Max wins the GTD class in the virtual 24 Hours of Daytona with Team Redline
Published on 21 January 2024 by Misha van der Kroon
Together with Team Redline teammates Gianni Vecchio and Ole Steinbraten, Max Verstapen has won the virtual 24 Hours of Daytona. The trio competed in the GTD class of the 24-hour race, with the overall victory going to Williams Esports in the #6 Acura ARX-06 GTP car.
Three-time Formula 1 World Champion Max Verstappen is an avid sim racer and regularly participates in endurance races, often driving GT3 cars. This is also the case in this iRacing 24 Hours at the Daytona International Speedway, in which he competed with great success with Team Redline #69 in a Mercedes-AMG GT3 car with number four.
The team qualified ninth in the GTD class. Vecchio and Steinbraten took the honors in the early stages of the race and closed the gap with the front of the field, partly due to good teamwork with the sister car Team Redline #70 (Gustavo Ariel, Alexey Nesov, Josh Thompson and Florian Lebigre). The two teams worked closely together by continuing to give each other slipstreams in order to save fuel and go around faster. A tactic that is certainly not easy to implement, but ultimately paid off in a nice victory.
Max took over the wheel on Saturday evening in the race, which had started on Saturday afternoon. The two Team Redline GT3 cars managed to work their way up to the first two positions during the night hours. With the race almost halfway over, a tricky moment happened when Thompson and Verstappen made contact. Max spinned and lost some time.
Team Redline #69 took the lead later in the night and extended their lead over the second Team Redline GT3. Due to a game crash, Team Redline #70 dropped to third place one lap behind. The #199 Stormforce ART Mercedes (Luke McKeown, Alex Dunne, Maxence Godinho and Jimmy Antunes) finished second, also one lap the winners: Team Redline #69 with Verstappen, Vecchio and Steinbraten.
Results GTD class iRacing 24 Hours of Daytona 2024
# Team Laps Car
1 4 Team Redline #69 819 Mercedes-AMG GT3 2020
2 199 Stormforce ART 818 Mercedes-AMG GT3 2020
3 2 Team Redline #70 818 Mercedes-AMG GT3 2020
4 1 Williams Esports BenQ 816 Ferrari 296 GT3
5 14 Simufy Esports GTD 814 Ferrari 296 GT3
6 002 Virtualcoach.gg by GnG 808 Mercedes-AMG GT3 2020
7 001 DeltaSimTech by GnG 808 Mercedes-AMG GT3 2020
8 44 Falken Simracing Team 798 Mercedes-AMG GT3 2020
9 198 Apex Racing Team 792 Mercedes-AMG GT3 2020
10 189 BS+COMPETITION 52 Ferrari 296 GT3
11 3 Williams Esports Chillblast 87 Ferrari 296 GT3
12 77 Williams Esports Academy 69 Ferrari 296 GT3
