TCR Championship & Cup Vice-Championship For CoRe SimRacing!
The 24H SERIES ESPORTS powered by VCO returned for a 2021-2022 season after a long break and with a very close Pre-Qualifying where entries were knocked out by mere tenths of a second. CoRe SimRacing, who qualified with two teams, competed this season in the TCR category with the Audi RS3 (Kieran Harrison, Corentin Guinez) and the new 992 Cup Porsche (Oscar Mangan, Carl Jansson, Oskari Rinne & Pascal Stix). After six exciting and tough rounds, the TCR squad won the championship, while the Porsche team could not beat Altus Esports, but grab the vice-championship in the Cup class.
The TCR team could start the season with a win at Hockenheim and showed their promising performance in the Audi RS3 early on. Corentin Guinez : “We had a very good race from start to finish. In fact, it went perfectly. We did particularly well in the traffic – and that was really intense. You had to remain patient and work clever. We managed that today.”
Despite a win could not be delivered at the following race at Sebring, both squads were able to finish on the podium. Nevertheless at the Red Bull Ring, Kieran and Corentin were back : “Right at the start, it was all about surviving the first waves of GT3 and Cup cars, which went well. Then I noticed that being in the lead with clear track allowed me to pull away significantly from the cars behind so I really pushed on and handed the car over safely to my team-mate. This win gives us a lot of confidence.”
At Monza, in the 992 class, during the first two stints it looked to become a five-way battle between Williams Esports, Logitech G Altus Esports, T3 Motorsport by Maniti, Asetek SimSports Volante and CoRe SimRacing’s 992 team. With another successful podium for the CoRe Porsche squad, the TCR team celebrated their third win in the season : “MSI eSports was really fast today. They obviously had quite a lead in the first stint in terms of traffic and fuel saving. We than basically spent all day in catch-up and the key was to save plenty of fuel. It was quite nerve-racking but really nice to hold on.”
In the penultimate race at Barcelona, Kieran Harrison and Corentin Guinez won for the fourth time this season. The early parts of the race saw plenty of position swapping between themselves and the MSi eSports and Team Heusinkveld teams. But eventually a familiar sight established itself as the CoRe TCR drove off into the distance. Kieran : “The first stint was primarily about slipstream for us, but then our fuel management allowed us to pull away gradually. Traffic was a huge factor in the final sector. The GT3 cars didn’t want to line up behind us in the final chicane and were really aggressive. We had to be careful. But it all worked out really well in the end.”
All four class titles were still in contention when the 24H SERIES ESPORTS powered by VCO went into the final, the 12H SPA – which were also won by the TCR team. The 992 squad on the other hand, was able to finish on the podium once again. The round up the final race of the season, Kieran & Corentin had to say : “It’s been a perfect weekend for us, everything seems to have gone our way. I think we win partly because of the setup, partly because of how we push each other to go faster. Something just seems to click with us and these cars. It was a stressful race, we didn’t have a lot of time to prepare the strategy. So we tried to pull away at the start, but that was impossible with the draft. Then we tried to save some fuel instead and with what happened behind it became easier for us.”
Content & text by Maik Paluch & NEO Endurance | 24H Series Esports | 24H SERIES ESPORTS (@24H_ESPORTS) / Twitter