Carl Winkler & Maik Paluch Finish DGTM 2022 Season In 5th!
Launched in April 2022, the Deutsche Payment DGTM is a digital GT championship on the iRacing simulation which is organized and run by SimRacing Deutschland. Using the GT3 vehicle platform in iRacing, every month the competitors of the DGTM are facing an endurance event racing on some of the greatest virtual racing circuits of the world. CoRe legacy members Carl Winkler and Maik Paluch decided to join the party with the simple goal to just make the best out of it. With limited time of testing and deciding on the car choice, both long term CoRe drivers put their trust in the classic Audi R8 GT3.
The first race’s qualification session at the Nürburgring brought an unexpected surprise for the CoRe SimRacing Legacy squad after Cali managed to take pole position by three tenths. Taking the positive momentum into the race, the first race of the season looked promising indeed. Nevertheless the mid-stint pace of the Audi dropped a bit due to poor setup work – the maximum in the end at the first race of the season was just a solid P4. Then, following a very safe joker solo run at Spa by Cali due to illness – and a P43 to P4 Hockenheim solo run by Maik due to a hardware failure, another bunch of P4 points were bagged in. Although enjoying pure results consistency in the first third of the season – the concentration started to crumble in the following round at Silverstone.
As a podium result at Silverstone was in close reach, the handover to Maik for the last stint saw the CoRe car spinning due to high tyre wear. The wrong decision at the pitstop strategy made only a 6th position the maximum outcome for the CoRe Audi which was definitely a little setback to bear. The focus to win or reach a podium position was still on though – and at Brands Hatch, both CoRe drivers decided to give it a chance. A pole position result for round five shifted the start of the race in a good light – an early contact in the race made the team fell back to P6 again, though. In Monza, the team was only able to end in P8, in the following race at Oschersleben only P7 was achieved after Ronald Großmann had to jump in to replace Cali.
At the penultimate round at Red Bull Ring, Cali and Maik were able to finish in a solid and uneventful P5 while the final race at Imola brought another P4 result to the scoreboard. With all results summed up together, the CoRe SimRacing Legacy squad finished the long competitive GT3 season in 5th position, being the best Audi R8 by a great margin. “It was a very enjoyable but competitive season – as it should be. Our contenders were insanely consistent and it was tough to scrape some points of them. Congratulations to the season winners and podium reachers. For us, it was just missing a tenth or two to be at the top. A big shoutout to the league organizers for the great administration. It has been a blast!” – Carl Winkler & Maik Paluch.
Twitch content of the season can be found at Cali’s Twitch channel at : Twitch.tv/cali4ger