LIVE - FINAL - SUZUKA - SRO E-SPORTS GT CHAMPIONSHIP 2020

[Music] [Music] hello and welcome to the sro esports gt series grand finale from suzuka we had a brilliant five round championship earlier this year and now it's time to put all three of our classes on track at the same time we've got the am class which is from the public qualifiers we've got silver drivers from the series like champion jesus cecilia and front runners arthur camera and enzo bonito and we've got pros including andy sushek and roman monte another pro we've got is david perrell who can help with driver coaching in both the real world and the sim world let's take a look with the success of this series sro are branching out into different esports series around the world so keep your eyes peeled for this um very excited for the gt esports asia championship to get underway but in asia for this suzuka race in the grand finale it is a new format it's a two-hour race this time with a mandatory pit stop now you don't have to change your tyres but you do have to put in some fuel so that's going to bring in an element of strategy that we maybe didn't see in the earlier rounds of the series tire management fuel consumption and strategy are going to be incredibly important as is getting to grips with this suzuka circuit one of the greatest race tracks in the world let's take a look at it with the track guide hey guys i hope you're doing well i'm sorry i can't be here tonight after the grand final i'm racing at silverstone in f2 so yeah i'm very happy to be back at real racing but unfortunately i can't i can't take part in the sro sportban final i wish everyone all the best and good luck in the meantime i will i will be back this winter with some sim racing uh when i will have more off time so you can have a look at my onboard suzuka in my porsche gt3 and i hope you enjoy the race bye [Music] paul jeffrey from race department here as we head on to the suzuka circuit for a fanatic powered guided lap on board with louis delatraz heading into the first corner 260 kilometers per hour down a fourth gear control the car on the brakes run it out wide into third catch the apex on the inside as we run the car all the way out maximizing the width of the circuit before we head into snake third gear incredibly important to catch the apex on each section of corner here unless you'll be running wide and losing barrel loads of time through one of the most complex and technical parts of this wonderful japanese racetrack into the final left-hand part of the corner long radius massively important get on the accelerator as early as possible for the run up to degna this is an incredibly fast part of the racetrack into fourth gear catch the inside curve run wide down a third gear be careful on the off camber not to run too wide onto the astroturf and lose time as we go under the bridge for the figure of eight configuration that is the suzuka grand prix track into the hairpin down into first gear be careful not to lock a tire catch the car at the inside accelerate hard as you possibly can now for one of the fastest parts of the track this is a moment for the driver to relax check his gauges check his tire temperatures and prepare himself mentally and physically for the spoon corner a double apex left-hander first part of the corner third gear nice and tight in run the car out wide balance the car on the brake into second gear occasionally get a little bit of snap over steel which would get there but we managed to keep it under control for the back stretch the fastest part of the race track now foot planted firmly to the floor as we're coming into the 130r a flat out incredibly dangerous old-school corner the porsche grips beautifully we don't need to run up to the full width of the circuit as we head into the chicane down to fourth third second gear accelerate between the two corners case the inside apex don't run too wide onto the astro turf and that is a lap of the 3.6 mile suzuka grand prix circuit powered by fanatec [Music] so that's the iconic suzuka track two hours of racing in the sro esports gt series grand finale coming up now so let's head over to the commentary team of ben constanduras martin haven and of course david addison guys you are muted ben you are muted uh i will be taking part in the pit lane uh as your kind of pit reporter inside the game looking at the live timing screen but we do have the voice of the gods and can't be more real than david addison and martin haven as your commentators for this evening david you've already done a days worth of commentary you've got any words left can't hear david i think uh he's in a different room so he'll talk to me in a second but martin is now uh in the room uh but perhaps muted david are you there i am now ben yes um strangely even though martin haven and i are in the same place we are discovering all sorts of um new possible gremlins that can crop up on sunday evening you see because kremlin's don't offer work on a sunday evening but we found a few to play with this evening but we are here and we're looking forward to what promises to be a fascinating race i mean it's a great circuit that's been chosen for this grand finale and the entry itself is a really impressive one isn't it with a few of the pros that we've got used to seeing over the course of the season uh the silvers that really were standouts and the ams and there are many of those that have had a very competitive championship as well and the man that's guided through the am championship over the last couple of weeks has been martin haven who joins us as am expert and commentator expert extraordinaire um we talk about them as ams martin but they're just as pro as the silver drivers in the field that were chosen as part of the silver series i think the big difference is that they're not generally part of large teams like most of the pro sim racers are but you're right i mean that's been one of the takeaways for me from the am series is how relentlessly on the money these guys are it's not like us sitting down and fooling around with the game and crashing every third lap or every third corner which is what david and i would clearly do because that's what our real racing driving was like i mean these guys are absolutely on the money all our races have been 60 minutes hell for leather from from lights to flags so i mean an indication of that we you just heard the the circuit description from all jeffrey paul jeffrey who i was doing the commentary with we were wondering just how well the am guys would go against the silvas on the pro drivers well the answer is we've got an ammon pole and he was sixth in the points so the answer is they go quite well actually against all the other sort of better known and better fantasy drivers so that's going to be very interesting i think to see just how it all works out in the mix longer race more strategy and setup is going to be king really isn't it yeah a mixture of vehicles are being chosen here are some of those names mikhail statenko has the pole position for gtwr racing team uh tim yarschel really a silver driver in acc we're using asceto corsa competizione as our platform florin hasa has been showing very well their teammates at uronix gaming you can see at the top of the screen the gtwr esports silver drivers andrea capoccia will start on the front row of the grid in his audi alongside his am teammate jojo simonini also part of that team and simonini a bit further down and 13th on the grid and they are the audi competitors in their r8 lms evo machines the next up is the the amr v8 vantage aston martin has a cecilia who won the silver championship he'll start in third position here a look at the bentley drivers two pros from bentley andy susek sadly roman monty will not be with us because of a pedal issue with his machine at home so we don't see him alberto garcia is the silver driver and nizar sauri in the am bentley yeah he was a winner at silverstone the season opener so he's got uh pedigree in that bentley as well ferrari have entered their works drivers from the f1 esports championship david tunnitzer and enzo bonita always there and thereabouts and david perel the pro driver much as pro sim driver as he is pro real driver the silver drivers for lamborghini giovanni de salva and camille franchac he was the winner of the sro esports championship last year when it was an on-site event supporting the endurance events lexus with three cars that's a bit of a surprise haniel sabti axel petit and alexandra vromo uh no am drivers there but mclaren well represented by g2 esports duo arthur cameron and niels nalyox patrick selva and yuri pachenko as well and we've got it's going to come back in the mercedes not very many mercedes watch out for emilia hossani who is incredibly fast and really didn't have a good season in that championship but this one-off event perhaps more his thing porsche's samir ibriami very very fast a privateer with alex turato and then eamon murphy alongside actually five porsches but uh as previously mentioned by jack sadly our champion louis delatraz so busy david uh in the real world of motorsports not only in formula two but also participating in the sro uh gt championship that doesn't have the time to join us this evening yeah that's gonna become a problem for future esports championships and events isn't it because the real world racing starts to take up uh take shape once again it's not just a weekend that drivers are losing it's perhaps a thursday to travel to practice friday to qualify saturday to race on a sunday so it might well be that early in the the week of an evening becomes the go-to esports time but we shall see but even so ben it is fair to say we've got a great entry for this uh grand finale great mix of drivers and great mix of brands as well looking at aston martin and ferrari and mercedes the cars turned their way around the saluka circuit which is a really good choice so we're about to go racing aren't we um is it going to be from the pro the silver or the ams that we find a winner let's put that on the spot first who's your money on ben i i think the mclarens have always been strong he's sicilia though up there in third position in the aston martin looks very good of course b.o.p not so much the thing here debbie tinitsa in the ferrari fanta i'd fancy a ferrari it should be really nice to see a ferrari on the top right so as fence sitting went comes that was a pretty good example right let's move on uh martin thought what brand or what driver might win i don't know i mean i have no previous of suzuka with any of these so that that has never stopped you from making an opinion before all right well let's go with stat senko samir abrami over the long run of the am series over five races he was almost always at the front in his porsche and he hasn't qualified quite so strongly here 20th place but he does race strongly so he's the am champion okay let i'll i'll put my am shirt on him that'll curse him okay well i would normally say jesus cephalia bearing in mind that he's the silver champion and he's a double winner but the two wins came in the west and it's not looking very wet here so he might not come out on top but he has qualified well third fastest there he is number 15 joseph cecilia so i'll go for the aston martin it's a fine british brand we're about to go racing it's two hours there's a mandatory pit stop we'll let our pit lane correspondent ben constant jurors worry about that in due course and strategy and explain how all that's going to work because we are about to go racing the cars come now down towards the final chicane work their way through what is known as either the casio triangle or the last curve depending on your point of view but anyway as i say we are set to go racing senko starts on pole position andrea capuccia will line up alongside him and they ramble their way now up towards the timing line david tonitza lining up fourth with pole position then on the inside of the grid has just cecilia there in the number 15 has to mark him so two hours of racing the sro esport gt series championship grand finale set to get underway the lights are red the field turns its way slowly up towards the timing line during the two by two nose art formation when the lights change we will be in business and this two hour races go the lights go green the two hours off the front of the grid accelerate away now who is it gonna be is it gonna be statsenko or capucha who scores the inside line it is that senko from position a drama already tonight to get sideways gets clipped by an audi and from fourth on the grid he's gonna come out if he's lucky just in the top ten but drama for david tronitza right at the first corner that looks like denise is just being a little ambitious on colder times maybe he hadn't worked enough pressure and i'm not sure there was contact to put him sideways it is statsenko that leads in the white red and black audi capocia behind him and the aston martin cecilia in third position so audi locking out the front row but not dominating qualifying quite as much tim yarchelle up to six alex torado in the quarter up to seventh place there'll be lots of changes as the ferrari driver tries to recover that lost ground in the 95 car damage there he is coming through the deck the kerbs he's got to try and work out where he's going to find pace on these audis so up towards the hairpin they come tonits and then crawling all over the back of the audi as you see that's the car i think he just clipped in fact he got all sideways it looked as though it was a ton it's a mistake the back coming round on him he tried to save it but the good news is he kept out of the gravel he's still in the race and he's still competitive and of course there is a long way to go this is the longest of the sro esport gt series races that we've had in two hours so the race leading car then accelerating up towards the end of that one number one four four because senko leading from andrea capuccia two hours round one and two hazel cecilia is third then as they work their way up through 130 are heading towards the casio triangle in a moment audi won two aston martin is three and stacenko doing a good job of being able to fend off cappuccia remember it's am ahead of silver here as their look porsche to the outside line the rover racing porsche of uh dietrich tries to gain ground coming down towards the chicane around the outside and now let's see what grunt the porsche has got as the leaders complete that one and we've got a yellow flag out somewhere yeah yellow flags further back in the field so it shouldn't disrupt the leaders uh four of the top eight from the category so they'll be very happy with that and the leader and dietrich was hanging on to 10th place there from simone but the black audi is on the inside i think he's squeezed by the porsche he has so similar up into 10th place and dietrich in that rover racing uh porsche has been pushed down to 11th florian harsu looking at in the blue audi now that's taken me a little bit to recognize exactly because that's not the colours he was racing in through the am season that's one of the joys for me of watching these esports races is that they are much more want to change their liveries from day to day and race to race than in the real world because of course it doesn't cost anything no that's true keeps you on your toes as well i was about to suggest that the leading pro was down in 23rd place andy sutchep he's dropped even lower down than that i'm afraid to say as there look we've got three now four for the race lead and a change as well because abi hussaini who was really quick in the charity that we had at monza at the end of march he's just got up into third place in the mercedes so it's am ahead of three silvers but ben we know from previous races that amy hosseini is always a very competitive driver even though his results didn't necessarily reflect the speed of the series he's got incredible speed hasn't he but it's it's about kind of consistency for him and keeping out of trouble as well remember he's got that great speed and very good at defending john watson said but uh sometimes a little bit heavy-handed with defensive work so if you can knuckle down and focus and uh and get that mercedes running well then with this long event you don't have to be panicky about uh passing people straight away you can think about your strategy and we've already had a fit visitor in actual critique he is now down in 29th and last position in alexis there was a bit of repair work to do on his car because he'd made contact with david perrell i think on lap one they were right at the tail of the field um the other person you saw spinning at the chicane uh was alberto garcia uh who took a a loop there but he is now continued and he's down in 27th so just one pit visitor and of course you are allowed to visit the pits at any point there is no window that you have to fit into okay so we can expect pit stops to shuffle the order we're getting a drive-through for the car in fifth place martin yeah tim jar shell one of the top audi drivers in the am series and he is the second am in the field fifth position and was that for jumping the start did he make a pass before the lights went green at least try to actually there in the replay you see the mercedes and the audi gang up on the aston martin and you'll also see the contact that you've just disposed of it was a nudge i was suggesting it might have been a driver error coal tars at the start of the race but no there was a definite nudge from i think it might have been your shells yeah hence the drive through and again not the colors he raced in in the am series either so he and um but even trying to be foreign you still don't get around the officials do you still get your drive through so barry is fifth drive-through will be seven of course in a two-hour race he can make amends for that up front it is the best of the am senko leading but capuchin i thought was just getting a little bit more toeing a little bit more committed to the task then you've got in third place amir hosseini and that grunts and go mercedes is going to be well worth watching now it's caught up and passed the aston martin and look he's getting away cephelia for the moment he's a bit busy defending from yarchel but in a sense that's a phony fight he doesn't need to because the audi is going to have to pit for that enforced drive-through and he's got to take that within three laps and of course he'll know that because that'll be on his timing as well and very wisely tim yarchel comes in immediately the longer you've got to recover from that drive-through the better it'll work for you so florian hearts are now on his own in eighth position the archel will drop down to somewhere right at the tail of field probably just ahead of axel petit but not by much there you go plunging down the order as he comes back out of the pit lane we have three pros then in the entry they're 24th 25th and 28th in the order so it does illustrate just how different real world rating is from sim racing as the mclarens file their way through chase in turn by uh lexus by what else we got in that battle pack porsche and uh the race leader then with an hour and fifty three minutes to go for the moment remains there as michael cenko but andrea carpaccia giving energetic chase as you look lower down the order at what is going on there's capacity through a shot and do we have a change for the lead because capuchin accelerates towards us that senko still doing his level best to hang on in there amir hosseini is the man to watch but yes the race leading out is still absolutely tied together senko keeping capuchin at bay but hosseini has very much become part of that battle for the lead he has but the question is why was the mercedes so unpopular there are only two in this field it wasn't represented in the am category at all and clearly not that represented either in the silvers or in the pro category so what is it about the car that works here that perhaps didn't work over the whole range of the races i mean we've seen it be very competitive in spa but that's not everywhere he's got good top end speed there's no question about that looking at the back of capacious black audi can't find a way through there you'd have to be brave wouldn't you to try going around the outside as he come down through 130r down to the chicane and it might be that he has to try and play a slightly longer game of course each of these different marks will change the balance of fuel and tire wear will change the performance relative to to the others but it's statsenco capocia capocia hossaini and sicilia who's in fourth position in the aston martin that's david's money there where's my money what is that what is that done samir ibrahim well he's moved up from 20th to 19th but that was only for a drive-through from somebody ahead of him so my 10 years is weighing him down as ever with our predictions we're spot off aren't we really here so up front to that st by four tenths of a second just going back to your mercedes point and ben might have a thought on this as well but i seem to remember that we had more of them at monza in the non-championship race and people had a look at what was competitive and had a sniff of the bop and then uh we had a bit of shuffling and changing because people thought okay maybe that isn't the car to have them it did seem better as though the number of mercedes dwindled after monza didn't it well it was very much the remember the championship charity race was a one-off thing whereas once you got into the full five-round championship you had to commit to your car and across the balance of all of the different tracks that we were going to obviously we didn't know about kyle army but the rest of them we knew and the balance of tracks just didn't suit the mercedes it's amazing even to me who's i find five or six seconds a lap off the pace of these guys i've been doing a little bit of racing i've been trying to anyway um and it is amazing how different all of these cars feel as opposed to and i'm sure it's in the same in the real world but there is definitely cars that suit tracks better than others have different balances and as you're right saying uh look off their tyres better and their fuel better and that is an important thing in this particular race now david we are looking at the pictures of the leaders and creeping into shot is the lexus of alex petit so the question now for mikhail statsenko our race leader is where is he going to catch this lexus how long is it going to take and how easy or otherwise is it going to be to get by and of course behind capocia in the blackout is thinking all right here we go except he's dropped a little bit further back from statsenko the leader than he wants to and he's got that wretched mercedes up his exhaust pipe so he's if he's going to make a pass oh what's that is that parel no that's enzo bonito it is yeah and he's battling with torato in the porsche this is the fifth and sixth toronto goes back ahead but they're trading places the porsche stays ahead of the ferrari yeah i mean the traffic is going to be interesting because that lexus is a good straight-line car it's got good grunt in a straight line a good talk to drag it out of a slow corner but axel petit is an experienced driver in simracing terms so i don't think he's going to do anything silly he won't get in the way enzo benito here who we had high hopes for in the silver series but he's struggled a little bit with the ferrari and he's just lost another place as you see to alex toronto one of the ams 10th in the championship he was and terrazzo having got back ahead he's doing his best now just to edge away ever so slightly hauser is seventh tonight so recovering after his half spin at the first corner of his eighth seminini his ninth and yanma dietrich in the rover racing liberate porsche is in 10th as you see the leaders now have to thread their way through the traffic statsenco goes around the outside of the lexus cappuccia knows he can't afford to sit there we don't get lafferty too often in the esports series but the two leading hours have gone through and so too has hosseini nobody gains nobody loses out of all of that and if anything it's given hosseini renewed optimism martin to try to find a way up into a second spot i just worried about the aston martin there for a moment he managed to make it through but he was right behind the mercedes at this point on the previous lap and he just dropped back a little be right petite staying out of the way the next deal of course is for alex toronto in the porsche who's got the ferrari right behind him he's got to get a clean pass as well toronto finished just in the top 10 with points in the final round of the am championship which was at mount panorama what a great choice that was from the fans um but he also scored strongly he was in third place at silverstone the season opener here we go challenge for second place the mercedes had a good slingshot from the casio triangle and then the advantage vanished down into turn one but while these two are squabbling hazel cephalia is buying back into the battle isn't he because the aston martin is creeping back into contention fifth is toronto but he has got to first of all get past the traffic and then catch up but now you see because the audi in second place of capacio is going defensive hussaini has got a bit stuck and cecilia now is right back on the tail of the mercedes so you've got two big powerful front engine gt3 brands there mercedes just ahead of aston martin and actually while capocia is having to go defensive now statsenko all of a sudden martin has got something like a discernible gap yeah and that's exactly what the leader needs of course he needs this battle to go on forever and ever but essentially an hour and 47 minutes and a couple of seconds would be nice but the longer it does go on the more chance he has to run away then the the better it'll be for him in the long run so cappuccia at the moment is just trying to hang on to second place and say he's trying to get it literally trying to get past him in the armor support car but yeah the longer it goes on then the leader clear on his own not giving a toe to anybody as well in the next couple of laps he'll be able to start accelerating away but looking again this elasticated third place gap has stretched out hasn't it because having started the sentence with the philia right up behind mercedes he then dropped back a little bit around the mid part of the lap the mercedes sprints away says defilia has got to do the hard work all over again and ben i wonder from your timing screens whether you can keep an eye for us on toronto because it does seem to the eye as though the porsche in fifth place is getting a little bit closer and it won't be too long surely even allowing for the traffic before alex toronto joins in that leading gaggle well uh um amir husseini lost a second on this lap from that little half a challenge so instantly he falls into the clutches of toronto jesus cecilia lost seven tenths on that lap whereas terrato running his consistent two-minute zero laps brought him a little bit closer and that's exactly what you're seeing but it was more to do with that half-hour challenge at the start of the lap than toronto picking up the pace right okay it's so senko in the meantime trying to stretch that gap what he had done now it comes down and get all of these gaps fascinatingly elasticated no one really being able it doesn't seem to kind of form a pattern martin one corner you think right getting away the next it shrinks again it's great for us to watch but it also it's a hard race to read at the moment yeah and i think it always going to be this early in a in a two-hour race we've only gone in 15 minutes but it was interesting how quickly the black audi caught the red white and black one statsenko looked like he was going to have maybe five six seven tenths came down to just a tenth as they came across the line so capote was right back with him and he's brought the others he's bought the mercedes he's brought the aston ah now change there because toronto and bonito have both gone by as they got down there to the spoon curve they had both gone by the back marker so you will see them next up you'll see the porsche um in fifth position alex terrata with the ferrari behind it and they are a little freer now to try and chase this group down of course these guys are punching a big hole in the air and that won't hurt either the porsche will be able to try and close up fast that's true enough as you ride now with amy hosseini this is the run uh heading towards the completion of the lap down towards 130r and then towards the casio triangle a brave drive as part of the circuit there's the two hours for the race lead still nose to tail stacenko versus cappuccio michael statsenko the race leader as he has been since the start amir hosseini qualified fifth is up to third fourth hazel sicilia but alex tarata fifth enzo bonito six accelerate that out of the casio triangle over the timing line clock ticks on down 3 45 local time is where the time of day has been set for and therefore the ambient conditions according to that through turn one they go then out of first corner up towards snake and again capuchin just when he wants to start attacking statsenko for the lead has got to think about that mercedes right there behind him more battles further down alexander of rome in 18th place there in number two full zero the uh lexus and he's got ibrahimi behind him in the porsche number 49 so 18th and 19th a pair of them on the back of patrick selva who was a race winner in the silver series in dominant fashion at silverstone in round one yeah and in that multi-colored porsche is the champion of the am series samira bryami uh was on the podium in all but one race didn't win but he had a second and two third places he was fourth in the season over at silverstone the only race that he didn't score in round four in barcelona and it was really tough you know 40 cars in a in a one-hour race only 10 get points and in fact the the race leader mikhail statsenko the russian driver scored just once he had 25 points at the end of the season so he was the winner in spa in some very wild conditions and a 37-car pileup on lap one he managed to just about get through it and then was uncatchable after that so um that was that was his big uh point score his only point score of the season he's big paid as it were yeah it was but now he's out front again without having everybody wrecked he he was fourth on the grid in fairness and and when the rep the rain came he just by the skin of his teeth avoided drama carnival and andy souchak in the bentley the capex car eleventh in the pro series where is he running at the moment 24th position but this is your pro class lead battle can you believe 24th and 25th ezekiel perez compact behind him so you've got an am ahead of the silver stars and your pros being humbled a little bit at the moment possibly you could argue because of real world racing they've got other priorities however they're a long long way down the order david tonitz then ahead of yan marcel dietrich ferrari versus porsche two great sports car racing brands dive down through first corner and right now it is still the ferrari that's just got the advantage as in turn tonita is trying to close up onto the back of florian hasser yeah florian hart a fourth in the am class he was the winner in barcelona he also scored fifth position in race two in spa in the rain actually he was running second uh early on in the race and then had a an error dropped himself off the road came back into it and he's there in that pale blue car sister car course having the drive through early on his car was silver highlights on the wing end plates and on the dive planes which you can barely see the other car with with bright pink highlights which is very much more a photogenic choice i think but you mentioned that just to prove that you've got your anorak on i can tell we've got a yellow flag out there's a car in the gravel there it is and that was cappuccia he was running second and now cappuccia is off the road now ben do we know what happened to him was that a driver error or was there contact what could we discern about the man that was running second being off the road he was of course in a close battle with hosseini wasn't he yes i just need to get into my replay mode to find out exactly what's happened it takes me a few moments to get to the right car and apologies it wasn't meant to be a hospital pass i'll go off and kick the evidence suddenly it's test match special you're asking the score of how well how many threes did jeffrey boycott score in the southern hemisphere before lunch on the second day that's an easy one martin yeah right so this is the new order then it is that senko from hosseini from chicago so we've got three for the race league toronto is up to fourth and of course is closing uh we'll give you an update on the capacity of demise as soon as we have one three amps in the top six i'll just say thanks so much yes and that therefore means three silvers in the top six okay so let's have a look here as the mercedes tries to go the long way round the outside this isn't where the incident happened on the previous lap but i'm suggesting possibly that hosseini was having a go at the audi because he's still having a go at this audi or well the other side of the coin is he's so buoyed up by one audi falling off he's trying to make the other one fall off as well he's got a long nose that mercedes long noses tend to get shoved into gaps don't they but husseini is taking facilia with him as well so you're right i mean he's there he's on the tail he's giving a really really hard time now amir hussaini who came oh so close to winning that monster charity event but there was contact between him and neil snyoks they put him off the road he'd like to win this to go out on a high but actually just when he wants to attack look what's going on he's got this elliot right up behind him now this his replay is second hosseini is behind him in third place hosseini closes and closes and capacity just exits stage left it's actually he's he's crossed up you can't see it from the outside view but as he hits that curve it the rear end steps away he corrects it and obviously then spits himself stage left and into the wall so he didn't actually touch the wall he stayed out the wall went through the gravel and is now back in the race but obviously losing a lot of time strategy can still play a part though he can still get himself back up into a decent position okay thanks bad so now we've got five for the race lead statsenko hosseini cecilia toronto bonito and haaser that is your top six three amps three silvers hosseini makes his move for the race lead but that audi is a very rapid car isn't it because even at this part of the circuit but you might anticipate the power of the mercedes to carry it through statsenko hangs on to the advantage i said he breaks late diving into the chicane again gets a face full of the r8 flicks right flicks left right again onto the pitch straight and look the audi's gone two legs as he accelerates out of the corner that's remarkable isn't it because it looked like suddenly husseini's car had started to fire on all cylinders and he just drove by senko until suddenly he didn't and then stepsenko on the inside in 130r had the advantage and that's just ridiculous so statsenko hanging on doesn't know how to win in trying conditions but husseini is all over the back of him and yet the audi just starts to counter away as he picks up the throttle off the corners and so hosseini then spends all of his top end speed down the straight trying to close that back again and we've now got all five top drivers together what's the gap from the leader back to fifth place benito 1.2 seconds maybe benito behind toronto's porsche and they've dropped florian haas a long way back flooring hearthstone nearly four seconds there he is behind the leader and he's leading the peloton he's got dj franchac and de nox as well and again the mercedes looks the long way around the outside here's the chance for the aston martin can't get on to the throttle uh that's bad news because the mercedes is now free to attack stat senko once more husseini has an underlying and undercut and under lap that's an overlap but on the inside i suppose and again the circuit turns away from him but now the audi has got a front engine gt car in both mirrors he's got the aston martin on one side he's got the mercedes on the other statsenko fighting for his life in the lead but hussaini and cicelia are side by side the aston martin is going to go through on the inside on board with the mercedes no he's still there this contact mercedes just avoids the gravel three wide off goes toronto oh my goodness the porsche the loser no the ferrari bonitos all falls into his lap haaser is going to go through in third and dietrich and francek go through with him well pick the bones out of that so mayhem effectively at the chicane right so senko leads bonito is up to second hearthstone is third david tonitzer is back at the races fourth yeah marcel dietrich fifth and amir hussaini is down to sixth camille franczak is seventh niels new york's now suddenly arrives on the scene eighth ninth is cementing the tenth is chris hooker down to eleventh goes sicilian now not only if we had a shuffling of the order but as people were having to break people dodging left and right they've all concented up so suddenly it's a very close fight for second and back and it's a different order but through it all statsenko impregnable at the moment no matter who it is or what they throw at him he's able to fend them off and a great race for alex toronto in that porsche is all undone he's dropped behind the ezekiel compact and andy sushek so he's down in the mid-20s somewhere after just basically having nowhere to go and getting shunted off the track i sense there might be a little bit of stewarding looking at some of those replays because uh the porsche was definitely not involved in that until suddenly the accident came and found him yeah toronto's actually gone into the pits and looks to be retiring out the race if not a very long pit stop uh i was actually wrong about capucha he's also retired out the race bailed straight away didn't even get back to the pits the other drivers is tim yarschel and actual petite also no longer with us all right okay so yahshua obviously after serving that drive-thru has gone do you know what this is a long two hours i'm not going to get back so i'm just going to call it a day and get out the way an axel petite once he's been lapped that's not happening for him either so that's understandable the way that car went off just looked like a connection issue with almost as much as anything else but here's the replay we're on board with the ferrari aren't we that's the porsche in front that's tarata and he's about to see way out wide hosseini so terrata goes for a gap husseini comes across he hits sicilia cecilia hits tarata it's a pinball effect isn't it across the road then hosseini and cecilia make very solid contact of both spin and everybody else has to go around them in avoidance now we're back live with tonitza he's fourth that is florian hassler ahead of him and they dive down towards turn one the ferrari with a slightly tighter line tries to get up the inside as they go through the first corner but as yet tonita has not been able to find the gap so haas offends him off enzo benito then ahead of the pair in second place and statsenko still leads the way bye ben quite some way 3.3 seconds now the margin all of that fighting was kind of compressing the field though but the pace was slow when they were doing that obviously now that senko is getting back into hot lap session and just bang in the laps and make sure they're fast and that's allowed him this breathing space over bonito but bonito is fast and i'm curious as to some of the more intelligent drivers someone like niels nalyok's not necessarily the fastest man out on track there he is but he's the kind of guy who will be putting in like setting himself a benchmark and just matching that benchmark so that he saves fuel and saves tires in the second half of the race when we see those pit stops play out i think these kind of guys benito and uh kendall franchac and niz naoks they may come to the top as the guys who have been absolutely hammering it and husseini being one of those you know there's no need to make that kind of a move with 90 minutes still to go uh they will fade because they've had to taken too much out their tires and they will have to fill totally their fuel again i can't see hussaini surviving to the end of the race after what he just did first of all the unsafe rejoin from the off track area where he hits one car who then hits another so he's ruined at least one other driver's race and then having not got by the aston martin he torpedoed him in the casio triangle of doom so uh if husseini doesn't get a drive-through um is it dinner time in the stuart's room i mean you know that's i don't having having seen the way that the stewarding work for the am series obviously i i wasn't party to all the silver races but that would definitely be a drive-through in one of the am races uh two amps in the top three i'll just say at this stage right excellent um and just to echo what ben said um there's a long way to go or it's early days yes and they might be taking life out of their tires and abusing the fuel loads so um you know just hold that thought right now however enzo bonito could be the man to watch he's a silver you know martin because the lead gap is coming down it's down by three tenths from alappa go and bonito of course is a very experienced sim racer there's his teammate 95 which is david tonitza in the fda hublot esports team ferrari tonita is on the tail look at florian houser and actually crawling all over the back of him that's released bonito the gap for the lead is down by another 10th yes statsenko still leads as he has done since the start of the race but bonito could well be a big factor before too long now anybody watching in santa carta bolognese might be very excited to see that franchise lamborghini is up in seventh place i'm not sure i know no lamborghini's finished in the points in the am category not sure that they even finished in the top 20 in more than on more than one occasion in the yam category how well was the lamborghini represented among the silvers we had a handful in terms of number they didn't have brilliant race results from memory cameo franchise was one of the stars of the last round at uh kyle army in the wet he chased cecilia for the bulk of it but had a moment i want to say he half spun himself when he was going for the race leap fell down the order so finished fourth or fifth so yeah he was second in kyle army according to according to the points i have anyway so um yeah so but so yeah it wasn't the most popular brand and he didn't have the results in either pro or silver really yeah and i wonder again how much of that was down to the choices of track that they had to deal with silverstone spa you know very quick nurburgring grand prix circuit a little bit nadgery barcelona quite a a handling circle at all but i mean real world lamborghini is a great car around barcelona it's pretty decent car around silverstone and spa so there are there are differences aren't there between the real and the virtual absolutely and you know ferrari you anticipate always to be up there that didn't have the results across either championship necessarily the audis definitely did and here you have the one and three florian houser who's at the moment the cork in the bottle he's keeping tonita and dietrich's porsche and amir hosseini behind him there's another brief yellow flag that comes out and goes back in again as cece runs wide now despite the incident plural that amir hussaini has had not only is he still going and seemingly still going strongly uh but we aren't aware yes i don't believe of any uh damn occlusion penalty hanging over him literally just come as you think about it ten seconds stop and go uh for unsafe rejoin and causing a collision so basically they were listening to martin and they just copied that down and put it in the in the chat never a bad idea more often however can you just go save time ben i know you're at the wrong end of the pit lane can you run and find out why samir abrami the am champion is in the pits is he stopping now with 90 minutes to go it seems unlikely oh it's something i can do much faster in the virtual world than in the real world i know so disappointing that not good for your fitness level ben that's the problem so yeah we'll get the news in a moment here in the meantime flurry and house are ahead of david tonight so the two of them accelerating now up towards the casio triangle jan marcel dietrich next up in the porsche eighth he was in the silver series this year but actually again they're pairing off on there the porsche drops back a little bit out wide goes house and now tonight is on his toes he's gonna have the outside line down towards the chica it's not gonna work david slot back in behind try and get the run coming out of the chicane which he tries now he's on the pound nails his foot to the boards behind look hosseini comes up to have a go at dietrich but it's all in vain because he's got to serve the stop and go so he might get a plate on the track but as soon as he's done it he's going to have to give it back and then look seventh you've got the leading mclaren niels new york becoming more of a factor as this race goes on the problem there for dietrich in the porsche was does he fight hosseini does he let him go and then allow him maybe to hold him up and back him up into new york's in the mclaren it's it's a bit of an invidious position because he will know that husseini has a a penalty to serve which you'll have to serve either at the end of this lap or the next but husseini again you know for my money if if you get a penalty get in the pit lane immediately try and leave yourself the longest possible number of minutes and seconds to recover from it a 10 second stop and go plus he'll then have to do his fuel stop midway through the race somewhere anyway yeah he's not a factor anymore is he husseini so unfortunately he rather hoist by his over exuberance in trying to rejoin after that little moment that caused a much bigger moment and ruined a couple of races for florian harter in the blue audi though the ferrari is the challenge his uh david tanitsa is all over the back of him and not giving him a moment's respite niels neux i still think could well be a factor as this race goes on i'll get ben to explain more about him in a moment but just to do the first part of the story as you look at tonita in fourth place neux is up into seventh he's the leading mclaren but the pace seems to be good the gaps are not that great between him and those ahead he's going to gain a pace anyway when amir helsaini pitts and ben nielsen is a very experienced esports competitor and team manager isn't he yeah back in the back in the day back in the proper day two early 2000's he was uh runner up in a live for speed competition where he nearly won a bmw uh and uh the now boss of g2 esports beat him and so when they were reunited a few well about two years ago now at the race of champions uh in mexico suddenly there was a discussion to be had and nils has got himself a a job back in esports uh as the team manager of rebel esports programme uh which is a partnership between uh red bull motorsports and g2 as an esports uh global esports um team and uh niels is super fast as well i mean he qualified to be part of the race of champions and there was only four places for that so again incredibly talented especially on a set of coaster competizione but he's a he's a thinking driver i mean he's incredibly moany every single race there is a protest from him um whether it be acc or whether it be race of champions or anything else he does he does always complain but he's that kind of perfectionist and the guys that he looks after off the camera in this race as his teammate you know they will spend all day working out what the best thing is and he's got a great youtube channel actually that you can follow if you want some tips on acc specifically on uh how to get the best out of it he has an open discord you can join and get set ups from i've been stealing setups in my series from him and uh ultimately a very generous man but also fiercely competitive but as i said earlier a thinking man and he might be doing something different on strategy here because this is very important to him well that's partly why i was raising the topic of neil's new york because as we've established in the silver series then yes he is experienced and yes he knows how to drive and how to run teams and uh yes he's a perfectionist she'll be so bad but either way uh he has high standards and he's not here just for making up the numbers is he so yeah don't rule him out all that experience and the the strategy that's going to come into play with what an hour and 24 minutes to go just under noyoke's the leading mclaren driver in the race could well be more of a factor especially as look he's in this battle pack and the bop working clearly as amy hosseini peels into the pit lane so right that gets him for the moment out of the way serves the penalty so new york breaks into the top six straight away i've got your answer martin as well somehow ibrahimi got a swapper on through 130r uh over-corrected and spat himself into the wall on the outside so i think he is another of our ataris okay so running too little rear wing probably on that porsche what a shame for him just as well that amir husseini dived into the pit lane because as they came into the casio triangle last lap i have no idea what on earth was going on with that mercedes either he completely outbreak himself or he's having the wildest lunge from a long way back on the car in front and i think they'll all be glad that he's gone watching david tanitsa still continuing to battle with the blue audi of florian house and this is the battle for third enso benito is three seconds up the road from these guys and still closing down our race leader mikasa senko benito in second place in his ferrari tanitsa looking to make it two ferraris in the top three is this gonna be the 488 gt3's finest hour in the season can they both end up on the podium are they going to finish with a puncture on the last lap i mean who knows what could happen there is a way to go so an hour to 22 minutes goodness me but brilliant and we won't ruin the ending of the uh the otherwise turgidly dull british grand prix for you i think i may have done statsenco benito the one-two they are clear of this battle harsa tanitsa the ferrari dietrich in the porsche neux not quite there yet in the mclaren is he further back down in nineteenth place palomour who finished in fifth position in the am category he was both the best mclaren driver and the worst mclaren driver because he was the only correct mclaren driver yeah not a car of choice we had one aston we had one mclaren so it was always easy to tell where the acid old mclaren was another mclaren driver worth watching in 11th place off the camera who won the monza charity challenge who was one of the front runners in that silver series the current drivers lost out at the end because they had such a good result in the penultimate race they went to the last round all ballasted up and they just couldn't make any progress tonight though now is right on the tail of florian hauser this move has been in the post for a good few laps now and david tonight crawling all over the back of florian houser fancies his chances of getting third place as they go through the snake to the anti-banked curve then towards dunlop but where does tonita make that move the audi has just got that final end hasn't it over the ferrari and tonita is going to have to be creative i think to get past and he's not going to do it up through the esses is he you know nobody passes up through the s's unless the car in front has fallen off what was interesting i thought in the am series season opened at silverstone to qualify at silverstone you could only use the bentley the bentley's just crushed everybody but thereafter were never really much of a factor the audis even when they had had a really good weekend first and second in spa they still survived the next weekend at the nurburgring with lots of ballast porsche when they had a one two three result died with full maximum ballast on but the audis seemed to survive it a little bit better so there's something in and that's why it was such a popular choice i think in the am series i think that's what we saw as well within the the silvers and the pros you know the audi carried the weight very well whereas other cars didn't uh and illustrated as you say it was a popular car across both championships and indeed in this grand finale as florian houser keeps tonitzer at bay and as he acts as the cork in the bottle so that queue of carl's behind gets greater and greater new york's only six tenths back from dietrich and the race leaders 11 10 now between statsenko and enzo benito it does mean though that 19 laps are done by statsenko and he's still still still the race leader but bonito ben is really now concentrating that effort on bringing down the gap and actually we're probably looking at about 20 more minutes aren't we to get us to the one-hour mark before we need to think about pit stops i'll be really interested to see exactly how this plays out whether i'd be very surprised if these guys are going to be able to double stint the tires i just don't think that's really a possibility especially around this kind of circuit which is constantly punishing the tyres so really it's down to fuel saving and how much time you sit in the pits whilst that fuel is going in obviously in the sro real world series there's a mandatory pit stop time but in as it of course the competency only there isn't the ability to put in a stated time for pit stops also we don't have the danger that a real world pit stop has and the reason really why we have a mandated time in sro real world pit stops is to make it safe and make sure technology doesn't go crazy and make it expensive so neither of those factors exist in sim racing and therefore we do pit stops as fast as we can do pit stops and therefore for my just explain how a pit stop is going to work and what we're going to see because we're not going to have virtual mechanics rushing out with virtual tires and a virtual fuel hose are we so what how does how does a pit stop happen i mean is it just you know you tick a box and that instantly fills up your fuel supply and you tick another box and it gives you a new set of tires how how's the mechanism going to work so you'll you have a set of amount of time for a tire stop and that isn't a variable so you have about 25 seconds to change tires that's fixed unfortunately we don't get mechanics jumping out and uh and doing it and visually seeing it there are platforms that do that but that's uh more kind of arcade than this simulation platform uh as uh tenitsa really on the tail here of hasa going into the chicane but nietzsche is a wildly old fox he won't be doing anything amir hussaini like um and then the amount of fuel depends on how much you've used so the more fuel the more time the less fuel the less time and it's as simple as that and the only other thing that you could choose to do is repair the car if it has damage um it never gets fully repaired if you've got heavy damage but uh effectively i don't think any of these drivers really would be doing that unless they've had really big impacts in which case they're the kind of guys that are down in the late teens and early 20s and won't be affecting the top of our top of our timesheets so what that means is that the pit stop is going to be crucial it is going to shuffle the order and not only that but we've got the lead gap coming down now to less than it has been between these two drivers since bonito got into the lead and of course the one constant in all of this martin has been ferrari catching audi the gap hasn't stabilized it hasn't grown it has come down and down and down and down and now look enzo benito is all over statsenko like a rash we've been here before though haven't we with the mercedes well his time in the lead is definitely you know pretty much over there all over him uh he's you know getting alongside at almost every corner and statsenko apparently has no rear view mirrors and has no idea any of this is going on and that and that he's on borrowed time because he's continuing to dig deep into the time at the bank benito is right there now it's no longer a chase is he he's looking for a way by florian harter though in third place is now leading a seven strong q behind him back down to the aston martin in ninth place so it is a a long group of cars and actually statsenco's teammate giorgio simonini is up there right behind uh neil stoyox in that uh mclaren so that's all joined battle as well new york's no longer the lantern rouge at the back of the queue but the breakaway statsenco versus benito statsenko's got no friends here he can't back benito up into anybody but benito's got no friends either because there's no traffic in front yet so you know we're almost at the midway point and there are anybody who's had problems has retired there are no laggardly cars to be tripping over this is true in the gap point 299 of a second house a third actually it's a little bit closer as well now we have got pit stops the philia is in petri chenko is in as well martin yes and we are in the uh top um mclaren as well so with 45 minutes done and and 75 minutes still to go that's quite ambitious i would have thought but then what do i know uh dietrich in the porsche just holding off new york's in the ferrari but there is the black audi of giorgio simonini the race leaders teammate he's looking to get in in the action as well and uh he's not alone because the second rover porsche is right there as well with herca so interesting that you've got those cars bailing it might be to try and get out of the traffic of course if you're not making progress we've seen it in real world racing you dive in now next question for ben and his experience of obsimating into this game in particular uh two hours for me sorry platform two hours of racing for these drivers both the terms of am and silver uh two hours of on the sieve is that a long stint and behind the question is the fact that you've got andy suck as a real world driver up into 16. now in the real world you're used to doing a long stint double or triple stick may be at spa in a race of this length as it goes on are the ams and the silvers likely to wilt to a degree physically and the pro drivers have a bit of an advantage or is that a red herring no i i think it's probably the other way around actually a lot of these drivers especially on this particular platform which is geared towards endurance racing being a gt3 and now gt4 whoop um platform two they are used to doing long races and what's crazy about sim racing and it's i've heard it many times from real world drivers and i feel it myself is that it is way way more intense driving in the sim than it is in the real world it's physically more intense in the real world but it's mentally so much more tiring because you're having to digest all of the information not just kind of what you see visually you're kind of having to compute what you should feel but don't feel because you're in a sim with your eyes and everything's so much more tiring when you're in a simulator so i think actually our real world drivers may suffer more because of that um than the sim races uh and uh by the way that pit stop is about 45 seconds for his cecilia him and petrenko came out bang on uh the same amount of time so there wasn't really much of a difference i don't think we'll see huge differences in pit stop times across our field well if they stop on the same lap they've got the same number of minutes to get through they're going to use very close the same amount of fuel you can tell that they have stopped because now the little orange bar beside the car color number has gone green so that's a good indication of who has and who hasn't stopped and we've broken up into two by twos haven't we statsenco polito that's the one two hearts of tanita that's the three four d chick neux that's the five six simonini now with herca and to break up the pattern camera and de salvo closing in so that's a sort of four-car train oh and in fact now they've all closed back up on tennis's ferrari as well he's had a bit of a go somewhere at hearthstone that we didn't see i think because he was right in the back bumper of the audi and he's dropped back a couple of spots so tanita may be going to rue that mistake now because right behind him is the uh jan marcel dietrich's porsche first of the rover racing cars and behind him is nils neux in that red white and black mclaren harsa has done a really good job of defending as amy husseini there gets up past ezekiel perez compact for 17th place so that's a silver getting past a pro both of them in the mercedes amir hussaini remember he's trying to make amends for his stop go but then he's got to serve the regulation pit stop anyway so some of the places he gains at the time he gains he's going to lose when he serves the regulation stop over the line goes house is still third tonight's a fourth dietrich is fifth and nielsen almost hidden there in the low line mclaren but now he dives to the inside line has a long look on the way to the first corner but is it going to pay off for him no no no gets a face full of the 911. so niels noyoks has to slot back in behind they in turn are just about three four lengths ahead of giorgio simonini and then chris hooker in eighth place knight is off the camera and off the road there goes the porsche so through goes neil snowy ox and that was jan marcel dietrich getting it all wrong and giorgio simondini in the black audience snuck by before he recovered his composure he won't have recovered his tire grip yet though after that little off track excursion but yeah neil snyhawks turn one is so tempting it goes on and on and on and on forever and then suddenly tightens up and it's very hard to make that pass stick down here stat senko still holding off enzo bonito at the hairpin sweeping away and starting to climb the hill a little and benito in the ferrari is right there he's trying to get his nose inside but we've seen this lap after lap and unfortunately just as he gets in a position the right-hander at 12 becomes the left-hander and into spoon he's not you know what i thought he was going to have a little lunch there but we're not done yet because the pace of the ferrari is such and the commitment of benito is such that he's going to try anywhere he possibly can now the next real opportunity is going to be into the chicane and to tee that up it rather depends on how good through the 130r the pair of them will be they both use the kerb actually the audi doesn't give away too much that bonito is about a length and a half back as they break for the casio triangle and now there's the long fast run past the pits now historically we've seen the audi break away here and it's happened again only fractionally but the ferrari is not quite close enough that means that it's going to have to be a really brave effort by bonito don't break yet don't break yet keep going keep going now turn in but he's not really brought the gap down sufficiently to think about it through the next sequence either and you could see tanita's ferrari cueing up a similar move on florian haas as they came out of the casio triangle for thirds but haase's blue nose is still just in front in the background of your shot so we're watching two audi ferrari battles and paintly at the moment if they were released the ferraris would leave the audis behind but that's all part of it you've got to out qualify them if you've got a quicker car and start at the front and they haven't managed to do that in qualifying maybe the ferrari just not bringing in its tyres quickly as the audi or as well as the audi maybe they didn't have the qualifying setup quite as spot on as the audi maybe the ferrari just doesn't respond to that but certainly in race gym right now you'd say enzo bonito and david tanitsa are the quicker of the top four cars statsenko and florian harter are just clinging on with every trick in the book gotta say mikakel statsenko has driven a superb first 52 minutes it doesn't matter who it's been behind him what car which driver what's been thrown at him he has managed to repel every challenge he's like the last bloke at the bar in a brawl it doesn't matter who hits him he's still standing at the end of the night and he hasn't spilled his drink he is at the moment utterly impregnable he's there in the race lead enzo bonito is behind him now the other thing that's going to be interesting there mostly is who blinks first in terms of the pit stops because that could be the only way actually the lead changes given the way that that audi gets wider and wider it's still hanging onto the lead again look bonito really good through 130 r goes to the outside line runs out of road wrong line slots back in behind try again in another lap this is senna in in monaco holding off in a dog slow mclaren the electrifyingly quick nigel mansells yes williams renault isn't it yeah it's one thing being quick but finding the speed at the right place where there's room to get by is a very different thing of course in monaco there isn't here there is but the out i mean here again as you come out of turn two the outer just canters away up the hill and he sort of hasn't caught him before they get to the dead the curb so it's a really really tough ass the audis low speed pickup mid to exit seems to be really good compared to the ferrari and the ferrari a little bit like the bentley does kind of by the end of the straight has really got a skirts picked up and he's cantering along nicely and reeling you in but it's all a little bit too little too late and now he's going to pass him so i've just said that well i'm just going to say to save some of your blushes this is where the move starts halfway around the lap you've got those fast flowing sections done then you get to the dangler curve and that seems to be where the ferrari starts to creep back into the mix look the gap is down on this section of the circuit so it's from here on in that enzo bonito needs to start planning the move they're back on the power now coming out of the hairpin up towards spoon curve and that in turn takes you along the back stretch speed building into 130 r into casio triangle so from here on in bonito cannot afford to make a mistake he's going to be quick through spoon curve he's a little bit neater only marginally but he doesn't run quite as wide as does the audi ahead of statsenco and again looks that senko clambers up the curb on exit now this is where the ferrari starts to nibble away at that gap further back there's house a third tonitza fourth niels neux is there in fifth place as they come up towards casio triangle but what's going on ahead of them is that the lead gap is coming down and down four tenths of a second still there goes har sir now what about lawyers he is all over the back of uh david tronitza for that fourth place as they make the run now into the breaking zone for casio triangle up front though statsenko versus bonito as they head towards the line and statsencoat seemingly is still able to repel the challenge of that ferrari but no benito into the pit lane so enzo benito that answers one question he blinks first so the next stint is gonna have to be 65 minutes give or take and so from second place into the pits comes bonito now you were talking about who's going to blink first and go in and get out of traffic and and i was thinking i wonder who's got the pit lane window to do it who's got the fuel tank capacity that will allow them to go in with five minutes or six minutes plus the final hour to go and the question is if you go in too early can you somehow feather foot your way around the last couple of laps to make the fumes last well we'll find out won't we davitonitza in third then israel is not released from behind foreign as we were watching the lead pair with uh uh with uh statsenko holding off the first of the ferraris i was thinking well the battle behind will be an absolute mirror image and so it is but with the added advantage in this one that you've got the mclaren waiting to pick the bones off this carcass but again from here tunisia is going to you know is he going to come in this lap or is he just going to stick to his task you saw that uh the audi came in as well giorgio simonini came in from the queue and a little further back david perell also stopped in his pro-class ferrari and he sushi now is the top 10 eagle compact in 11th because that means that the other mercedes has stopped as well hasn't it that uh who picked up the penalty earlier on um he's nice oh no he hasn't he's yes he's yet to serve the regulation stop he's done the penalty stop but no other yeah yeah so order shuffles and that now means florian houser gets up into second ahead of tonitza in third nils noyoke's fourth and that's the battle you're watching fifth is chris hooker who's now upholding porsche on or after yan marcel dietrich uh had his off and went down into 18th place joseph cecilia's 17th after his earlier speed david perrell 13th coach dave he's a man to watch now do we get any more pit stops yes in cavs harsa in comes tronitza so now ben that releases niels neux doesn't it for a couple of that she's going to get up in the second and also the leader is in as well so now with 63 minutes on the clock then you're going to be busy in the pit lane yeah i mean there's not much to see [Laughter] out the back having a cup of tea in one of the team awnings oh there's a couple of italians for coffee isn't there so change used in the virtual world [Laughter] yeah the cars go up on the jacks and uh and then you don't really see much more but they are getting clearly getting new boots because the lap times when they come out are very very good after two laps and i guess it depends on how much fuel they use ultimately the the lap time including the lap in is about three minutes so let's see when these guys who are in the pits right now filter out i'm watching on board with enzo benito you can see him from the exterior shot and he would be the man to pick up time if he's managed to do some kind of undercut this is his first flying full lap and he's got four cars sitting in pit lane is he going to take the race lead well the real question for me is how quick is the mclaren that leads now going to be because it's been released and can he stay out long enough to capitalize for it can he spend neil snoijks another four or five minutes out front another two or three laps of clear roads to give himself that advantage on empty tanks if you like to somehow maybe make a pit stop and come back out in the top three nil snorlax is the race leader and the highest of the stopped cars is in seventh place that's nine six nine patrick selva's mclaren yeah and patrick silver has kind of come out of nowhere hasn't he he was the silverstone winner in the silver series dominated the race with battles going on behind if florian has got a stop go penalty look number 67 you can see him tumbling down the order ben what do we know about that stop go for florian harsa if anything i'm thinking it might be speeding in the pit lane because he just came out the pits okay that was my thinking it's about the only thing i'm not sure there we go okay so it has sorted itself out statsenco is the best of our stop cars there he is ahead of benito so benito didn't gain any advantage the aston martin we haven't spoken about that for a long while he's there in a third position he was invisible wasn't he for a long while but his early stoppers has put him back into the frame yeah after that spent cecilia was the uh one of the first in was the a very early stopper it's bought in a whole load of places chris here because porsche has just gone in so uh bonito and sicilia the top three and jan marcel dietrich is the fourth of the stoppers now he's also been able to fight back having been off the road so it's going to be fascinating to see where new yorks and cameras slot back in because they're leaving it very late this could either be inspired or it could go horribly wrong well don't forget yeah marcel dietrich only had that slight off it wasn't his portion that got thumped off in the uh in the three-car pileup a couple of spots but he's still very much in top 10 contention so so of the stoppers oh hook has come out in front of statsenko just and that gives him the race lead doesn't it in real terms so chris hooker by leaving it late has managed to jump everybody that will give noyokes and camera and hosseini a renewed optimism as well that they might be able to come out ahead especially now if hooker goes defensive because he's going to slow the pace of the race down but hussein is 30 seconds behind noyoke surely he can't come out in any kind of top 10 position from there given how close given how relentless the pace is as ben said you know these guys are just nailing the laps it's like watching dark players 180 180 180. we've also got a drive through for camille frank jack in the lamborghini i'm afraid to say so in 18th place he is going to be further down the order i think just going back to your darts analogy at this circuit it's meant to be 130 130. now ladies and gentlemen who's here all week yes tell your friend i don't laugh he sings noyoke's 3.8 seconds clear of alpha camera so it is mclaren's one and two and neil snowy ox will know exactly what to do as we go into the second half of the race in order to try and keep that margin yes martin two things first of all mclaren fans are clearly taking a little snapshot at leaderboard and secondly then maybe you can tell us since you are deeply enmeshed in the platform what are the lap times like for neux on his last lap compared to fresh tide but full of fuel statsenko and hooker okay so niox is still doing two zero zero ones which is just amazing we've seen this before in monza remember when uh he was uh post penalty just banging in the laps and he was faster than every single person out there which is incredible he's still being able to do that camera is about half a second slower as we've got uh hooker coming into the pits for a drive-through penalty i wonder what that's for i need to do some more digging on that one maybe he was speeding in the pit lane or something like that pit lane infringement maybe to jump the leader sorry ben gold um but statsenko two minutes nine bonito two minutes point seven so there are they are still lapping full obviously of fuel but with better tyres about five to six tenths of a second slower than now yox who is increasing his advantage so an amazing turn of speed hussein is in the 59s right now and very tight contact finally florian haaser gets turned around by the ferrari oh that was very clumsy and somebody else got involved as harsa tried to dive into the pit lane at least i assume that was haas's car rather than his teammate yes that was a replay well that was a replay so so who made contact with florian haaser then because hasa has is he trying to come in there for a penalty to serve his penalty i know this was before the penalty so i think he's been given a penalty for that but he was hit from behind unless he's selected i'm not sure how that comes to be his fault that's generally not the way that however um still leading neux and camera the mclaren one two husseini up to third in the mercedes that really is quite a big recovery from a ten-second stop and go early in the race isn't it uh andy such fourth is equal compact fifth but unless they can go another hour without stopping those are not going to be realistic position so looking here at mikhail statsenko who should or will he they're lapping five to two and a half seconds a lap quicker than they are so clarion is leaving the pits now [Music] then so onto the pit straight comes the audi can it get its lead back on the road and statsenko is taking bonito and sicilia with him down towards the first corner they go where is the mclaren there is new york so he comes out just ahead there's only and that's crotchet in it but it's the mclaren there that on the pit stops has jumped into the lead statseko second bonito third this was what we were discussing 20 minutes or so ago niels neuyox using his huge experience and he's used it to very good effect he leads into the second hour of the race now see that is remarkable patience to know that you've got speed in the car that you can't use and just wait and wait and wait until there is an empty track and that is just you know again people people from the real world like us to go well you know but it is only a computer game yadda yadda after the first race in monster what was john saying he said i don't care if they're real cars or not real cars they're real people racing really right and that's exactly the same thing you know the fact that that the cars are not physical they're virtual doesn't change the drivers so niels neux that is just remarkable patience and knowledge of the car as well that he can go longer that he can go nearly 10 minutes longer than the audi and still use that pace well now we are teed up aren't we for the second sprint race if you like the next 55 minutes to take you to the checkered flag we start with but yet to stop ezekiel perez compact leading discount him because he will drop down the order so we have a new race leader the lead only ever changed on pit stops and it's niels noyocz then he's come out ahead only justin mikhail statsenko so it's a silver leading and am finally enzo bonito is third still staring at the back of the audi but the problem is he's a place lower down than he used to be fourth is jesus cecilia back at the races jan marcel dietrich despite rally crossing is that in fifth sixth is giorgio simonini seventh is the mclaren of yuri petrochenko eighth is giovanni de salvo's lamborghini ninth is patrick selva and tenth is david tonitz and i'm saying that because we know that compact has yet to stop so in real terms that is your top ten and the gap between the top two is four tenths of a second now something else that we haven't yet seen what we are going to do for the next few laps is watch that senko chase somebody the first are he only had to defend built a gap lost the lead in terms of the time but he was always able to fend off the car behind positioning the car to keep the advantage now he's going to do the chasing and a bit of overtaking this is going to be fascinating it is and the race that he won in the am series which was at spa in the driving reign he was a long way clear a long way clear and the only man who got close to his pace spun off from second place and gave himself a bit of a a fright and then rained his neck in a little bit and settled for second rather than pinning it uh in appalling condition so haven't seen him carve his way through the field of course he doesn't have to carve his way through the field he only has to find a little bit more than one car but that one car will have 10 minute fresher tyres by the end of the race and is in fresh air as that senko for the first time in this race is in turbulent air behind noyoke's of course ezekiel compact he's done an hour and seven minutes already i don't know how he's done that in the mercedes but he is still out front so yeah we're waiting for him to piss and at the moment watching petra jinko interesting one here um from florian hasser who's decided to retire out of the race he got the drive-through penalty as we suspected for speeding in the pit lane however he was shunted into the pit lane by david tenitsa and that is how he ended up over speeding not because he went too fast into it but he was helped into the pit lane uh by tenitsa and then obviously we saw the contact one lap later the stewards have decided that is um a racing incident between the two of them at the chicane uh but uh the stewards will now be looking to see whether tanita actually did shunt into the back of florence perhaps by being surprised by the anne's mistake maybe um but either way hassa is not very happy on the chat no i bet he isn't we've just seen the drive-through being served by giovanni to salvage lamborghini again all the praise we gave for the lamborghini being in the top 10 has undone his race so sorry about that giovanni and florian harty yes i'm not he did look i mean in the replay it did look like he got shunted from behind and clearly that's exactly what had happened but it's the lead up to that that's a little bit of a shame uh palomuya still in the pit lane so he has obviously uh had a problem and retired as well yeah he's been in there for a while hasn't he the other disappointment sadly he's david perella who's had a troublesome race and he's down in 21st position as still compact leads on the road out wide over the curb coming out of the deck curve there was david toniza so he's running in 10th place on the road and he's still crawling all over the back of patrick selva one of the stars of the silver series this year patrick silva the silverstone winner and he's keeping that ferrari at bay right now as they power their way around the lap patrick silva runner up in the silver series in the championship 51 minutes still on the clock amazing that company is still yet to serve the pit stop and we haven't seen him uh compact release his drop tanks yet which is clearly how he's going you know because we when did the mercedes come in after 45 minutes husseini's mercedes and yet we're now 70 minutes into the race and company is still going on that elderly tank of gas i mean i don't know how few fumes there are how many plug leads he's taken off to keep it running but that's that's astonishing right he's running he's running map too rather than the rest of the field you might remember this from monza where some of the drivers had to do use a different engine map to make the race without a pit stop and compact is using map too in his mercedes so i think that is allowing looking at the other drivers nobody else is doing that that's allowing him to go so much longer he's not particularly fast with it but it is allowing him to stretch the stint uh much longer which means okay a big fill fuel fill when he does stop but he'll be able to push harder on those second set of tires and that something we did see at monster wasn't it the likes of niels neux in for that race a mercedes went on and on and on and on and was good for fuel even though he was going what seemed to be flat out and others were going at a more relaxed pace but the mercedes there with that different map did seem to be able to go much longer much faster and although company's on map too he wasn't that much slower than andy suchak i mean they were first and second in class and so such clearly on map one uh looking a little further back down the order there is david perrell and he is in third of the pro drivers yeah the south africa there on the back of barbara in the mighty bmw m6 then as they come across the line say this is the 20th place you're looking at and the bmw is about to come under real attack though the ferrari has a look to the inside line but to no avail david perell slots back in behind but there look way out wide goes to bmw david perel says thank you very much the door is open for him and he breezes on by up into 20th place david perrell the man behind the coach dave academy racer in his early days ran out of money went back to south africa built up a business got back involved in the sport through sim racing that in turn brought him back into real world racing it brought him back into european racing uh and a very good enthusiast drama at the chicane pitches around bonito he made his move against that senko contact the ferrari spins and that throws him down the order so out of all of that niels neux will lead statsenko but i think the third is going to come sicilia now in the aston martin well been here before haven't we but with slightly different uh position for nils neux as he was closing in on that queue early in the race when statsenko was the race leader new york was down in seventh eighth position has worked his way all the way through and used some very good strategy to take the lead big mistake from enzo bonito though has cost him and here's the 95 ferrari davitonitza still behind selva's mclaren and pechacenko just in front of him so he may get by the 969 but there'll be another mclaren further up the road if he's freed and able to use any of that pace he can probably see it in the not too distant future uh compact still up front with only almost half an hour after some of our drivers stopped for fuel he's still going he does know that there's a mandatory pit stop doesn't he he's not just going on fairy juice and and oof dust it's like children's games where you can buy cheats yes get to more levels he's found the cheat code for more fuel clearly it's a remarkable what it really is left down up that's it just a thought about statsenko i mean considering the race that he's driven it's impressive enough in isolation just look at that leaderboard look where all the other ams are they're nowhere there is senko upholding their honor in fine style getting a replay here of earlier dramas this was the incident at the chicane wasn't it look bonito dives up the inside there's half a gap the gap closes bang and the bite a bit there the ferrari is the one that gets turned around oh i tell you what statsenko was lucky to survive that if you want to see lucky to survive go and look for the first lap crash at spa in the am series because it's like he had was teflon coated there he just avoided the leader coming back off the armco and smiting him in the door but that was probably contact with the ferrari there so he just got away with that by the skin of his teeth he's still in second nielsen oil's still the race leader and we are still working on the tale of selva's mclaren here we go tanitsu with a run silva painted to the right hand side of the track and that means tanits is going to have to try to go the long way the brave way around the outside the trusting way yes just never trust a mclaren on the inside of you down into turn one in suzuka that would be uh that would be a rule for life i think particularly if you're a ferrari you're just gonna say maybe a ferrari driver would back you up yeah absolutely so well one anyway maybe tonita slots back in behind find a better ferrari friendly corner perhaps 45 minutes of this race to go then it's not for points it's for pride and it's given a very lively race thus far and we're not done yet three point three seconds is the margin up front between new york's and statsenko 1.4 seconds back is cecilia right let's get ben busy in the pit lane once again out of that leading gaggle ben new york statsenko sicilia and dietrich in the porsche what are we looking at in terms of lap times is anybody laughing quicker anybody slower gaps coming down gaps opening up what's what's the pattern if any within that leading group they're all on in the early two minutes um and kind of pacing themselves in that sense it's interesting to watch the lap times because in the one hour sprints we saw the tires hold on for a lot longer and then kind of plummet here we're seeing one or two really good laps and then they are instantly about half a second slower so the way that these guys have set their car up for this two-hour race is certainly different to what we saw uh for the one-hour races now yox and dietrich last lap through with a two that was slightly faster than the others uh but only by a couple of attempts and of course that will change again on this next lap does feel like they are the two that are slightly slower though on this second stint um and actually seeing that bmw we haven't had a chance really to see that very much but does bring me to two really cool esports stories over the last couple of weeks because of course the first round of the real world sro gt world challenge was at immolar last weekend and in the pro-ams we had a professional sim racer take uh i think race one victory um chen bullock bashi was driving the old turkish bmw and was able to take a lease pole position if not victory um and chem is a professional red bull esports driver so that's pretty cool and then today in the british gt championship as we see a replay there just a second ago um we've seen james baldwin who is an incredibly good acc driver um take the win in the first race of british gt alongside michael o'brien who did very well here in the sro esports series we didn't see james in it but first ever race for james baldwin but many years of carting and sim racing and he goes out and wins british gt on his first attempt i think that proves just what a breeding ground this can be absolutely yeah basically was the winner of the formula renault esports series in lockdown as well wasn't he qualified on pole for his um stint if you like the qualifying session for the racing started in the bmw and he led all the way then it was his co-driver that wasn't quite so quick so the result didn't really reflect his pace but yeah i mean he was mighty in qualifying and unstoppable in his stint so yeah it is fascinating to see the the ability that the sib racers have got and those older broadcasters and monsters have learnt a lot about simracing over the last few months haven't we and a lot of new names have cropped up but this whole lockdown period and the explosion of championships has taken this to a whole new audience and it's not just the driver's ability i think that's hit home it's also what the graphics are like and the realism of what we're watching yeah absolutely apart from ezekiel company obviously he's oh he is in the pits there you go oh well yeah 42 minutes left no wonder he's run out of fuel some people some people stop with 42 minutes of the race gone got remaining he has gone 40 minutes longer than some of our earlier pit stoppers map two is clearly not a bad uh can he now turn it on to map one and just gas it up because he he could have that's like turbo over boost isn't it my dad tells me clearly virtual vapors are better than real vapors you can go further on a virtual vapor this battle is a really good one between silver and torica isn't it for what's in our eighth place and you can see how far down the order compact will drop as a consequence of the pit stop falls back behind amir hosseini which is roughly where he was swabbing before he came in so new york to senko 3.9 seconds now remember when they came out of the pits there was only really a length between them and what you've seen there for is that noiops has extended that gap over the last few laps yeah in 20 15 minutes he's he's found nearly four seconds so yeah it was clear that the mclaren had the pace the way that he was able to work his way up the order not just the driver ability but some pace as well and statsenko obviously 1.2 seconds ahead of the aston martin interesting to see ticks top six has five different brands in it you've got aston out of the mclaren audi aston martin porsche a second audi of simonini and then the ferrari of bonito so there is a decent spread there isn't it lexus not getting much of a look in lamborghini having been uh highlighted by me is doing quite well obviously having a disaster thereafter and that's apologies for that again but uh yeah again as we see so often bop although everybody has a bad word to say for it is the only thing that makes this racing achievable because it mixes such different propositions in terms of how the car is built and laid out and how they work and comes up with a very level playing field well nielsen joyox right now is three point eight seconds clear of mikhail statsenko with jesus cecilia third young marcel dietrich fourth giorgio semelini fifth enzo benito is in sixth place seventh there coming towards yurio petrachenko behind him in eighth places patrick silva david chinitsa is ninth and offer camera is in tenth place he was a very lucratious guest in the pit lane the sro podcast that we ran during lockdown and off a camera who has real aspirations to go into real world racing but he's very realistic he doesn't have the money to do it so unless somebody waves the golden ticket at him this is how he will enjoy his motor racing and arthur camera uh was a race winner in that charity challenge he was a race winner within the silver series within the championship itself he's a little bit far away from the pecking order in 10th place but you never know if drama's before others up the road he might gain a spot or two back before the very end just under 40 minutes to go now was going to say that the selva tennis battle is catching petrachenko but camera is closing in on them as well so that little group looks like it could well clear up uh just ahead of amon murphy this is uh yeah this is garcia in the bentley that's the lead bentley isn't it yeah so yeah they're not particularly well suited here to suzuka clearly because it's taking a long while to get up towards the top 10 spot i'm not sure where where did he start on the grid 18th place garcia and have a look behind him because damian helsaid he gave like a train reeling them in he's only half a second back as well david tennisa who flattered to deceive a little bit really in the silver series he came with this good track record but the results never really gelled for him he is still crawling all over the back of salvation it's a sixth in the championship silva second and patrick selva keeping him at bay he wasn't the gold medalist patrick he was the silver been a long day hey david it has you're not wrong though man i was 38 minutes to go i was about to praise the used laquacious but the tumbleweed for that i'm afraid completely undoes any good work there oh what a flag our friend compact uh down in 19th position uh he has turned it up to map one now and really really interesting to see the pace that he's got he's just coming around the spoon curve now he's already 1.5 seconds up on his best lap that he's done so far in the race so that kind of proves how much time he was losing using map two but he is only what two seconds behind andy susek so in the battle for our pro drivers and you know credit to them for sticking around there's not many of them that decided to do this because they probably knew that they were gonna not be at the head of the field but compact and susek have been here and they are about to provide us with a great battle for the pro honours compact two seconds to the good as he comes across the line on this first lap full of fuel new tires but the first time he's used matt well in a race it's sort of a shame that it's british grand prix weekend not for louis de la chaz who finished in third place in this morning's formula two sprint race and was jolly happy with his second podium of the season because he's doing his real day job but it would have been lovely to see him here as well and see how the pro champion might perhaps have stacked up against some of the silver drivers uh and of course our top am one am in the top three at the moment we're saying indeed yes yes being shunted out by some of the silvers largely bullying is that what you reckon yeah well statseko has been a real star joking apart i mean to do what he did in the first hour of the race and to still be just about in contention and really be the trailblazer for the championship i think he's done an outstanding job there is 150 that is the audi of giorgio simonini dominini making his way now out of the chicane he was 12 equal with enzo bonito within that silver series this year and behind simonini is enzo bonita the gap is half a second between them they're not that far adrift either look if you have marcel dietrich in the rover racing colored porsche as the almost stealth like audi turns its way through the first corner and fends off to the tune of half a second the ferrari of bonito just as well we weren't starting at 6 p.m local time otherwise that would be the invisible out by now but an hour and a half in it would be pitch black you can see the sort of golden twilight haze uh has left the sky and the the mist is starting to settle as well here at suzuka neil snoijk still the race leader pulling away happily from mikhail statsenko but statsenko he looks like he's doing a pretty decent job doesn't he i mean next is the only guy really who is pulling any ground on him uh julia closing in slowly from behind he's got the gap down to under a second now in the aston martin in third place and uh audi and benito that's four five six but they're about two and a half seconds away from them from the battle for the podium however statsenko's already survived one brutal assault in the casio triangle so there's nothing to say that another one might not come somewhere in that battle again it's true i mean cecilia is not a dirty driver far from it but he's certainly a committed driver the spanish winner of the silver series and if he feels he's got a chance to challenge makes you wonder what he could have done but for that spin early on with the initial contact where he was turned around but cecilia still there still fighting but niels noyoks having probably it's fair to say ben the best drive we've seen from him really since that monster charity challenge where he was unlucky because he got involved in contact with assadian was penalized and then he didn't really sparkle in the silver series in terms of the championship rounds did he i think that was very much down to down to the kind of the way that the success ballast worked for the mclaren you know they had such great performances in some events and then was so heavily ballasted that they couldn't do anything in the other events and uh i don't know if they were all kind of working together i think they might have played the whole series slightly differently to make sure they didn't get too much ballast uh you know if there's only one audi in the race and it wins the race it only takes the ballast for the victory whereas when you had so many mclarens and they did a one two three that just put so much weight onto the car for the next race you couldn't do anything with it and i think i think that was kind of the problem they a lot of the teams have got to a point where they knew which the best car was for the overall series chose the mclaren and ended up kind of uh almost tripping over themselves it would have helped noyoke's if when the mclaren was the winning car he was in the one that was doing the winning there is that yeah yeah i mean his results were um a little up and down a sixth twelfth a thirty eighth a third a fourteenth the consistency wasn't there even if occasional lap speed was but that said uh niels noyoks did come good for a podium at barcelona like we said but that was his only podium whereas patrick self and alta camera cameras his own teammates they had a win in the second place a piece when the mclaren was the kit to have so if it's the old story isn't it you know if you've got a car that can win for god sake win if you happen to take the points but if a mclaren is going to be one two you want to be at least one of those two not somewhere else that's out of the points or or down the order so yeah winning at the beginning in the in the charity race and potentially winning here at the end in the grand finale hasn't necessarily helped his championship at all but he's he's started and ended the season well but interestingly if you're going to win one race make it the grand finale make it that two hour race something different because uh this is the one that has perhaps had more in it yes it's longer but we've had the pit stop element you know there's it's more than just a flat out sprint there's a little bit more strategy to go into it as ben was saying earlier on now nyx has crossed the line the gap is down by a whisker it's down to 4.2 seconds is this going to be a consistent push from statsenco or do we think new york's got the measure of him as also here further down seventh eighth and ninth have all got themselves together now two more mclarens petrichenko and selva with david chinese ferrari right there behind and cameron are not too far behind either i'm not sure the camera is closing very quickly but he is closing slightly here is our pro leader andy suchek in the capex bentley tiki company second david perrell third they're all 18th 19th 20th sort of running nose to tail ish on the road although there are gaps between them and of course the other pro who couldn't make it through because he had problems with his kit was roma monty so we're down to three pro drivers but they are in the top 20 in what was a pretty busy and professional field this is just second place battle and this is why the lead gap has gone up because mikhail statsenko is having to work hard to defend from jesus cecilia that means therefore that he's taking the slower lines it means that noyoke is getting away this is great news for the race leader but can that aston martin find a way by and were it to do so could it go after the leading mclaren the clock ticked down we're almost into the final quarter of the race but again the audi just seems to have the tiniest advantage over the aston martin the good news for the aston driver is they are within five seconds of the leader neil snowboards has not opened up a 13 second margin which would be sort of unachievable in half an hour he's only five seconds away now if you can't lap half a second the lap quicker than him only five seconds might as well be 30 30 seconds but yeah cecilia's first got to get by stat senko and as history has taught us that may not be as easy as saying it no that audi is a resilient car as we have seen i mean ben has been explaining in previous rounds of the championship about damage that you can pick up within the platform but actually ben despite the contact despite the uh challenges offered by other drivers against statsenko's car it doesn't seem to have been hobbled by any of the contact does it anything before the pit stop could have been fixed in the pit stop um and but honestly he didn't lose a huge amount of time to bonito when they pitted so i'd be surprised if he took that option same deal kind of with cecilia's car because that suffered contact earlier in the race didn't it so um certainly by looking at the lap times no way these cars are uh anywhere other than at their absolute maximum speed although naliox is three tenths of a second faster than anybody else so he's doing max is doing exactly what he did in monza he's driving a pace that nobody else can get anywhere near him and here comes david tanitsa in the ferrari in ninth place all over the back of selva petrachenko is there as well holding up the mclaren the mclaren in front of the ferrari has been selva's been in clear air for half an hour but now he's in turbulent air suddenly his front end isn't going to be quite as sharp his brakes are going to start to get very hot his engine temperature will start to climb petrochenko is not being his friend here by being right in front of him of course petrachenko would rather be right up behind ento bonito but doesn't seem to have the pace in his mclaren to do so these guys are eight seconds behind the back of the queue with dietrich simonini and benito well they're five seconds behind them at the very least so this is now not a two-way battle between tennis ferrari and selvas mclaren in front it is now a four-way battle with one ferrari and three mclarens and actually the person looking most likely to make the move is patrick selva the silver series runner-up who is trying to put the move in to get ahead of petrachenko for seventh but actually probably to get away from the ferrari as much as anything else and off the camera is also well worth watching because he's been chipping away he's brought that gap down and down and down and now he is right there so petrochenko seventh fires the gun comes off the last corner over the line he leads this battle pack but now let's focus on camera because he has been quick enough to gain ground and he's right there on the back of the ferrari of tennis they turn into turn one what can he do to gain more ground before the end fourth remember also petrachenko was the first of our pit stoppers along with cecilia they came in well after 40 minutes so they've got to do a little bit of preservation and both tyres and fuel to get to the end and maybe that's why we're seeing petrochenko with this uh little queue behind him yes that i'd i would definitely go with that as an option were sicilian not doing so well in catching senko for second place he seems to be ignoring that and maybe he'll take jam now and pay for it later with uh degraded tyres and having to feather foot his way through here is uh simonini in the black audi enzo bonito right behind him georgios malini hanging on still again the audi gets off the corner from from the earliest part of the pickup on the mid corner to the exit the audi just seems to get half a step on everybody and that is really hard to counteract it's great being fast into the apex but if your rival is quicker off the apex to the corner exit you play catch up down every straight they're not too far behind dietrich's porsche so jan marcel dick may still play a part in this because simonini's just getting a little bit of a toe from him not quite as much as benito's getting off the audi but it still helps to try and fight off the ferrari so down to the casio triangle comes the fight for fifth place then look back from simonini's audi enzo benito in that ferrari 488 gt3 crawling all over the back of him so it's mclaren audi aston martin porsche audi ferrari mclaren mclaren ferrari mclaren within the top ten a little bit more variety comes next because 11th flying under the radar to use a well-known cliche is alexandra vromwell and the lexus 11th head of chris hercus porsche 12th mercedes 13th of amir hosseini ayman murphy's porsche 14th and the uh alberto garcia bentley running in 15th place 16th is where you get the leading lamborghini uh which is giovanni desalvo who is 16th the head of penalized from earlier on camille franczak and then the leading sorry the second bentley he's 18th that's the leading pro andy sujek from ezekiel perez company and david perel the south african driver coach dave himself down in 20th spot but right now it is mclaren that leads the way but still the trailblazer for the am championship is mikhail statsenko in second place but the gap between the top two has opened up by another few attempts over the last few laps 25 minutes of the race to go as now jesus cecilia comes up to have a go at statsenko once again for second place but that lead gap bet it's getting bigger all the time yeah absolutely now yox is consistently better than the rest and i don't really feel like there's any catching unless he gets caught in traffic and something happens now oxford has just done an amazing job strategically to put himself in that position remember not only is he leading the race but he's got better tires he'll have about the same amount of fuel if he's sensible but he'll have you know he's got on some people about 40 uh 30 minutes better tires so he can really push when he needs to and he doesn't need to so he's in a really really happy strong position and as you say statsenko doing a fantastic job yes he is an am in the way that this particular competition has been put together in that silvers were invited and recognized by the organizers aka informatica as people to represent brands but that doesn't necessarily mean just because he was missed out on that list that he's any worse just because he had to go through the am sort of public lobbies uh he is one of the guys that you would see in the very top end of any acc competition that runs kind of as a as a private competition that perhaps isn't broadcast but well most of these people apply their craft mclaren showing his nose to brand rival petrachenko who drifts out a little wide sampler finally gets the crack in the defenses he's needs petrichenko rides to curb somehow finds traction zelda gets a little touch around the outside comes to lisa's ferrari who's going to come out best i think tanita might lose another place camera sneaking through out to a camera just getting by the ferrari as they continue to climb up through corner five six and seven of these s's he does i think he's completed the move so suddenly patrick silva having a little lunge at uh petrichenko but europe henshinka held him off and now it is camera who has got ahead of tanita the ferrari just for a moment there thought oh i might get both of them and in fact he got neither of them and lost a spot daritanita down to 10th a little flurry of excitement there and actually niels neux i think ben you're absolutely right he doesn't need to push any harder than he is the gap i was about to say was just under five seconds for the last half dozen maybe a dozen laps despite statsenko defending so hard against the aston martin in his second place but noyoke's now just creeping away the gaps just around the five-second mark 4.7 5 point something so noyoke's just keeping the car alive as long as he doesn't do a center monaco moment by nodding off in the final 20 odd minutes then he'll be made in the shade but the mclaren ferrari battle continues the ferrari shuffle to the back of the pack and still patrick selva in 969 trying to find a way by europe and not succeeding last lap let's see if he's any better this lap because it does look like petrichenko is slightly the stopper in this mclaren bottle i agree with that the other nice thing about this is we get to half past six local time within the way that the uh i said of course the platform is set up that it looks ever more like an endurance race doesn't it now the headlights start to take on more of a feature and yes it gets a little bit darker as the light fades but there is something always doesn't matter what the venue there's something magical about cars in the dusk as the headlights start to have more of an impact so it just adds to the flavor of a proper two-hour endurance race doesn't it it makes it feel longer anything any no any race that's finishes in the dark even if it's only 20 minutes it makes it feel like a longer race you go and stand under floodlights and watch a national hot rod race and into its stadium it doesn't feel long it takes about seven minutes man up that's what he would say there's someone going backwards yes david yeah so that was tenitsa having a lunch and that didn't work at all well did it looking further forward this is enzo benito trying to find a way by giorgio simelini but uh the ferrari salva pechichenko both dropping back is that right camera squeeze through the camera so the camera is lost so that was nine seconds that self was trying to get by petrichenko there wasn't me and it's camera and tamita who survived so we need to have a little look at that again camera was being distracted by hot rods camera was throwing a flash thanks ben right so camera is up into seventh tonitza is in this battle is still raging on as bonito finally gets level with simbonini but the audi as we have seen in the past is really good accelerating out of corners and there it is again absolutely dead set level midway through the casio triangle and once again bonito is staring at the back of the audi and he's had enough of doing that he can't calculate a way through there can he neil snyhawk still leads from the battle for second mikhail statsenko holding off jesus cecilia then the porsche in fourth place and jan marcel dietrich is just sort of a little bit in no man's land nowhere near the feed trio and enzo bonito and giorgio simoneoni look semenini look you can see the porsche just tantalizingly in front of the audi simonini's got more things to think about though than dietrich's porsche he's still worried that the ferrari is going to find a way through enzo bonito the only way i think he hasn't tried is going over the top of the audi maybe that's the next move give him time 20 minutes to go he's not run out of ideas just yet great battle though this they might be in different parts of the world they might be on sims rather than in real cars but whether graphics are this good you forget all about that and you just enjoy a proper motor race a proper battle and still summoning is able to fend off enzo benito as they power their way out of the corner once more remember these two tied on points in the silver championship so very evenly matched indeed and what's really fascinating i've been watching we've been watching a lot of this battle obviously is the way the two cars corner so differently the different line that the audi uses compared to the ferrari watch it as they come out of the final chicane and onto the start finish trade if we're still watching them then the audi takes a much tighter line the ferrari runs almost all the way around the white line on the outside and yet they don't seem to have any different speed by the time they get down to turn one no indeed replay off before go on bet talk us through it petrenko uh is the one that loses out the least here trying to find a weight bar not trying to find a way past at all just binning patrick selva coming back onto the circuit and taking out all of that battle so this was the battle that was just behind enzo benito and simonini and it's been decimated silver is still eight cameras down in tenth and tennis or eleven but that was selva trying to get past petrachenko and then petrochenko got spun around the nose of his car and yeah tanitsa they were the ones that lost out particularly the ferrari i mean in in a real world red flag race over that's the great thing again about virtual racing yeah if you have serious contact like that i don't have to fill over to end the final 20 minutes of the broadcast while david goes to the uh hospitality suite i was waiting for that i'm surprised it's taken this long to have to have that apprenticeship then a bus will come along [Laughter] the interesting thing about uh cameras and talita's cars are hobbled they are lapping three seconds back over what they're able to do before so unsurprisingly by the looking at that contact as you say that would be very much race over they've bounced off the mclaren have continued but they are not running anywhere near what they could be and i'm afraid that's kind of day over for camera and tennis somehow potrenko and selva though seem to be running slightly better well there's tony to losing out to chris herker look in the porsche that goes around the outside so going back to your hobbled boy sunitsa is easy prey isn't he there because the porsche look picks up it skirts through it goes gains track position so hooker goes up into 11th spot david tunnits are fading all the time with 16 and a half minutes to go and while we've been looking at other dramas new york has managed to build the lead gap a little bit further you have to feel a bit for statsenko in all of this he did such a ripper job in the first half of the race and now he's fading in second place but he has got cephelia right up behind him meantime here gang of carls heading up towards the chicane amir hussaini is at the back of it which means there's going to be action for sure tanits are losing out and there look herka goes ahead of camera so chris hooker gets up into the top ten camera is losing ground tonix is losing ground amir hussaini is on the attack look he's got the inside line he's up alongside off a camera is he going to go through he's at the curb but surely the mercedes he's going to power off the corner with better grub yes he does look at that easy peasy through goes amir hosseini and as he breaks the timing beam that will put him up now into 11th place yeah and of course cameras mclaren got a very substantial hit there so camera in the mclaren and tenitsa in the ferrari that is the battle of the halt in the lane missing it damage central and they're again going to continue to increase that before we get to the checkered flag i think final 15 minutes may may not be the friendliest although neither of them were actually the ones that started that four-car pileup they were both the uh the innocent bystanders who got caught in the crossfire hussaini up to 11th who would have thought that not me after his drive-through penalty early in the race but we only have 21 cars still running so the bmw lasts to the 21 because samiro brahmi actually petite and the rest um all in the pits and out of the race that senko in second still holding off the aston martin for that second position statsenko of course not just doing a good job in the beginning of the race but qualifying on pole on pace as well so the audi is not just a good race car it's a good qualifying car again another reason why it was so popular in all of the series and although they are losing pace and dropping down the order this battle is still raging on look as tonitzer looks for a way past camera the virtual ferrari tries to find a way past the digital camera very good statsenko in the red white and black audi holding on from the aston martin and i think the porsche is getting closer i think the porsche is getting closer quite quickly janmar seldich in a rover racing porsche 14 minutes is there a chance he might end up on the podium it's not a big opportunity but i think there is potential there that something might happen for him because these two are getting slower and don't forget the aston martin stopped after about 45 minutes so that was in the pits very early on statsenko just after the hour mark and then neil snyhawks our race leader quite a long way off the hour mark yellow flags out and gone and back on and back off yes so somebody's having a bit of a tank slapper i think on the road off the road back on again late race there can be dramas yes absolutely and that's why niels neux actually perversely statsenko his adrenaline will be absolutely racing holding off super cecilia keeping himself very firmly motivated by trying to set quicker and quicker laps on his slightly fresher tyres he's just got to make sure that he doesn't overcook it on his own because it's quite easy to allow your concentration to wander david put that statement down with 13 minutes to go we are looking at the second place battle mikhail senko versus jesus cecilia and half a second is the margin between them but yes the aston is just ever so discernibly dropping away isn't it lap by lap the gap creeps up by hundreds into tenths and so senko's looking a little more secure in second place but the trouble is this is all coming too late to then release him to do anything about niels noyoke so it looks as though the lead gap barring any surprises that are lurking in the system he's going to go uh new york's way this race now lower down here you've still got petrochenko versus selva and alexander vromwell who's done a really good solid job he's hauled that lexus around he's kept out of trouble yes okay he's benefitted from other people making mistakes or having problems but there he is running in the top nine doing a good job but if you don't hit stuff you tend to have a better race and he hasn't hit quite as much as the people who are no longer in front of him meanwhile we are we are poor people back again so much mclaren ferrari action in this race and camera just about hanging on there way over the track limits line but tanita having a little look now the question is what's the damage done to each of these cars is one of them turning right with alacrity but refusing to turn left is one of them failing to slow down quite as well as it used to it's hard to tell from the outside there should be bits hanging off all over them well tonight has finally made the move and he's gone back ahead of off the camera so the ferrari now moves itself back up into 12th place these two drivers you know both stars really of the silver series it's a shame they are so far down the order really because they're not perhaps illustrating their normal pace but tonita up me to 12th it's been a good battle to enjoy that we've had a lot of exposure for camera yeah half an opportunity and tanitsu was buying a flash but that's not what's happening here statsenko still holding off the aston martin and you know has the gap been as big as half a second in the last 40 minutes between these two i wouldn't say so because when new york's came out in front of the queue these two were nose to tail weren't they lead gap though six seconds so senko is now too far back and actually sicilia possibly mounting another charge look because he's really good coming into the braking zone he gets right onto the back of the audi but what is tempting to say little good will it do him because we know how good the audi punches out of slow corners look it happens again look at the gap look at the gap look at the gap a length two three lengths they straighten up and boom past the pits but the damage is done it's now going to take sicilia a good few corners to get back onto the tail of the audi yeah straight line speed is only any good if the straight line is long enough for you to employ it and again it's that so good under-breaking he closes right up and then he can't make a move at the apex and the moment he starts to pick up the throttle statsenko's already pulling away from him so frustrating you know you've got the the ability to outbreak him you just can't get close enough off the corners to use it at the end of the straight it's it's not a particularly long front straight here at suzuka and that's really why the audis have been able to hold off so many other different cars now the next i think another factor in in this kind of ability for the audi is that that car's got much better tires uh cecilia was one of our first stoppers so probably 20 minutes longer on those tyres he's he's still using map one so he's not saving fuel but he is on a higher uh traction control setting uh which will have basically more interference from the traction control uh to control wheel spin and to keep the car pointing the right direction uh the aston martin using traction control setting five rather than statsenko who is on three um therefore slightly freer out of the corner so you can kind of see it but the aston martin needs that because the tyres are more worn david and i pointing at each other drive through penalty the the students have finally sorted the wheat from the chaff in that four-car pile up and said selva started it which he did whether by accident or design by turning petrochenko around and then involving almost everybody else in the race so salva with a drive-through and unfortunately there is uh patrick silva in that red and black mclaren and that will drop him out of any top 10 contention the risk of being pedantic millennial friend selva gets a stop go of 20 seconds it's a drive-through for chris herker yes i'm a 99 porsche so selva who is eighth at the moment and he's in this battle pack he is going to tumble down the order whereas herker who is 10th gets in comparison the fairly innocuous drive-through your younger eyes and 52-inch plasma screen have beat my slightly older eyes and 11-inch laptop screen i could see that it was red i guess it was 10 it's 20 seconds self is in the pits i i couldn't hear all of that for the violin playing in the background so i thought it was your slightly older ears here's the battle for second place still continuing to senko they are losing quite a lot of time now though aren't they to noise he's now six and a half seconds it's it's barely been over five for 40 minutes the question i was going to pose to ben a moment ago was about dietrich in fourth place in the porsche and ben if you can keep an eye to his lap times i noticed that the gap has actually just crept up by a tenth but with these two back squabbling again into second and third places does the porsche have a chance of being able to reel them in by the end or is that a little bit too much to hope for now 2.8 seconds between third and fourth but candied trick there he is in the background does he stand a chance or do you think he's too far back well what good thing is he hasn't got somebody crawling over his rear end so he's able to focus purely on what's going on ahead of him and i think you know we've seen before when these guys start squabbling running side by side we saw it earlier in the race with husseini you lose a second and a second and a half a lap the gap is not that big 2.6 2.5 seconds so yeah i think one or two laps of them properly going side by side and then the porsche's in the mix themselves together yeah it's going to be to say the least isn't it what do we got six and a half minutes on the clock remember the flag goes out the first time the leader crosses the line once the two hours are up and to the outside goes cecilia this is a chance is it going to pay off for him yes gets his nose in front he's done it sincerely around the outside but look the audi again punches off the corner is he going to be able to find a way back up alongside the answer this time is no cecilia covers off the inside line dietrich is bringing the gap down as best he can but now that cecilia is through into second place can the aston drive away well first up to the outside line tries to go the audi back to no avail statsenko is in third place but cecilia leaves half a gap on the inside line boy he worked hard for that second place and he does not want to give it away now with just under six minutes on the clock the question is has he got the tyres to hang on stat senko didn't seem to be an awful lot slower than the aston martin if the aston is having to work the traction control harder to keep those rear tyres alive how much can he take advantage of that change of position already he seems to have pulled out a good half a second over mikhail statsenko nielsen eight seconds up the road and five minutes he's not gonna catch him he's got to hang on to the second place now he's worked so hard to grab it for the aston martin so neil snowy ox then after that demon pit stop that uh propelled him into the lead of the race now has a nearly eight second advantage over hazel's defilia who actually having finally got past that senko is pulling away jan marcel dietrich look he's bringing down the gap it's almost as though some of the fight has gone out of statsenko because suddenly that gap is coming down between third and fourth so could we get a silver one two three out of this well we probably ought to shouldn't we because they were the guys that were chosen as the best representatives of the various different brands however is it that statsenko's audi is finally starting to run out of grip a little quicker than the porsche and the aston martin did a little further back for a more uh attacking petrochenko metaphorically rather than literally hopefully at the moment petrichenko's probably had quite enough assaults although his car actually despite that the fact that he was basically the cue ball in the whole four-car pileup seems to have survived relatively well however the lexus is closing in and seems to have enough pace whether he's got room or time to get by four minutes on the clock there's another point entirely so out of 130 yard into the casio triangle here comes alexander vromwell who's had a really good solid race as martin said if you don't hit things it is going to help your chances but he's kept out of trouble he may not have had the ultimate pace but there he is he's chipped his way up the order and alexander vromwell there powering his way up towards the line he was only 20th in the silver series championship but he had occasional good days but it's good that he's been in this race and like the majority fighting to the very end trying to get as good a result as he can petrichenko is another driver that's managed to repel most challenges i know he got involved in that incident a few laps back but he's still there in the race he's still running in seventh place yes he's dropped a lot of time to the leading six cars but he's also keeping vrom off they're doing a good job of that you gotta say being shunted from behind is not getting involved in an accident that's somebody involving you in an accident so petrichenko just hasn't had the pace of the front runners has he has not been a top six car but you're right i mean he's doing it he's clinging on again like statsenko by his fingernails and and doing a pretty good job at it as well from all is close but i think this is going to be no cigar for the lexus driver however he's the only lexus at the moment that he's going to take the checkered flag and to do so in the top ten that's a pretty good afternoon at the office third and fourth statsenko to dietrich the gap is much reduced eleven tenths of a second now so with two and a half minutes give or take on the clock it could well be that dietrich is able to have one roll of the dodge look another tenth pull back here so can we get the porsche into the top three who is barbara in the bmw offended in the final three minutes of the race that he's got a drive-through penalty i didn't i didn't see what happened to that uh turkish blue car but uh unfortunately he's had a drive-through but camera has had and i think he stopped in the pits earlier camera and so he is running uh very badly damaged further back here is our race leader lest we forget nils neux out front senko is being shown as in sixth place now what has happened to the audi of the man that dominated the first half of the race that senko seemingly has got a problem now is this grip is this fuel is this something mechanical or has he had it off somewhere where the bank has shed any light on this from his advantage point of the pit lane we'll find out in a moment or two we'll let him go to research it but as new york pulls away suddenly we have got the changes dietrich third simon in the fourth bonito fifth and statsenko tumbles to six so now no audi in at the podium positions at the moment but dietrich and simonini less than a second apart and if you're battling for fourth that's one thing however if you're seminini in the audi and you're battling for a podium finish with the car in front of you that's an entirely different deal it is a mclaren that leads an aston martin that second a porsche audi battle for third we're looking a little further back at de salvo in the lead lambo the two lamborghinis franchi right behind him and of course the top three in the silver series and the top two in the am series than lamborghinis are all going to test a real lamborghini courtesy of the fff racing team so that's some kind of good fun result isn't it absolutely right right so dietrich a second clear of simonini ben any news on what happened to stepsenko to drop him back into sixth place he's i found him facing the wrong direction on the exit of uh 130 yards so i think he spun all yeah there's nobody around him he spawned his own accord just uh lost the rear end and you know the tyres have gone and perhaps he should have had one more click on his tc oh it was really late actually he was accelerating out the corner and the car just spat him around yeah that sounds like he's completely run out of tires and like started on pole position led more than half the race was in a podium spot mikhail statsenko the russian audi driver in sixth position in the final seconds of the race the clock is at zero two hours have come and gone and that when niels neux next gets to the line he will be bringing at the race to its conclusion the chequered flag will be out and ready for him sicilia and dietrich simonini that will be the battle for third position and it's still alive we've got a car in trouble there look one of the mclarens putting to one side we understand that niels neuyok's pit stop is under investigation it will be investigated after the race alberto garfield has just picked up a drive-through penalty so this battle pack is about to start its last lap bentley into the pits that is garfield to serve the drive-through but niels neux then there he is he's on his last lap of the race as i say there's that pit stop that's going to be investigated after the race in fact we're hearing now that there will be no further action on the pit stop so the checkered flag awaits neil's neurops he is clear and free 7 15 local time in the suzuka circuit and in the gathering gloom he will head towards the checkered flag penalty for garcia on the final lap as well to be served the drive-through so a few penalties in the final seconds well we saw garth going to serve that so he gets that out of the way so that means that that neil snowy ox is going to come through for his only win of the season and it's going to be in the grand finale he will make history by winning the first sro gt esports two-hour race it has been a mighty effort a very good pit stop he's got traffic to dodge around look the mclarens together that he's off the camera his teammate who lines up for the photo finishing true endurance style niels nyops wins the grand finale of the sro gt esports series from jesus cecilia in second place jan marcel dietrich in third and those two hours have absolutely flown by yes now jan marcel dietrich crosses the line eight tenths ahead of giorgio simonellini in uh third and fourth position enzo benito fifth waiting for stats oh yes well that's not quite the photo opportunity that the mclaren team would hope for statsenko comes across the line in sixth position guys don't do donuts in the first corner well well done to the students for sorting out the little question mark it was all to do with niels neux and the speed of his pit stop but he used manual selections manual start of the pit stop and the manual finish of it so he all round used his knowledge his experience to get the most that there is the lexus coming across the line in ninth place thanks on for more ahead of eamon murphy in his lazarus racing porsche finishing in 10th and everybody having a little hug and a cuddle down in the first corner gravel trap i have to say that the sro esports gt series has been a big hit these lock down months the commitment from drivers from the organizers and from everybody involved has has made it well worth all the effort we've become used to some new names a new style of racing and neil snowy ops perhaps appropriately ben given his involvement in esports racing and the level of his involvement in esports racing comes out on top in this grand finale sorry ben our pro winner just to round it all out ezekiel compact who ran an hour and 95 minutes uh or seemingly forever and ever on his first tank of fuel and comfortably ahead of andy suck and david perrell well there's another gt sports uh series soon the uh gt asia equivalent for esports but ben it's been a great series all around hasn't it absolutely sad to kind of put an end to this one but uh we start very soon with the asian series on the 29th of august so only a few weeks to wait uh and that will be in a very similar format to what we've already seen here for the sro esports with a pro and silver series uh for the silver drive for the pro sim drivers and for the pro real live drivers so expect to see the likes of dan wells for instance uh reappear in that one with his involvement in the asian gt championship they do have a real world series going on uh at the end of the year as well but they were slightly uh slightly frustrated they didn't have their own series so uh they've been hastily put together and great work from gta asia to get the championship up and running for the 29th of august nielsen yorks wins by 6.1 seconds over hayes's cecilia great work from the porsche of dietrich in third position simonini fourth and then enzo benito in fifth position for ferrari again just you just wanted more from those ferraris and then just never quite got there is that senko the best of the ams and really the only one that figured against that uh flood of silver drivers and as martin said a great alternative strategy from compaq to go very very long on the on stim one and then instead to a short stint where he could push hard and in the end had a decent advantage over andy susek and debbie perrell and great to have those pro drivers with us uh really really uh awesome to have that representation knowing that they would not necessarily be at the very very sharp end of the field um so it's kind of goodbye from the from the sim racing world for certainly for david as he goes back to full-time touring car racing every weekend until uh until october i'm gonna miss it because it has been um an education as well as a very enjoyable few months but uh you never know um the asia dates looked though they might slot in around other things so um i don't think i'm done with esports yet i haven't got around to buying a sim maybe that's going to come at the end of the season but you know and obviously martin's legs would never get into us they're far too long so they're only simulated long legs and plastic simulation race plenty of racing for you still martin involved in commentary in the in the virtual world yes absolutely the uh the virtual world continues to to mix and match weekends with the real world so yeah it's just yet another motorsport calendar that's going to clash all the way through the season but it's as david said you know it's been really entertaining to watch every championship that i've been commentating on they've said you know what's the difference between this and commentating on real cars and the overridingly and we've already had this this evening the difference is that david and i have to do our own technical work and that comes as a big shock because we're not that's not what we hired for that's not where where we earn our money we earn our money watching things on television and telling people about it not plugging wires and then trying to figure out why they don't work so globally that's the big difference for me the racing is is just as intense as we've seen in this race as any other two-hour sports car race or a gt race you care to mention um but and other than that yeah barrier repairs they're singularly absent so i'm i'm all for it definitely and nice safety cars no red flags and no barrier repairs that's a it's a joy isn't it and on acc i said of course the competency only this platform you have now gt4 cars as well as gt3 cars you have dynamic weather you have the ability to race throughout the whole 24 hours and i think one day very soon we may see a full 24-hour simulation of perhaps as far 24 hours uh in the in the winter season once we got rid of all those little bugs and niggles that uh you know it takes to put on an event like this i was hoping that we might get a chance to talk to nielsen ops but uh no news from our guys in the production office and therefore i think we have to say a goodbye and leave the last words to virtual jack nichols hard risks yeah hello oh no i've just i've just said goodbye and uh and neil snyder's here uh nils what a drive just how long did it take you to establish that setup and that kind of strategy would be the right way to go for this finale uh so the majority of the work first uh was done by arthur but i know we usually start like two weeks before the race or so and then he took the first week because i didn't have too much time and then i joined for the second week and the setup didn't really need too many adjustments um and so we had a very good base to work from i did a little adjustment but overall uh we didn't invest too much to be honest we had we had a set up probably entirety of the season that just worked and um we knew how the car worked and we just adjusted it a bit for what zuzuka required so what was the idea then about going so much longer than the rest of your field and that first stint i have no clue really because we felt let's just do 50 50. so we have a two hour race that stopped after one um i have no idea what the other guys were doing to be honest um so for us this was like the the only choice we really had and but then you you mean in the first stint we didn't really see too much of you you were late in the bottom of the top ten and then all of a sudden uh appearing at the top of the time sheets after your pit stop is there anything special that you're able to do in the pit stop to gain an advantage like fuel less or not change tires i mean the limited factor in the pits is always a tire change which lasts exactly 30 seconds and the refueling usually takes less than that and it's done at the same time so um no not really everybody should have a pizza of 30 seconds the only way you can gain time is by parking in the perfect place and then like the mechanics start immediately and this is probably where you can gain a second or two or so somehow you managed it and then that pace in the second stint was unbelievable just banging in those low two minutes every single lap um yeah i think the i was expecting like in the practice we were a couple tenths faster but i guess the track was different temperatures were different so i couldn't replicate that um i was expecting all the cars really to be at my neck for the rest of the race um but i'm i'm not too sure why they were they were lacking a bit because at the start of the race they were clearly faster yeah absolutely and just how much does it mean to get this victory in the finale i know that you were preparing uh mentally preparing a lot for this particular race and uh obviously the series was one thing but this final race with that element of extra strategy was another bonus uh let's say if i take my whole sro races as as um i don't know as a storyline then it started nice in monza with some casualties on the way then the series itself went like a little bit up and down and i think just this is finally the result that i always wanted to have during the season already well niels congratulations you are the grand finale winner of the sro esports and i know you're heading to lamborghini in september as well as a finalist for that so uh flying high in the world of acc and great to have you on the top tip of this podium uh in the mclaren thanks for having me ben no it's new york's then the champion of the grand finale and david and martin will be relaxing in their chairs thank you so much uh for their wise words and expertise really great fun to have the two of them together uh and as i said a few moments ago uh the last words are with our virtual jack nichols what a way to end the sro gt esports series a fantastic two hour race around suzuka and we'll be back at suzuka at the end of august for the first round of the gt esports asia competition and if it's anything like the european action it's going to be really worth tuning in for in the real world the next races in the gt world challenge powered by aws come up this weekend europe the action is in mazano and in america it's in sonoma california so it'll be great to see the real world action kicking off so thank you very much for joining us in this sro sport gt series thanks to fanatec to assetto corsa competizione and cunos similazzone aka and of course for you for joining us we'll see you very soon oh do now

Channel: GTWorld

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Id: vYAdruY8k8w

Length: 148min 23sec (8903 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 02 2020