Ladies and Gentlemen racers. It's that time of year and it's on again, quite possibly the biggest challenge in Sim racing. 24 hours of "The Green Hell". The toughest track in the toughest sim. Personally I have done the last three of these. I have experienced being last in class and being first in class as well as outright winner. Every one of them has been special. A truly amazing event. The other various 6 and 12 hour events are just "warm ups". I wholeheartedly recommend getting involved. There are still some spots available, especially in the Touring class. Often teams might be needing a driver as plans firm up nearer the event. https://p1-gaming.de/index.php?forums/24h-series.189/
So fellow sim racers just to report that this race was run and won over the weekend. 22 teams in GT3, about 10 in Touring class. 139 drivers. The provisional results are HERE. The GT3 Mod was the latest Apex Modding GT3 and the cars were sensational. We had 3 dry compounds and 1 rain tyre. Rfactor 2 shone in this environment, we used the wet weather plugin and encountered 4-5 hours of rain. It was a challenge! After losing 3.5 laps (30 mins) with technical issues we Hagemann Racing fought back from P21 and losing only 2 laps to P1 in the remaining 20 hours we ended P7. The Wet weather tyre management and the transition from a wet and drying track and the tactical call to go to slicks made my morning 2 hour stint (from approx 7:45 am (8:45 in game) and one of the most enjoyable multiplayer stints I ever had. The drying line was getting wider but it was 69% wetness off path and I had to pit at the end of that lap! Last year it was my team mate who had to do it, this year it was me. It worked. Some new teams arrived and survived. One guy did the whole 24 hours solo save for 1 lap when he handed it over so he could stretch his legs. If you like your endurance racing it's amazing. The highlight of my sim racing calendar. Please consider getting involved next November. My race report was thus; So a few words after the 24 Hours of the Nordschliefe. My first words are to than @Markus Broch and his team including the talented and hard working @simon Christmann. It's a massive event and massive work, thank you. Welcome to the new teams that raced, I hope to race against you many times in the future. The pace at the front was incredible. In a clean run we would have been pressed to be P4 or P5. For every team and every time this race is a massive adventure and a massive journey. So it was for us at Hagemann Racing. Last year we won this event when everything went right including a good tactical call on tyres on a drying track. We welcomed two new drivers to the team @Luciano Santos and @Gerhard Zeller. Both nice guys and good drivers. We created our rota for 5 drivers and Lars started. It was clear from the opening hour that there were 3 teams with huge pace. AI Bug:Lars tried to pit after 2 hours but there was a mis-communication and he ended up doing 3 hours. In VR I understand that's tough. So after 3 hours at lap 21 we again tried to pit. This time AI took the car. Simon Christmann wisely suggested that we leave the AI in the car but his pace was poor and he ignored us on the radio so after 1 lap we got him DQ'd and we started from the pit garage again with Lars. Lars drove a lap and we tried once more-AI took the car again! One more lap (we figured we would give the AI a final chance to prove himself) and we DQ'd once more. This time Lars just did a lap of the GP circuit. Same result, AI took the car. @Greg Hall was kind enough to give us a fix for the bug and all drivers implemented the JSON file change. It was 3hrs55 mins when @Lars Hagemann finally managed to hand over the car to @Bjoern Hagemann. We had dropped from P9 and 4m40 sec from the lead to P21 and +3 laps! Bjoern cleared the Touring cars and handed to @Luciano Santos F in P16. Luciano took us to P14 with a solid drive in the wet. At 9hrs 15 min I took over and had a scrappy wet stint. Not my finest hour. The wet tyres tempted you on the out-lap but if you pushed that was the only good lap and then the rears were gone. 11:15 pm (23:15) I handed to Gerhard and went to bed. At 7 am Luciano was running in P8. We had had a good overnight. Next we had P7. Not sure if that was in mine or Lucianos stint? I was so looking forwards to a dry stint in daylight and Luciano said the words "It's raining". I took the car with wet tyres once more. I tried a different approach to managing the rear tyres and it worked, they stayed good for 7 laps. In this stint I built the gap to P8. Lars took the car at 9:45 am and Bjoern took it home from 10:45am. We had drama, fun, met new team mates. Congrats to the winners Reborn Racers you took the big one. GT Omega and Black Hawk great drives and to Team GPL. You guys were stunningly fast, well done. and Michael Roellin you are unbelievable. YouTube here
