Jeffrey Rietveld wins virtual 24-hour race Le Mans, Verstappen drops out

Jeffrey Rietveld and his team Realteam Hydrogen Redline have won the second virtual variant of the Le Mans 24-hour race. Brand new Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen also participated, but due to a crash he had to leave the field after eight hours.

Jeffrey Rietveld is a sim racer who, among other things, competes for the big prizes in the game Asetto Corsa. This turns out not to be his only trick, because last weekend he won the virtual variant of Le Mans by driving the largest number of laps within 24 hours together with teammates Felipe Drugovich (Formula 2), Oliver Rowland (Formula E) and Michael Smidl (Simracing).

The race started well for Rietveld anyway, in qualifying he managed to keep Max Verstappen off pole position. That same Verstappen, driving for Team Redline, however immediately took back first place during the race. Fate struck the Formula One world champion in the eighth hour, however, after an overtaking maneuver went wrong, he spun and then flew into a wall. The damage was extensive; two wheels were lost and thus his race ended in a minor one.

At the end of the 24 hours, Hydrogen Redline had driven 407 laps, thirty more than the previous winners, giving it a lead of one minute and three seconds over number two ORECA 07. Redline also managed to win in the GTE class, in that car Rudy van Buren was among the drivers. Both race wins also ensured that Realteam Hydrogen Redline won the overall standings by half a point.

The virtual 24-hour race of Le Mans is a digital variant of the real race, in which racers complete as many laps as possible on the La Sarthe circuit within 24 hours. The real race has sixty cars with three drivers each, while the virtual race has fifty teams with four drivers per car. The record for the number of laps on the real circuit is 397 (2010), a record that does not seem to be broken anymore due to other rules, this year Toyota managed to win the race by driving 371 laps within 24 hours, 36 less than the digital variant.