Author: altusesports

The Le Mans Esports Series has come to a close, and Beau Albert had the honour of commentating the final race of the event alongside Chris McCarthy, with Veloce Esports taking the win in the Forza Motorsport event. At the conclusion of the Esports Series, teammate and French local Yannick Lapchin caught up with Beau for the opening of the real world race!

It is the start of a big few months of international travel and competition of Altus Esports, with GT Sport drivers Nicholas Voon and Kenny Conomos jetting off to Nürburgring on Tuesday to contest the FIA Certified Manufacturers Series, representing Aston Martin and Jaguar respectively. But the international events don’t end there. More to follow! 😁

A fantastic drive from Andrew Kahl who drove more than half the race in the Logitech G Ferrari GTE, completing a mammoth 191 laps. Joining him was teammates in Marin Čolak and Alexander Lauritzen to take second place in the 24 Heures du Mans, backing up our 3rd place finish from last year. For Alexander, it was his debut in the team and what a debut it was. There’s lots more to come from him! For Marin, it was a welcome return to the podium of a major special event, and certainly is a good confidence builder heading into next weekend’s Porsche Esports Supercup race.

At the end of the day, we do have to congratulate our rivals in Williams Esports who drove an excellent race and showed great pace throughout the race. Over the past 11 months since we started racing, we’ve found ourselves regularly up against this strong side, and they got another one from us. Kudos to them though – a true class outfit and deserved winners. 👏

For the ASTRO Gaming Audi R18 LMP1, the squad did an excellent job throughout the race, running as high as P5 but in the end were caught out with what makes Le Mans such a tough race. The slightest of errors can have massive consequences, and at the exit of Indianapolis Sam Blacklock was caught out with more wheel spin than expected, and a hard shunt into the wall with just under 5 hours to go. Despite the non-finish, it was a really great run for Dayne Warren, Ethan Warren and Sam, who are still quite new to this level of competition, and this only will bring them back fighting harder and stronger next time.

If you wanted to see one race that summarised the fortunes of 2018 World Champion Tim Ryan, the season finale at Knoxville Raceway was it. Ryno would take the quick time in qualifying and lead the way in his opening head to take a dominant win, thus taking pole position for the feature race.

On would roll the feature race and Ryno would get off to a great start and hold the lead for more than half the race holding a mid track line for the duration. However the track itself would evolve to favour the outside line, and upon pushing the very bumpy outside line, a slight rut in the road would kill his momentum, and the 2019 Champion Alex Bergeron would drill him from behind. Certainly not intentional, but an unfortunate set of circumstances that pretty well summed up Ryno’s season.

Ryno showed great speed throughout the season, however was not as dominant out front and was then buried in the pack mo and got caught out in incidents, with many out of his control. Tim did manage two complete white wash rounds taking the Quick Time, Heat & Feature races flag to flag at Volusia Speedway Park and Eldora Speedway, being the only driver other than the champion to be a multi-round winner.

The championship defence was lost with these costly feature incidents, and especially early on in the season with heat incidents causing Ryno to go to the B Main to make it to the feature. In the end Ryno would fail to finish in 6 of the 10 rounds, thus demonstrating the feast of famine season that was 2019. However he is quick to admit that you make your own luck, and staying up the front is where you can avoid those kinds of situations as he did in 2018, and through reduced availability was unable to achieve in 2019 consistently.

With the 2019 season coming to close, we would like to congratulate Alex Bergeron on becoming the 2019 iRacing NOS Energy Drink World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series World Champion. Our 2018 rival was the class of the field in 2019, and a richly deserved champion.

It is with great pleasure that we announce our ninth iRacing GT driver to join the team, with Danish driver Alexander Lauritzen being signed at the weekend.

Alexander first drove with the team in preparation for our ill-fated Nürburgring 24 Hour race, and whilst he was never able to show his skills in the race, the work behind the scenes and in our tests was very impressive. Alexander has performed at a world championship level in karting, and also is a former racer in the Volkswagen Motorsport Scirocco R Cup, and has relished in Sim Racing since taking it more seriously in the last couple of years.

We take on a very considered approach in our recruitment of drivers, and operate quite deliberately with a smaller more focused squad. We believe Alex has a great deal of potential, and with us having one eye on the 2020 World Championship season already, we decided to bring Alexander in earlier to become more embedded into the team and participate in some of the Special events this year, starting with this weekend’s iRacing 24 Heures du Mans.

Welcome to the team Alex!

The iRacing GT World Championship moved onto Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari di Imola, Ferrari’s home turf. However as testing showed it would prove to be an improvement to Ferrari’s fortunes, but only by a little.

Qualifying would see another strong showing from Italian Simone Maria Marcenò placing the Logitech G Ferrari into 5th place on the grid, and narrowly missing 2nd place with a marginal 1x off track cancelling out his second lap. Such was the closeness of the grid, despite being within 0.3sec of Simone, Marin Čolak’s qualifying lap would place the ASTRO Gaming Ferrari in 19th place on the grid, and in the dangerous mid pack.

Simone lost a place off the start to Coanda Simsport’s Mitchell DeJong, however would have a fairly solid start and in a settled train of drivers early. For Marin however, he misjudged the movements of a car in front that had missed the Apex and was avoiding a slowdown, and had committed too far to his line to avoid, spinning the Croatian. He remained stranded hoping the pack would avoid him, however two cars would make heavy contact to the front and causing significant damage, costing more than a second per lap. The team would pit for repairs at the 1 hour mark and go down several laps, persist through to the final stint however retired the car when there was nothing else to gain. Another unlucky race for the squad leaving them down the order at the championship half way point.

For the Logitech G Ferrari, it became a feisty latter end to the stint, with the pack starting to lose patience behind the Williams Esports Ferrari. This would turn into a gain for Altus, with Vendaval Simracing slipping down the order, and Simone making a decisive pass just before the round of pit stops. The team knew early on that they would either undercut or overcut compared to their challengers, and this pass completely changed the strategy play and allow for the overcut, and less time on the double stinted tyres later in the race.

This would prove to be a pivotal moment, as Andrew Kahl would leave the pits to begin his double stint, and come out just ahead of the Vendaval BMW, meaning the overcut and less time on the tyres had still netted a gain. The Williams Esports Ferrari was always within our sights for the duration of the next two stints, and Andrew’s metronomic driving was crucial in keeping in touch, however their pace was just that little bit too strong to catch.

With two big competitors in Red Bull Racing Esports and Pure Racing Team having new tyres for the final stint, it was a question of could we stay in front of one or both of them. Running in P4, Andrew valiantly fended of the Red Bull BMW for several laps before ultimately succumbing, but crucially not losing a lot of time to the PRT Ford running behind. Andrew managed the gap to behind brilliantly and all looked solid, before a very poor rejoin on the second last lap required some quick reactions and avoiding action, losing a crucial second with one lap to go. Thankfully, Andrew drove a solid final lap with no mistakes, and not giving an inch, taking 5th place at the chequered flag!

At the halfway point of the season, the Logitech G squad retains 6th in the Championship Standings, with the ASTRO Gaming squad sitting in 30th place.