The Digital Nürburgring Endurance Series presented by Goodyear is approaching its hot final phase. On Saturday, 11 February 2023, the HAPPY RACING 3.5h Race, the fourth of five races of the 22/23 season, is on the calendar. Three races, three winners in the top class SP9 – excitement in the virtual races in the Green Hell is guaranteed. Will AMG Team URANO succeed in defending its lead in the standings? The answer will be provided by the LEGO Technic livestream at www.VLN.de from 11:30 am.
With their victory in the third race, Alexey Nesov and Sebastian Schmalenbach have taken the lead in the SP9 championship with the Mercedes-AMG GT3 of the AMG Team URANO eSports. In the championship standings, their lead over Vasilios Beletsiotis and Will Tregurtha of Williams Esports Razer is five points. Dörr Esports occupies third place. The team from Frankfurt am Main will start race four with a new driver pairing. Jonas Wanner will take turns at the wheel of the virtual Porsche 911 GT3 R with real racing driver Marc Gassner. Gassner was the winner of the Nissan PlayStation® GT Academy in 2014, where he beat 65,000 rivals from all over the world. He subsequently made the step up to real motorsport and competed in the NLS and ADAC GT Masters, among others.
In race three, URANO drivers Nesov and Schmalenbach were 26.219 seconds ahead of their pursuers. Due to the win, the duo has to make a 30-second longer pit stop than their competitors as stipulated in the regulations; the second-placed drivers have to stop 20 seconds longer, the third ten. After fifth place in the opening race and fourth place in race two, the duo confidently drove to victory in the half-time race. Whether they will now manage the feat of defending their lead in the standings remains to be seen. The opening winners Dörr Esports and Williams Esports Razer did not manage to do so.
Only two points separate the two top teams in Cup 2, with Team75 Bernhard by SimRC leading after three races ahead of PhoenixRacing eSport Cup. Both teams achieved one victory and one second place each. In the third race, neither of them made it onto the podium. URANO eSports DATAGROUP took the victory and thus occupies third place now in the championship, 13 points behind the team in second place. British driver Luke Peddington and Dane Mads Gravsen, who drive a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup for the Upshift Simsport Team, will make their DNLS debut at the HAPPY RACING 3.5h Race.
The benchmark in the GT4 class SP10 is BS+Competition. With the BMW M4 GT4, the Munich-based team took two victories and one second place. Thus, the alternating drivers Felix Quirmbach, Ruben Bonga, Joshua W Anderson and Phil Denes collected a total of 38 points. And in this class, too, URANO is represented at the top. Constantin Tscharf and Dylan B Scrivens took one win and one second place and are six points behind the leaders. And there are debutants in SP10 as well: The two Germans Ralf Piringer and Daniel Kühn take turns with Icelander Hakon Jökulsson in the cockpit of Geekz Energy simracing’s Mercedes-AMG GT4.
SimRC enters the final part of the season with a comfortable lead in SP3T. The #476 Hyundai Elantra N TC, last driven by Corentin Guinez and Kieran Harrison, is leading the class standings with 37 points scored from one win and two second places. With a win in race three, Puresim Esports closed up to within eight points of the leaders and occupies second place with two races to go. Also still in the race for the SP3T title are Team Heusinkveld #401 and Impulse Racing by GTÜ.
The free practice of the HAPPY RACING 3.5h Race will take place on Saturday from 9am to 11:05am. The timed practice is divided into two parts. From 11:40 to 12:20, the Cup 2, SP10 and SP3T classes will fight for grid positions. The SP9 will complete the time hunt from 12:30 to 12:45. The race will start at 1 pm in four starting groups. In the pre-show of the stream from 11:30 a.m., there will be live broadcasts into the halls of W&S Motorsport in Ofterdingen.
