Le Mans 24 Hours Virtual: Verstappen rages “I will not participate again” Fighting for the lead but DNF due to line disconnection … Organizers continue to be severely criticized | Formula1-Data / F1 information and breaking news commentary

After retiring from the virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2023, Max Verstappen (Red Bull) erupted in anger, calling the organizers of the troubled event “incompetent” and saying, “I will never participate again.” .

The reigning F1 World Champion will drive the championship-leading car #1, Team Redline, at the virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans. After jumping into the lead at the start, he fought for the lead from start to finish, leading the laps towards the end of the race with seven hours remaining.

However, he was kicked out of the race due to a disconnection of the circuit, and although he returned to the race, he fell back to 17th place, one lap behind.

At this time, the only car that lost connection at the same time was the #100 Arnage Competition LMP, so lapbacks were not allowed, and Team Redline decided to retire car #1 with 5.5 hours remaining. bottom.

The regulations stipulate that if four or more cars lose connection at the same time, a maximum of three laps will be given at the discretion of race control, but Verstappen’s tragedy did not fall into this category.

After the race Verstappen folded his arms and said: ‘They say it’s very bad luck but this happened because they’re just incompetent. They can’t even control their game. It’s the third time I’ve been kicked out,” he said in a quiet voice, exploding with anger.

“That’s it, because there’s no point[in it]. Five months of preparation for the title fight, leading the championship, two months of preparation to win this race, and they’re here. This is the way to deal with

“I’m not kidding. Calling it an event is presumptuous. This is a clown show.”

“It would be better to retire. Running around in 15th place for six hours[after this]doesn’t mean anything to anyone. This is an act of disrespect to all of us who worked hard as a team.”

“I really want the organizers to think about where to put this game because it’s not going to work on this platform.”

“I’m going to uninstall this game. It’s going to free up some space on my PC. I sincerely hope that everyone will also uninstall it.”

Regarding the repeated troubles, Verstappen continued through the chat tool “Discord” after that, “It was a shame on the faces of all the big brands and drivers in the sim race area.” ) is due to the incompetence of

It is unknown whether the disconnection that caused the retirement was on the game server side, but the race suffered from frequent connection failures from the beginning, resulting in two red flags, and 7 hours before Verstappen’s trouble. There was an accident that the stand was cut off.

The development team of rFactor 2, a virtual platform for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, has begun investigating the cause of the trouble in the early stages of the race, saying, “As a result of the participating teams unintentionally sharing the IP address that connects to the server, a security breach occurred. A global disconnection has occurred.”

The race was won overall by teammate #2 Team Redline driven by Felipe Dolgovic, Felix Rosenqvist, Luke Bennett and Chris Loulam.