The official sim racing version of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, also known as the Le Mans 24 Hours Virtual 2023, promised to be a smashing edition. There was a $250,000 prize pool and numerous major teams took part in the event, including Williams Esports, Romain Grosjean’s R8G, Porsche Coanda, Jenson Button’s Rocket Simsport, Alpine Esports, Peugeot Esports and more. The field of participants included big names such as Max Verstappen, F2 champion Felipe Drugovich, Romain Grosjean, Andy Priaulx, Beitske Visser, and so on. A field of the highest level, in other words.
Technical issues, please stand by
However, the race itself did not go smoothly. Several cars were unceremoniously thrown out of the game and had to make up one or two laps behind and the entire race was even completely stopped twice, for a total of almost 3 hours, due to technical problems. In doing so, it seemed like the server was struggling to carry it all, as during one of those red flags, the chance of rain was shut down. In the final phase of the race, the car of Verstappen and co. thrown out once more, with race control not returning the laps lost because it happened too close to the end of the race.
The two-time F1 champion promptly decided to retire, but not without making his views clear: “This is just incompetence. It’s already the third time I’ve been kicked out of the game during the race, but it’s now also the last time I participate. You can’t call this an event, it’s a clown show. I hope the organizers think about what they’re going to do with this race, because on this platform it’s not going to work. If I go to Las Vegas and bet my money, I have even more chance of winning.”
Why no other game?
But where exactly is the problem? The virtual 24 hours of Le Mans is organized by Motorsport Games, part of the Motorsport network (Autosport, Motorsport.com, Motor1.com, …) and owner of rFactor 2, the game in which the race is organized. rFactor 2 has been out since 2013, but has long been criticized for the game’s instability, especially in online races. The driving behavior of the cars is exemplary, but bugs continue to plague the game.
In addition, one of the two red flags would have been caused by a DDoS attack on the server, someone with malicious intent overloading and shutting down the server. Other platforms are now protected against this, but the Le Mans 24h Virtual apparently is not. Then why isn’t the race organized on another game like iRacing? Because Motorsport Games, the owner of rFactor 2, holds the exclusive license for the virtual 24 hours of Le Mans. And as long as that remains the case, we will not see Max Verstappen at the start again…
