Champion Formula 1 racer Max Verstappen rage quit the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual event after ranting about the professionalism of the competition.65
24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual is a relatively new online esports tournament that has taken the place of the Le Mans LAN event. It features teams of tour competing in rFactor 2, a realistic racing simulator game. At least two drivers on each team must be FIA-licensed professional drivers—and Verstappen is an F1 racer.
Leading up to the tournament, Verstappen and his team spent time preparing for the race, treating it like a “real, live race.” While there are no real cars involved, Verstappen told The Washington Post it’s an important event and stated they have been testing and preparing in a variety of conditions to get ready for the race.
Despite the intense preparation, Verstappen and his team didn’t do well in 24 Hours of Le Mans. The opening hours of the event were plagued with disconnections and other errors, resulting in a long delay. But then a few hours later, Verstappen was disconnected while in first place. Since he was only one of four drivers impacted by the error, it was ruled he wouldn’t be given back any laps. In response, Verstappen decided to drop out of the race.
“They call it amazingly bad luck. This is just incompetence. They can’t even control their own game,” Verstappen said as he pulled over in-game.
The frustration could be seen on Verstappen’s face as he started to rant about the tournament. He said it was the last time he would ever participate in the virtual tournament as this was the third time he experienced this type of situation.
“You cannot even call this an event. It’s a clown show,” he continued. “It’s a disgrace for all the effort we put in as a team.” Verstappen said he was going to head to Las Vegas and gamble instead, since he’d have a “better chance” of winning. He was clearly angry about the amount of prep his team put in just to run into so many errors.
“Welp, I think I’m gonna uninstall the game,” Verstappen said. “Free up some space on the PC anyway. And I really hope uninstalls it.”
24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual executive producer Gerard Neveau responded to the backlash after the event concluded. He stated many of the connection issues were due to DDoS attacks. After doing some investigation, Neveau said the team found out that some of the racers had accidentally shared their IP addresses, putting them in a “weakened position.” Security breaches then caused global disconnections.
Fans of the racing game competitive scene were disappointed with what happened at Le Mans. Many responded that all of the disconnects and security breaches shouldn’t happen at an event with so much on the line. Others begged the tournament organizers to switch to a different racing game, like iRacing.
Lucky for Verstappen’s team, Team Redline, they still won the race despite Verstappen’s sudden surrender. It’s possible that he may compete again in the future, especially if changes are made, but it’s not looking likely at the moment.
For now, Neveau is working on improving these issues for the 2024 event iteration and has promised a “full investigation” into what happened to Verstappen.
