Max Verstappen retired from the 24 hours of Le Mans Virtual in frustration after a myriad of technical issues, branding the event a “clown show’ when connection issues saw him lose the race lead.
Verstappen had taken the lead comfortably at the start, racing in Team Redline’s number 1 car, which the Dutchman was sharing with Jeffery Rietveld, Luke Browning and Diogo Pinto.
However, the organisers were forced to red-flag the race twice as technical issues, blamed on a security breach, continually blighted the event.
Connection problems saw Verstappen removed for a short time from the game and when he was able to reconnect, he had fallen to 17th place after being disconnected for a lap and a half
It was around 90-minutes later when Verstappen made the decision to quit the race after he was hit with a similar connection issue to before.
The two-time Formula 1 world champion vented his frustrations at the event organisers on his Twitch stream, declaring that he would no longer participate in future virtual races.
“They can’t even control their own game,” Verstappen remarked.
“This is already the third time this has happened to me, getting kicked off the game while doing this race. It’s also the last time I’m ever participating, because what’s the point?
“You prepare for five months to try to win this championship, you’re leading the championship, you’re trying to win this race that you’ve been preparing for two months, and they handle it like this.
“There have been two red flags, they cancelled the rain, because maybe that’s already a big influence, and people are still getting disconnected, and at one point we were hit by it, and they’re just not dealing with it, because they need even more people to disconnect.
“Honestly, it’s a joke. You cannot call this an event. [It’s a] clown show. That’s why it’s better to retire the car.”
After restarting the event, the organisers elected to resume in dry conditions, as the wet weather seen prior to the interruption was said to have been contributing to the server issues.
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