Michelin rolls out digital tires in Le Mans 24H Virtual
MANILA: The smart money is on esport continuing to flourish for the foreseeable future. And motorsports has found a new, safe home in the digital realm. Hooray for us.
The first-ever Le Mans 24 Hours Virtual has just happened, and saw Rebellion Williams Esport claim first place with its No. 1 car shared by Deletraz/Marciello/Wisniewski/Brzezinski.
Pole-sitters Dillmann/Guerrieri/Simoncic/Pedersen (No. 4 ByKolles Burst Esport) reached the checkered flag in second place, followed by the No. 13 Rebellion Williams Esport (Canapino/Aitken/Arana/Romanidis).
Porsche’s Esports Team expectedly topped the GTE Class following a dominant qualifying. The No. 93 Porsche 911 RSR of Tandy/Güven/Rogers/Ostgaard reached the goal first. This gives British driver Nick Tandy the distinction of having won both the real and virtual realms of the GTE Class with both Porsche and Michelin. In second place is the No. 95 Aston Martin (Thiim/Westbrook/Sorensen/Biancolilla), while R8G Esports Team’s No. 80 Corvette (Juncadella/Beche/Jayovski/Kappet) took third.
All these cars ran on “virtual” Michelin rubbers.
The rFactor2 software employed for the inaugural Le Mans 24 Hours Virtual provided endurance racing fans with a chance to enjoy their favorite spectacle, albeit digitally, while giving videogame fans an opportunity to discover motor racing from a fresh perspective that introduces them to the important role that tires play in motorsport.
Some 50 cars and 200 topflight racing drivers and sim racers joined the race, with drivers from different forms of racing and top names from the world of endurance racing teaming up with a lineup of sim racing stars to showcase their professionalism not only during their respective pre-race preparations but also in the course of the twice-around-the-clock race itself.
“The result was a gripping fight between the successive leaders who all chose similar race strategies and the gaps at the end were extremely close. As expected, the teams with the strongest reputations took turns in front and took the two ‘virtual’ red-flag interruptions that bunched up the field in their stride. Thanks to the quality of the coverage and the work put into the event by its organiser, the ACO (Automobile Club de l’Ouest), it was easy to forget at times that this wasn’t actually the real thing,” said a press release. “The inaugural Le Mans 24 Hours Virtual was a resounding success,” according to Michelin Motorsport Director Matthieu Bonardel, who added: “There is always room for improvement, but I would like to thank everyone at Michelin Motorsport, as well as all the staff at the ACO and the FIA World Endurance Championship who put so much effort into this project. Michelin’s business is advancing continuously on the digital front and we are delighted today to have had this opportunity to reach out to a new audience thanks to the Le Mans 24 Hours Virtual.”
The realism of steering wheel feedback reflected the different compound option for the Michelins. Like the real Le Mans 24 Hours, strategies were based on either hard or medium tires at the early stages of the race, then a softer option as dark descended on the track.
On Sunday morning, as the temperature started to climb to exceed 20°C again, teams switched back to the medium, then hard compound.
However, unlike the real Le Mans 24 Hours where multi-stinting the same set of tires is a usual occurrence, the teams had more of a leeway as they didn’t have a maximum allocation of tires for the race. Tire wear rates were higher than in real life. “The game effectively reproduced a cost of two seconds per lap (one stint equivalent to approximately 10 laps) due to wear, whereas Michelin’s tires deliver consistent lap times from the start to the end of runs of up to four stints at a time.”
The French tiremaker “hopes to be able to work with the rFactor2 platform’s designers so that competing teams have a broader spectrum of possible strategies in the future while demonstrating the consistency of its tires’ performance more fully.”
The quality of the race’s video coverage kept millions of fans captivated across the world, with viewing figures boosted by Michelin’s own social media teams who provided live streaming of the race on Michelin and Michelin Motorsport’s Facebook pages in 30 countries. The teaser video posted by the French firm ahead of the race attracted by 1.3 million views on Instagram alone, plus another 450,000 on YouTube and 155,000 on Facebook.
Screengrabs from Michelin
Also read: Porsche details Le Mans and Nurburgring performance in new documentary
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