “YES. Go for it young Max. Start after that triple thingy that Fernando wants while you are young”.
Then I saw the “virtual” bit :( :(
Qeki (@qeki)
7th January 2022, 18:27
The headline went like
this
RandomMallard
7th January 2022, 19:22
@nullapax Yh I was the same. Could he go for first real racer to win the virtual triple crown, especially if F1 hosts some virtual GPs again
HJ
7th January 2022, 19:24
I think that one day he will race in the ‘real’ 24h of Le Mans. But I think for now it is not allowed by RB.
Ben
7th January 2022, 21:25
Not a chance HJ. He has so much to learn before he’s ready for the real thing. playing bumper cars at Le Mans doesn’t work.
HJ
7th January 2022, 22:00
We’ll see ;-)
erikje
8th January 2022, 23:27
I agree, he is young and only at the begin of his career with still a lot to learn.
Even more impressive how he destroyed a 7 time world champion on the peak of his abilitys.
And he still has so much to add to his learning.
José Lopes da Silva
9th January 2022, 9:55
Surely you were not thinking we would see this “so much to learn spoilt brat” thing to magically disappear after the first title…
Travis (@)
7th January 2022, 22:12
At least it mentions “Virtual” in the heading. The Racingnews365.com (where Dieter Rencken went) headline just says he’s “retuning to racing action”.
Ben
7th January 2022, 17:47
Breaking news. Guy plans to play video game.
Miko
7th January 2022, 18:42
Haha
Niki101
7th January 2022, 19:26
Breaking news. Guy who makes money from people watching him play a game plans to make more money letting people watch him play another game.
Chris Horton
7th January 2022, 19:35
Hahaha brilliant.
Tristan (@skipgamer)
7th January 2022, 23:52
I can’t believe people still think sim racing is just a video game. To think Max has achieved what he has without it is missing the point.
Barry Bens (@barryfromdownunder)
7th January 2022, 18:09
Turns out Latifi crashing and Verstappen taking the championship was just them giving something back! :^)
RocketTankski
7th January 2022, 19:16
Will Masi pause the game and change the settings a few times?
RandomMallard
7th January 2022, 19:21
That did kind of happen last time (in 2020). They run on rFactor2, which is notorious for not having the most stable servers in the world. So in 2020 the servers started showing signs of something wrong so they red flagged the race (at least once, maybe twice), made everyone leave, reset the server and started again, but back with a closed up field. They also let the Alonso/Barrichello car back into the race after it ran out of fuel earlier on, and gave it a huge number of laps back, which is also not exactly procedure under FIA rules ;-)
amian
7th January 2022, 19:25
OMG, RandomMallard, this is hilarious!
amian
7th January 2022, 19:22
“The team were leading the race in the night before a lag spike resulted in a collision”
This is actually an interesting and somewhat nice element of reality – basically analogous to a technical failure.
It’d be cool if the software producers programmed this into the game where an internet lag would be reflected as a technical problem in the virtual world, rather than a glitch that breaks the fourth wall.
RandomMallard
8th January 2022, 0:26
amain I can understand the want for something to cover lag a bit better, but I don’t think this is really the solution. Lag is usually an unpredictable problem with Internet, not the program, so there isn’t really anything the program can do to rectify it. I agree it would be cool, but until anyone can make a system to predict lag, I don’t think this is a realistic solution.
pSynrg (@psynrg)
8th January 2022, 8:33
Perhaps more analogous with something wrong with the track, e.g. lose drain cover, tyre blow out due to debris…
Aapje (@aapje)
8th January 2022, 10:54
@amian
That’s like asking for race control for a real race to change a crashed car into rain. It’s not how it works.
Mobius Clean (@mobiusclean)
9th January 2022, 6:59
Huh, and here’s me thinking that lag had something to do with turbochargers.
Sonny Crockett (@sonnycrockett)
7th January 2022, 19:25
In other news:
Super Mario to Drive for Red Bull in Monaco
Niki101
7th January 2022, 19:30
In other news:
Man belittles games on a site devoted to a game.
Dominique (@tryneplague)
7th January 2022, 21:05
Mario does not get the freedom of racing for other teams. We gonna have to wait for a real Nintendo F1 Team for that.
Tommy C (@tommy-c)
7th January 2022, 21:32
I saw the first part and got all excited! Pity the sentence ended with “virtual”.
Tristan (@skipgamer)
7th January 2022, 23:54
https://www.gtplanet.net/max-verstappen-talks-sim-racing-20211222/
There’s a great article (and interview) here where Verstappen talks about the impacts of sim racing on his ability to drive fast and improve himself. There’s too many short-sighted comments here.
jff
8th January 2022, 8:01
Thank you for the link.
Aapje (@aapje)
8th January 2022, 10:56
@skipgamer
He also talked about how seriously he takes it during the interview with David Coulthard. He practices as long as the race itself.
JohnH (@johnrkh)
8th January 2022, 0:27
Yeah, Verstappen does seem to take this stuff seriously. I wonder if his virtual driving style has influenced his actual on-track driving style negatively, because of the 0 consequences for safety.
Alan Dove
8th January 2022, 9:08
Nope It’s an old trope that sim racers tend to encourage more risk. It’s actually the total opposite when you race at any decent level.
Johnny
8th January 2022, 1:16
Maybe they’ll change the rules there in the last 4 minutes of the race to give him a chance to win?
Omar R (@)
8th January 2022, 1:51
Maybe people would stop crying about it one day.
Johnny
8th January 2022, 5:26
The asterisk is there forever. :)
jff
8th January 2022, 8:00
……. virtual.
Alan Dove
8th January 2022, 9:15
Lewis doesn’t have an asterisk having won a WDC in a car that was developed under ‘Spygate’.
Schumacher doesn’t have an asterisk for 94 after driving into Hill and racing a car with allegedly have TC logged into the system and also pitstopping with modified fuel filter until Ver got cooked.
Rosberg doesn’t have an astericks in 1982 despite winning only won race and barely beating a Pironi who missed the last 5 races.
etc…
erikje
8th January 2022, 16:04
The only “asterix” is the brilliant pass on Lewis in the last lap of the last race.
José Lopes da Silva
9th January 2022, 10:00
Where are Prost and Senna’s asterisks of 1989 and 1990?!
David (@djarvis)
8th January 2022, 9:19
Some very short minded comments. Sim racing is completely different to video games and takes a lot of skill and practice to be competitive. I’ve also seen an interview with Max were he has stated how much sim racing has helped him develop, he is also very highly rated within sim racing within that community.
Good luck Max, an esports triple crown would be quite the achievement if F1 hold a Monaco esports race during the off season and Indy Car do a virtual 500 as well.
I could see Max racing in Le Man’s later in his career, I’m unsure if he’d leap across the pond though for the indy 500 but I thought the same of Alonso
Matt D
8th January 2022, 18:35
Actually, Max is highly rated but also widely disliked. His driving is quick, sometimes on a par with the ‘true’ sim professionals but he’s also got a reputation for taking people out if he’s not winning, throwing tantrums and generally being a bit disrespectful.
He’s found himself on a ‘big’ professional team because of his name and he’s calmed a bit since that time as he’s got older.
There’s been a virtual Indy 500 for years on iRacing as well as a virtual LM24 both of which were open to all comers professional and amateur. Max competed in the iracing LM but he’s not very good on an oval. Unfortunately, during the pandemic along came this ‘new’ company Motorsports games (owned by Motorsport.com) and a lot of exclusive licenses started to rest their ugly heads again. For both LM24 and Indy, the licenses now mean that the only way anyone can hold either and Indy500 or LM24 is unofficially in a ‘hosted’ environment and it cannot be named as such. Now the only way to take part in a ‘virtual’ event is the either be a big name real driver, be on a ‘big’ sim racing team or be an influencer on streaming platforms like Jimmy Broadbent (who isn’t actually that good). It’s a real shame, and has gone down like a lead balloon in the sim-racing world where the events and content for them (cars etc) were hugely popular and now are only available on a creaking, aged platform which doesn’t host huge events very well in RF2 (which MSG bought). Exclusive licenses have never worked in racing games, because they lock content from others and immediately deny anyone outside of that platform access. Look at how much the F1 license or the old Porsche license were abused by Electronic arts…
I’m sure the event will run well, and be very slick and professional. But it’s appeal to sim racers is minimal, real world drivers can’t hold a candle to the sim professionals, they treat it like a joke or a money-making exercise and these events are more like a pro-am golf tournament mess-about than a demonstration of top class sim racing.
erikje
9th January 2022, 12:05
You seem to forget all the participants who go to great length to defeat a f1 racer and very often break all the SIM rules doing so.
It’s hard to keep those “battles” ( or better attacks) at bay.
Matt D
9th January 2022, 21:01
I’m sorry but that’s just not true. Within iRacing the competition fairness system stops most of the ‘stupid’ type moves from happening and Max has been around so long that novelty factor has more than worn off. Go and watch some of his old stream clips, or those of Lando and you will see how patently untrue your comment is.
erikje
11th January 2022, 23:01
Nope, you are building a storyline on some old races were max reacted furiously on some actions by other racers..
As far as his level goes.. this is illustrative..