Analysis: How an unlikely tie-up won sim racing's biggest race

For over half of the inaugural 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual, victory looked destined to go the way of one of the Rebellion Williams cars. In the end, only 17.7s and half a litre of fuel were all that came between the #1 line-up jointly fielded by Williams Esports and World Endurance Championship LMP1 privateer squad Rebellion Racing and a bitter defeat.

But following 24 hours of virtual racing featuring all of the drama, unreliability, safety cars, controversial collisions and penalties of the real-life Le Mans, the #1 entry of factory Mercedes GT gun Raffaele Marciello, Haas Formula 1 reserve Louis Deletraz and sim racers Niko Wisniewski and Kuba Brzezinski triumphed against the might of real-world motorsport giants such as Toyota and Penske, as well as dominant forces of the virtual world like Team Redline and Veloce Esports.

The race which was organised by WEC, Automobile Club de l'Ouest and Motorsport Games, was considered by most of the participating drivers and teams to be the biggest sim racing event in history and boasted entries from real-life Le Mans winners, F1 champions, Indianapolis 500 winners and some of the fastest drivers on the simulator-platform rFactor 2.

• How the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual unfolded
• Le Mans Virtual Hour 1: WRT leads the way
• Alonso retires, technical issues bring out red flag
• Hour 8: Veloce holds sway over Redline
• Hour 10: Verstappen crashes from the lead
• Hour 12: Rebellion takes charge at half distance
• Hour 16: Rebellion holds its advantage
• Hour 19: Verstappen/Norris rejoin after red flag
• Hour 24: #1 Rebellion repels ByKolles charge for victory

The Williams-Rebellion tie-up was initiated by Marciello and Deletraz, the latter making his Le Mans debut with Rebellion on 19/20 September - the new Le Mans date following its postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team entered four cars in the event, with three finising inside the top six. The #13 entry shared by Williams F1 junior Jack Aitken, Argentine tin-top racer Agustin Canapino and sim racers Marc Gassner and Michael Romanidis - aged just 16 - rotated the lead with the winning car in the early hours of the morning and finished third, while the #3 of Yifei Ye, Arthur Rougier, Isaac Price and Jack Keithley survived with a blameless Keithley being hit by the fourth car of Gustavo Menezes at the chicane to finish sixth.

"When it was announced, I straight away said that we [Rebellion] should do this properly, they didn't have much knowledge about the Esports stuff," Deletraz told Autosport. "I knew Raffaele Marciello, and he actually had the idea of the Williams Esports team. I just sent a Whatsapp and it came together.

"We had cars and places for Williams' sim drivers, and it was just the perfect combination because they had the sim knowledge. Everyone practised together, we even organised our own test races with all 16 Rebellion-Williams drivers, all in their own car."

Their extensive preparations were aided by Deletraz working with his real-world Formula 2 engineer Martin Proc, who will run the Swiss in his fourth year in F2 this year with Charouz Racing System.

"We did around 800 laps because we were [each] doing 60 laps a day. Williams, they put a lot of effort into it" Raffaele Marciello

"Louis and I started three weeks ago to do some training and stuff for Le Mans," explained Marciello. "We did around 800 laps because we were [each] doing 60 laps a day. Williams, they put a lot of effort into it.

"We also had one engineer that was helping us with strategy and stuff, we had two good sim drivers, so we wanted to be good for them.

"They worked with the car set-up because it's different from real-life. It's not really the same as the real car, but Niko and Kuba knew about the game so they did a really good set-up, and it was just about driving and not doing any mistakes.

"I know how much they wanted to do well in this race, so we tried to do the best and it worked out very well."

Wisniewski posted the eighth fastest lap in the high-pressure 20-minute qualifying session and Marciello successfully avoided an incident in the 50-car field at the start of the race to move into the top five. However, he did pick up a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pitlane - a stark reminder that just as in the real-world edition, the smallest mistakes can be the most costly.

But the #1 car soon recovered, and it began rapidly rising up the order while many of the high-profile names such as double world champion and real-life defending Le Mans winner Fernando Alonso - in the team he co-ran with Rubens Barrichello - had already hit major trouble. The #1 crew made the most of the first of two red flags for server issues which closed the #1 car's gap to the race leaders.

An impressive opening quadruple-stint from Stoffel Vandoorne had put the Veloce #16 entry among the early frontrunners but as the virtual night fell, Irish sim racer Eamonn Murphy moved to avoid a slow-moving GTE car and Veloce's leading entry ended up in the barriers, ending their victory chances.

Veloce's woes around the eight-hour mark left an increasingly two-horse race at the front of the field, with Marciello aboard the #1 Rebellion-Williams catching Red Bull F1 racer Max Verstappen, who was piloting Redline's #20 car.

Verstappen began to experience technical troubles with his screen briefly freezing on multiple occasions and his virtual car displaying erratic and unpredictable movement for the chasing Marciello. Verstappen's ailing car made contact with Marciello, and while Verstappen and Redline's chances were ended with a trip into the barriers, Marciello and Rebellion-Williams emerged unscathed.

"In the contact with Max, I was really lucky to not have any damage," Marciello admitted. "I knew it from practice that I had good pace, we did so many laps that you know the pace of the car.

"I started to close on Max and I saw in the delta gap, sometimes I was recovering one second because I think his game was freezing so he was losing time, and I was catching him.

"The actual contact, he was one-second in front of me and suddenly he just teleported into me and we crashed but luckily I had no damage, and I was able to continue without problems.

"I think us, ByKolles and the Redline car was fighting for the win, so it was a pity because we would have had a good battle. But it is how it is."

The #13 Rebellion-Williams in which Gassner was a last-minute replacement for Spaniard Alex Arana, who was plagued with connection problems in the build-up to the event, made it a Rebellion-Williams 1-2 at the halfway mark. It may well have stayed that way without the second red flag with just under four hours to go.

This allowed the three cars remaining on the lead lap to close up, with only lapped prototype and GTE traffic between them.

Alongside the two Rebellion-Williams entries was the sole ByKolles entry, which had bounced back from a series of setbacks earlier in the race. The sim racing entry was managed and formed by real-world ByKolles LMP1 driver Tom Dillmann, who scouted out under-appreciated talents in the real and virtual world to form the four-driver team.

He picked rFactor 2 ace Jernej Simoncic, who took pole position on Friday evening's session, as well as Danish sim racer Jesper Pedersen and 2019 World Touring Car Cup runner-up Esteban Guerrieri to race in the team.

"I was in charge of putting the team together," Dillmann explained. "I picked the drivers to race with me, I was really happy we also took the pole because we were an underdog team, both in terms of Esteban and I and our sim drivers are perhaps not the most famous ones. But they really showed who they are in this race.

"I found Jernej whilst competing on rFactor 2. He isn't part of a big sim racing powerhouse, but he was always very quick, always putting a good lap in qualifying. That's why I decided to try and recruit him.

"Pedersen's wheel went into a 'zero-mode' - he had to drive two laps turning right to go left, it was incredible that he managed to do that and only lose around 20 seconds a lap" Tom Dillmann

"Esteban and I really improved a lot in these two weeks. In the end, we were three or four-tenths on one lap slower compared to the sim drivers. We did a lot of preparation, we did every strategy, every tyre, fuel-saving and we nailed the set-up as well.

"We kept working on the set-up until half an hour before the qualifying where we still found some tenths and we had a really good car.

"You have to take a big event like this very seriously, some of the sim drivers are some of the best in the world. It's not just a game."

Dillmann started the car from pole position, but picked up a drive-through penalty for a jump-start, which he believed was unfair as the pole-sitting #93 Porsche GTE had replicated his start without being penalised.

After serving the penalty, ByKolles battled back to the front, only for Pedersen's simulator to break and cost the #4 car more time. Burst Esports driver Pedersen battled to get the car back to the pits and stay on the lead lap in the hope a safety car or red flag would bring them back into contention.

"I dropped to 17th after the drive-through," Dillmann added. "I managed to climb and gain some places and Esteban was in a tight group, but he made some aggressive moves to move quickly back up the order.

"After the first red flag we were already in fifth place, but it helped us to gain back the gap to the leader. We had so much pace, the car was really great to drive for all four drivers. We knew we had the pace to come back and from such big issues.

"We lost one and a half minutes with the steering wheel. Pedersen's wheel failed and then it went into a 'zero-mode' - he had to steer right to go left, and visa versa.

"We had to connect another driver to replace him but it took two laps until I could connect to the server and take over from him, so he had to drive two laps turning right to go left. It was incredible that he managed to do that and only lose around 20 seconds a lap and bring the car back in one piece."

Pedersen's efforts were critical in keeping ByKolles in victory contention and it became the only obstacle to a Rebellion-Williams victory in the second half of the race. The second red flag meant just 30s would cover the top three cars heading into the final hours and it soon became a fuel race.

"[At] Le Mans, if you go full push, you can do nine laps," Deletraz explained. "With a little bit of fuel-saving, lift and coasting in the long back straight before the chicanes, you can manage 10 laps just on the limit.

"We will always go for 10 laps, it's not a big loss of time. It's always better for strategy because you can save [fuel] in the end.

"But what happened after the red flag, we decided to push and make a gap to the ByKolles car, thinking it would be enough that they wouldn't be able to keep pace.

"They had to do two stints with 11 laps to be able to reach the end, but to do 11 laps you have to lift and coast a lot, which costs you a lot of time. Even if we splash and dash, we will still come out in front.

"But actually one hour to the end we decided that we were on the wrong strategy, so we decided in the last two stints to save one extra lap of fuel. This was extreme fuel saving with some switching off engines and massive relying on slipstreaming. I would not have been able to do that, but Niko did it."

"The whole race our average consumption was around 7.5 litres and that was also with lift and coast because normally the ORECA needs to consume around 7.7l a lap. [In the last stint] I had to do 6.8l per lap" Niko Wisniewski

With just under half an hour to go, Wisniewski had an advantage of around 22-seconds as the ByKolles car in the hands of Simoncic moved into second place and set about chasing after his Polish rival.

But Wisniewski, whose sim racing successes include winning the Le Mans Esports Series qualifier at the Autosport International Show last January, was able to limit the time lost to the chasing ByKolles to just under five seconds and crossed the line with 17.781s in hand.

"It was crazy," Wisniewski told Autosport. "The whole race we were doing 10-lap stints, our average consumption was around 7.5 litres and that was also with lift and coast because normally the ORECA needs to consume around 7.7l a lap. [In the last stint] I had to do 6.8l per lap.

"That was really huge, but also I knew I had around a half a minute advantage and the help from our engineer, Proc. He was really helpful because every lap he said to me either 'you need to consume a little bit less or your consumption is good so you can eke out more tenth'."

The strategy worked, just. Wisniewski took the chequered flag with half a litre of virtual fuel in the tank and the #1 car had to be pushed back to the pits by another car on the slow-down lap.

The thrilling finish and Wisniewski's heroic fuel-saving efforts provided a fitting climax to a scintillating performance from the unlikely but highly effective Rebellion-Williams alliance. Its leading four drivers were among the most-closely matched in terms of consistency and fully deserving of not only a major sim racing win, but of a historic Le Mans triumph.