How an unlikely tie-up won sim racing's biggest prize

By:

Josh Suttill

Jun 15, 2020, 2:17 PM

An unlikely partnership between World Endurance Championship LMP1 privateers Rebellion Racing and Williams Formula 1's highly-successful sim racing team yielded victory in the inaugural 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual. Here's how it triumphed in the biggest sim race ever staged

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For over half of the inaugural 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual, victory looked destined to go the way of one of the Rebellion Williams cars. In the end, only 17.7s and half a litre of fuel were all that came between the #1 line-up jointly fielded by Williams Esports and World Endurance Championship LMP1 privateer squad Rebellion Racing and a bitter defeat.

But following 24 hours of virtual racing featuring all of the drama, unreliability, safety cars, controversial collisions and penalties of the real-life Le Mans, the #1 entry of factory Mercedes GT gun Raffaele Marciello, Haas Formula 1 reserve Louis Deletraz and sim racers Niko Wisniewski and Kuba Brzezinski triumphed against the might of real-world motorsport giants such as Toyota and Penske, as well as dominant forces of the virtual world like Team Redline and Veloce Esports.