RDLMS: LMP1 Driver Interviews

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rSeat.fr Racing Team claimed outright and LMP1 honours in RaceDepartment’s Virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans, a spectacular result for the French team on Bastille Day. Jimmy Dion, Steph Amiel and Raphael Bohorodycz shared the driving duties of the #113 Peugeot 908, with all three pilots putting in a flawless performance to secure the victory.

The #115 Skype Racing Team entry crossed the line second, while Fenix Motorsport rounded out the podium after rounding the Circuit de la Sarthe 379 times within the 24 hour period. SimRace Vereniging Nederland and FEEDER Sport Poland completed the top 5 respectively. Drivers from rSeat.fr Racing Team and FEEDER Sport Poland were kind enough to speak about their respective experiences in one of RaceDepartment’s most prestigious events.

Steph Amiel, Jimmy Dion, Raphael Bohorodycz - rSeat.fr Racing Team (Finished 1st)

You were hands-down the fastest and most consistent entry throughout the 24 hours. Can you pinpoint a reason for the team’s stunning success at the event?

I think there were several reasons which made us a strong team at this event:

Firstly, we have good knowledge of the car, as 2 years ago we won an endurance championship at the French league Endurance Inside with a hard fought 24 hour race held at Magnificent Park. Then, we had 1 victory and other good results in last year’s RDLMS season.

From the first point I can say that the experience in endurance races with rFactor helped us a lot, as we had no disconnections or driver swap bugs. You have to prepare yourself and your different hardware for endurance races to put the best luck on your side, then if we had a problem, everything was in control and we could fix it as efficiently as it could be.

Then, we have the very important part of car setup, and on this part Jimmy and Steph were very complementary. They have the same feedback from the car, as while one could easily set up some parts, the other one could easily do others, so eventually we had a very good setup. We can tell you that during the race the car was a complete blast to run, so much so that several times Jimmy said to us "what a brilliant setup we have today!".

Another point is the brilliant vibe we had in our TeamSpeak channel, as both rSeat teams were in the same channel and it was great! There were serious moments when needed them, as well as a lot of laughter I can tell you that!

Throughout the latter stages of the race, did you feel pressure related to being the lead car on track with the field desperately chasing you down?

It was a mixed feeling, we were relaxed because we knew that we did have the speed to control any threat, but you never know what can happen! You can crash, have disconnections or driver swap bugs even though you have every chance to make it right .Unfortunately, all of us had a least one crash so there were stressful times, but each time we had the appropriate reaction.

As soon as we had a 3 lap gap, we decided to "secure our race" as at some point in the middle of the night the track was very cold and the very slippery. Steph had a crash because we had inappropriate tires on the car, and he couldn't get any heat in them! So we repaired the car and put softer tires on, and we could have lost everything there! It was a wake-up call, and as a result we were more careful and the team order was "no contact whatsoever”! If we felt danger ahead, we slowed down, and we didn't care if we lost many seconds in order to expect the unexpected. Even with this mindset, luck has an important part in this kind of race. I guess we were luckier than the other teams with no disconnections and no driver swap bugs.

Proper preparation was clearly vital for this race. Can you give us an indication of how much time each of the drivers dedicated to preparing for RaceDepartment’s 24 hours of Le Mans?

We started race preparation about one month before the race with some "once in a while" training sessions. We already had a good, basic setup, and then 15 days before the race we started serious training, 2/3 times a week depending on the drivers’ availabilities. Finally, at 1 week before the race, we did some intensive training! We tried to train as often as we could to fine tune the race setup and ensure that the driver swaps were perfect. Our training sessions were 2/3 hours long and sometimes longer.

How would winning RaceDepartment’s 24 Hours of Le Mans rank in terms of your personal sim-racing achievements?

There is no doubt that wining a major event like this one at RaceDepartment (which is a big name in the sim racing community) is a big high in our 3 sim racing careers. Winning it with a French team in a French car on the 14th of July, WOW! It was also very special for Raphael as it was his first big endurance win! He's a young talented driver, watch him in the future.

How much communication was there between each of the drivers in your team throughout the race? And do you feel that team camaraderie played an important part in your success?

As said earlier, we think that communication was a key to our success. It was nice to have both rSeat teams in the same channel, and we also had friends who came and supported us. There was good chemistry going on in this channel, we all had required information from the spotters, quick reactions if we had problems and we had lots of funny moments too. Unfortunately I can't tell you all of them but let's say that Steph tends to shout a lot when at the wheel! Raphael is the opposite, as it's hard to get him talking and sometimes we were worried, and finally Jimmy was snoozing a lot when he was supposed to be a spotter! We are all very good friends, we know each other very well and it makes things easier you know? We don't have to make long sentences to be understood. So yes, our friendship helped us a lot during this event.

Completing three more laps than your closest challenger is a truly amazing effort. Have you had time to reflect on how much of an achievement that actually is?

A 3 lap lead looks like a big gap, but lots of our rivals had disconnections or other problems. They are part of the race, but we are aware that without these problems they would be a lot closer than that. Anyway, we're proud of what we've achieved as drivers, as a team, as friends. We were well prepared and as fast as we could be, we made mistakes but recovered from them and were lucky enough to avoid big problems.

Mateusz Bogusz- FEEDER Sport Poland (Finished 5th overall)

How would you evaluate your team’s RaceDepartment Le Mans 24 Hour campaign?

We hoped that we would be able to fight for podium positions and the main objective was of course victory. The good sign was that we scored 2nd place in another 24h Le Mans event, which was 2 weeks before RDLMS Le Mans 24h, and lost about 2 minutes to the leaders. We didn't expect a good qualifying session, so we didn't put much effort into it. From scratch, we were completely focusing on the race. The race itself started great for us, we were driving well and we were even in 2nd place for some time. Then we just hit the catastrophic set of crashes within next driver changes (apart from that later in the race we got 2 CL's and one screen freeze during driver swap). We decided not to give up easily, and continued in the hope of gaining positions. It was still quite a lot of hours to the end, and we were still in the game.
From your personal perspective, how hard was it to maintain concentration and continue to complete consistent and clean laps throughout the race?

I had no problems with that, sometimes it was raining during my changes, but it wasn't disturbing my concentration.

Were you satisfied with your car’s setup in terms of tyre wear and speed?

Completely yes, the setup we were driving I developed one hour before the race start, because I wanted to make it faster and more stable (and made quite a lot of setups to achieve this). Then I decided that we would be driving on different tires compared to what we were planning to use. And it worked; we used one tire type and didn't make any changes during the entire 24 hours. All was good and "comfortable", and the ride itself in day time was perfect. For me, night was even better!

We know that sim racers don’t experience high g-forces and painful bumps while driving, but did you find it physically difficult to complete long stints behind the wheel?

No, but the chair was maybe a bit too hard. It's hard in my country to experience what the real racers do, but I managed to drive go-karts twice and after each ride I was feeling like I hadn’t drunk anything for 7 days (and worse)!

Did you personally make any significant mistakes during any of your stints?

Hmmmmm, I made one when I got confused during overtaking GT2 driver at Mulsanne corner. We made slight contact, but apart from that I had no spins, no mistakes, clean changes.

Stay tuned for the driver interviews for the remaining three classes later in the week! You can read our full race report here.
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