Max Benecke and his team-mates get behind after a 20-hour lead at Nurburgring. Meanwhile Lando Norris wins his first IndyCar Challenge.
Benecke and Wallmeier place 5th at 24H race at Nurburgring
One of the weekend’s highlights was certainly the 24-hour race at the virtual Nurburgring. iRacing World Champion Max Benecke and his team-mates Jonas Wallmeier and Christopher Dambietz led the competition for the most part. Everything pointed to a third consecutive victory of an iRacing special event for Benecke and Wallmeier until they had a crash after 20 hours. The Team Redline Black lost a considerable amount of time repairing their #71 Ferrari 488 GT3 and finished the race 5th.
In the end, it was the BS+COMPETITION with Laurin Heinrich, Alexander Voss, and Philipp Eng earning the victory after 175 laps in their #089 BMW Z4 GT3. Although losing in the classic category, Redline still managed to get to podium places in the end: in the Cup2 class, Aleksi Uusi-Jaakkola and his team-mates emerged victorious for Team Porsche24 driven by Redline. The newly formed racing team by Formula 1 pilot Romain Grosjean placed second – a very respectable team debut for Thibault Cazaubon, Marin Colak, Daniel Lafuente and Andre Martins. Another RL squad, including Formula 1 driver Max Verstappen, Marcus Jensen, and Ayhancan Güven, placed third in this category after a turbulent race.
Norris turns invite into victory
Lando Norris gave his IndyCar iRacing Challenge debut at the Circuit of the Americas on Saturday. He displayed an astonishing performance, recovering from a spin. While the Brit celebrated his successful debut, the winner of the last two races, Team Penske’s Simon Pagenaud, finished on a disappointing 14th place. His team-mates Will Power and Scott McLaughlin ranked 6th and 4th respectively.
The final race is going to take place on Saturday, May 2. At Indianapolis Speedway, the champion will be finally crowned after six races. The three Penske pilots currently lead in points, with both Pagenaud and Power sharing fist place at 176 points and McLaughlin ranking third (161). Their hottest pursuer, Felix Rosenqvist, is almost 50 points behind the leaders. Therefore, we are probably going to see a champion from Team Penske next weekend.
deJong does is again
While we saw a new IndyCar champion, deJong scored his third consecutive win at the Subaru iRX All-Star Invitational. He finished ahead of both defending iRX World Champion Sami-Matti Trogen and Craig Breen. With a bold maneuver, deJong overtook the Irishman and maintained his position until the end.
With his third victory, deJong has the championship of the six-race series almost certainly in his bag. $10,000 are going to be donated to an organization the winner gets to choose. The fourth race takes place on Friday, May 1, at Lucas Oil Raceway.
Photo credit: iRacing
