The virtual 24 hours of Le Mans ended in a big disappointment for Max Verstappen last weekend. The Dutchman was in the lead with his #1 Team Redline car, but ran into several disconnections on the rFactor2 game. He let his anger run free afterwards and director Atze Kerkhof understands the frustration.
While Verstappen seemed to be looking forward to the virtual 24 hours of Le Mans, the weekend turned into a disappointment for the reigning Formula 1 world champion. He got off to a flying start, going straight from P4 to P1. From there, however, it went downhill for him and Team Redline, although that had nothing to do with their own performance. Several times the race was neutralized by disconnections and hassles with the game. In the end, Verstappen even fell back so far due to the hassle that it was decided to withdraw the car from the race.
Preparation Verstappen
It resulted in a grumbling Verstappen, who left little of the game and the organization intact. Kerkhof understands his compatriot’s anger. “They just don’t have their affairs in order,” he says clearly to Motorsport.com” href=”https://https://nl.motorsport.com/esports/news/atze-kerkhof-disappointed-dnf-max-verstappen-biggest-ambassador-lost/10421358/” target=”_blank”>Motorsport.com. “And that’s such a shame. Because Max has spent every free minute since he came back from vacation to look the best he can in this event. And that was quite stressful for him, because he only had very few days to preparing himself really well and he always puts a lot of pressure on himself to perform in a race like this. In addition, we really did our best to promote the competition, where we also put Max in. We had 20,000 viewers on our live stream. And then it ends like this again. That is such a big disappointment. Why didn’t they do it again?”, Kerkhof wonders aloud.
Will Verstappen return?
The director of Team Redline is afraid that he and the organization will not see Verstappen again during this specific event. “In recent years it was already difficult to motivate him for this event, because there was always something going on. Last year he made a mistake himself, so this year felt like the time to make it right for him. We had it all together again, we were first and we were unthreatened on our way to the win. But then there was another blow. So now he’s like, ‘Fuck it, it’s been great.’ Thanks to rFactor 2, this event has now lost its greatest ambassador, and that is a great pity,” concludes the Dutchman.
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