CoRe Wins The 2021 ARL GT Series Team Championship!
The Apex Racing League organization provided another season of GTE category racing in their league repertoire – CoRe SimRacing drivers Sven Neumann and Maik Paluch teamed up together in a Corvette C8.R to tackle a twelve round challenge on fantastic and exiting circuits across the globe. Dominik Engel and Ronald Großmann joined the ARL GT Series 2021 Season 4 events for a few races, aswell.
The duo was starting off at a season opener at Phillip Island with an over 50 participants field separated in PRO and AM category. Followed by the venues of Interlagos and Montreal, Sven and Maik were able to finish several feature and sprint race runs in Top-10 positions to grab valuable points for the season start. CoRe’s main contenders of the Urano and Colbek team gave both CoRe SimRacing drivers a good challenge, especially due to the reverse grid mode of the series. But CoRe had to experience first major incidents and setbacks at Montreal and Motegi where Maik and Sven got involved in several start crashes – and then as a result, missing out solid performance runs. Nevertheless a first podium finish was achieved by Sven at the Donington event afterwards where the C8.R machine finally enjoyed a light advantage compared to the favoured Porsche GTE competition.
The following accidental Zolder night race as well as the successful Sebring event gave the CoRe SimRacing squad several podium results to celebrate. A top notch outcome was the Indianapolis run where Maik was able to get his first maiden victory in the series. Nevertheless bad luck struck Maik in the following Barber Motorsports Park event where he DNF’d out of the feature race due to damage. With the points sheet closing up and each driver trying to squeeze out their last effort for the penultimate races at Spa and Sonoma, CoRe SimRacing saw themselves leading the team championship into the final races at Long Beach.
Long Beach and its’ notorious hairpin corner provided a breathtaking but chaotic finale to the series. Despite Sven started from the pitlane due to penalties given out in the race before, he could finish a successful Sprint race while Maik finished his sprint run in 4th. Due to the reverse grid Sven was able to end the season’s finale feature race with a maiden victory. Maik confessed : “It was a tough but fantastic season – I really liked to be the only real Corvette contender team with Sven, that gave the whole project an own unique touch. Really happy to win the team championship with Sven!” The CoRe SimRacing team is already preparing for their next challenge : The 2021 ARL GT Trophy Season 2 where the squad of Sven and Maik teams up with additional support of Thomas Arends, Dominik Engel and long-term LFS icon Carl Winkler on May 18th.