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iRacing Bathurst 12H: SIMRACE247 claim first win!

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iRacing Bathurst 12H: SIMRACE247 claim first win!

SIMRACE247 claimed their first victory when Troy Dolinschek, Elliot Simpson and Chase Herholdt powered to the top step of the podium, topping the sixth split in the 2021 iRacing Bathurst 12-Hours.

This weekend on iRacing, Formula 1 star Max Verstappen and teammate Enzo Bonito wrapped up the overall victory with a dominant performance at virtual Mount Panorama to claim the Kings of endurance racing on the benchmark sim racing platform with a faultless performance – not one incident in 12 hours!

For SIMRACE247, fresh from a day of real-life karting exploits, Troy jumped into his rig and signalled his intent with a sixth-split pole-winning lap time of 2:03.387 in the SIMRACE247 Ferrari, half a second up on next best Josh Rattican in the Elite Motorsport Ferrari.

What transpired was a race of strategy and patience as Troy and Elliot did the bulk of the work, the latter delivering 79 strong laps packed with incidents and challenges he managed to avoid. Chase kept an eye on things from the crew chief post before doing time in the car to allow Troy to rest.

After 11 largely and comparatively incident-free hours plus help from Lady Luck, Troy emerged from the pits for his last stints in the car with the leader halfway up the mountain, the SIMRACE driver with a big ask to take the win.

Fired up and in the sweetspot Troy delivered a faultless and ultra-fast stint. On the 11h38m mark the passed the leaders Elite Motorsport and kept it fast and safe until the chequered flag waved for the team’s first victory in an official iRacing event.

The next four cars were on the lead lap, a testament to the intensity and level playing field that split six of the event provided for the 12-hours of intrigue and drama on the mountain.

Team captain Elliot said: “It was race packed with everything. Big moments, plenty scares but in the end it was great to wake up to the knowledge that we had won. It was a true team effort, with Troy really on song and the best guy to have in the cockpit when we needed consistent speed.

“I kept to the game plan, and Chase provided support when Troy needed to rest while keeping an eye on things after his own real racing earlier in the day. Hats off to both of them and proud to have won the toughest race on iRacing with them.

“Part of the team work was having Vladislav Zenkov taking time off his own racing to help us spot and provide moral support. All these things made a difference.

Team principal Paul Velasco added: “We have come close often only to have bad luck and inexperience go against us. But in the end, you make your own luck as Max Verstappen and Enzo Bonito showed with their incident-free run to be crowned the best around virtual Mount Panorama.

“The team talk before the race was all about running incident-free, this they did and to score such a strong result in such a manner. We learned from our previous mistakes when victory was snatched from us; Daytona 24H last month the most recent example.

“Its also fitting that this win comes almost a year – to the day – since the SIMRACE247 team and website project was launched, coinciding with the big boom in sim racing brought about by the coronavirus that engulfs the planet… poetic justice of sorts.”

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Paul Velasco

Paul Velasco