Max Verstappen rants after Virtual Le Mans debacle

24-Hours-of-Le-Mans-Virtual-halted-due-to-a-suspected-security-threat.jpg
This year's Virtual Le Mans 24h race, hosted on rFactor2 and featuring high profile racers, simracers and simracing personnalities, is raising a lot of criticism after the race was riddled with disconnection issues.

The race was red flagged twice due to server crashes, due to security issues according to the organizers, but resumed with rain turned off as an effort to put less strain on the game. Still, multiple teams continued to suffer from disconnects, including team RedLine #1 car, which was in contention for the win prior to that. Max Verstappen, one of the drivers assigned to that car, finally elected to retire from the race with approval from the rest of the team, before commenting on stream he would never participate in events hosted on that platform again.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1614553896239697921

mvestappen.jpg


The whole situation has been adding fuel to recent controversies surrounding Motorsport Games, the company behind the game and event. Many people have already jumped on it saying this was a bad look for simracing. Romain Grosjean, who posted a tweet dismissing the issues as similar to real life car failures (an unsurprising take considering he's the official technical advisor for MSG), was also met with a considerable wave of disagreement.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1614653944277643264

In the end, the #888 car from his own esports team, the R8G, won the GT class, while prototype and overall win went to RedLine's #2 car.
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About author
GT-Alex
Alexandre Tonini
Global motorsports enjoyer, long time simracer, Gran Turismo veteran, I've been driving alongside top drivers since the dawn of online pro leagues on Gran Turismo, and qualified for the only cancelled FIA GTC World Tour. I've left aside competitive driving in 2020 to dedicate myself to IGTL, a simracing organisation hosting high quality events for pro racers and customers, to create with friends the kind of events we wished we could have had. We strive to provide the best events for drivers and the best content for viewers, and want to help the simracing scene grow and shine further in the global esports scene.

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Comments

Johnr777
I respect Romain as a driver and enjoy watching his channel. But that ridiculous tweet? oooff...

Sure... can be comparable to a real world example... Say you only give some random teams good rocket fuel, the others get whatever is cheapest at the pump. Good luck everybody!

Hopefully this is the last nail in the coffin for this whole Motorsports Games debacle in sim racing.
 
Ole Marius Myrvold
Club Staff
Premium
db_1973 said:
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Yup. @Kenny Paton - this will take up your evening most likely.

Wilko Jones said:
I'm not the biggest fan of Max Verstappen, but he's well justified in the stance that he's taking. I cannot say I blame him for wanting nothing to do with Motorsports Games or RF2.
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Verstappen wanted nothing to do with rF2 after 2020 Le Mans either. Yet he joined again for 2022, where they retired and then in 2023.
If he'd stop simracing on any platform where they have experienced server issues/connection issues in a race he has participated in, he'd be racing offline I think.

Johnr777 said:
Hopefully this is the last nail in the coffin for this whole Motorsports Games debacle in sim racing.
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Less competition is never good. Though, I get what you mean.
 
Antonio Castagna
Anyone with a good memory knows very well that rF2 has always had this kind of problems, however I expected that after the acquisition by Studio397 several years ago, the situation would improve, that they would fix most of the bugs that afflicted it ... . and instead ... it was a continuous churning out of new content (some perfectly useless, such as Formula E and related tracks) rather than reinforcing (or completely renewing) the multiplayer part which already gave many problems in the past, and not only that.

If they wanted to do everything to bury even more a sim that has always struggled to establish itself over the years, well ... now they have succeeded perfectly.

I say this as a fan of endurance races, I've done many with rF2, from simple 90-minute races to even 24-hour races, I know very well how much effort and work it takes to create everything for a single race, how much preparation it takes for all the members of every single team, but now we need to look at the facts: rF2 is not recommended for events of this kind.

Either they decide to redo all the multiplayer from scratch (or at least most of it) or it's better to look at other sims, there's not much to think about it.
 
Nitro McClean
Premium
The Virtual 24h LeMans was an embarrassing display. Everyone agrees on that. Max Verstappen's reaction was somewhat understandable after 5 months of preparation. But the way I found it a bit clumsy. If you are a two-time F1 world champion, we can expect a slightly more mature reaction. I hear voices that his reaction is bad for sim racing in general. I don't think so, I think it has more of an effect on how people look at Max Verstappen as a person.

It's sad that a sim that is very good on one side gives so many problems in online racing at the same time. The question is, however, whether the drama of Virtual 24h LeMans 2023 was entirely rFactor 2's fault. What did the organizers do to prevent what happened at the previous two editions this time around? Why didn't they protect the servers from DDOS attacks? If SGP can do this, surely Motorsport Games should be able to do it too? Or is SGP just very good?
I hope that WEC will have a serious talk with Motorsport Games and that this will ultimately lead to something positive in the form of a much improved functionality of online racing in rFactor 2. And that WEC is strong enough to close the contract with Motorsport Games if they don't trust it enough.
 
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Jach
Antonio Castagna said:
Anyone with a good memory knows very well that rF2 has always had this kind of problems, however I expected that after the acquisition by Studio397 several years ago, the situation would improve, that they would fix most of the bugs that afflicted it ... . and instead ... it was a continuous churning out of new content (some perfectly useless, such as Formula E and related tracks) rather than reinforcing (or completely renewing) the multiplayer part which already gave many problems in the past, and not only that.

If they wanted to do everything to bury even more a sim that has always struggled to establish itself over the years, well ... now they have succeeded perfectly.

I say this as a fan of endurance races, I've done many with rF2, from simple 90-minute races to even 24-hour races, I know very well how much effort and work it takes to create everything for a single race, how much preparation it takes for all the members of every single team, but now we need to look at the facts: rF2 is not recommended for events of this kind.

Either they decide to redo all the multiplayer from scratch (or at least most of it) or it's better to look at other sims, there's not much to think about it.
Click to expand...
Every single one that ever hosted an rF2 server will agree with you. The multiplayer programme's framework hasn't changed much in the past 20 years (and rF2 itself is also, almost 10 years old)
 
Dzul
Premium
I take the opinion of Jimmer to a higher regard than that of Max or Romain due to the fact that he has been simracing for over a decade and has participated in all previous LMV races and other endurance events across several platforms. It's not "gospel" but it is an informed opinion that (I agree with and) I think belongs here:


(Excuse the 'double post', there's an ongoing discussion on the rFactor 2 channel already on this topic).
 
R00b_Driver
Antonio Castagna said:
Anyone with a good memory knows very well that rF2 has always had this kind of problems, however I expected that after the acquisition by Studio397 several years ago, the situation would improve, that they would fix most of the bugs that afflicted it ... . and instead ... it was a continuous churning out of new content (some perfectly useless, such as Formula E and related tracks) rather than reinforcing (or completely renewing) the multiplayer part which already gave many problems in the past, and not only that.
...
Click to expand...
I'm an rF2 fan, and I'm not defending rF2/MSG (who I think shouldn't have exclusive rights - I don't think any one sim title should have exclusive rights).

But, to say all S397 have done all year is churn out new content after new content is a little unfair.

They've radically transformed the UI, fixed some AI related bugs, introduced a new Real Road 2.0, are bringing Hybrid for the BTCC cars this year, and introduced a new tyre model - are that is only the ones I can think of.

Is it perfect - no.
Are there still bugs - ohh god yes.
Should have the server related issues/disconnects been sorted out by now - yes.

Are they heading in the right direction - yes.

I only hope that this year they go and release a new online server system etc to cure these constant reoccurring issues.

But once again - what happened is inexcusable - I feel for anyone who was effected, I'm just as sceptical of MSG as the next person.
 
Jan Larsen
Well, if we look aside from Max's view which is pretty irrelevant in the big picture, the whole situation is pretty much nothing more than a giant display of server instability. Long story short - it happends.
Now, the curve ball here is the statement MSG put out during the race, basically saying they've been hacked. IF that is true, it shows two things: 1; someone out there has a big enough grudge against MSG to go to jail and 2; the server security was poor. As I understand, IP addresses of everyone on the server were accessible which obviously isnt good. Again, IF its true, I wholly expect MSG to make another statement saying they now know who the hacker is and disclosing it in precise details. F.x. "we now know who hacked us - Iraping" or something like that, otherwise I wont believe this to be anything other than inept server handling.

@Neilski @Ole Marius Myrvold (you two came about off the top of my head) Is it possible to crash a server, even the best ones, with 40+ drivers and a few more waiting to swap seats, rain, day/night, textures from 40+ cars, custom skins etc etc, from sheer overload?
 
Nitro McClean
Premium
Maybe Motorsport Games and Studio 397 should work on rFactor 3 which should have all the good things from rFactor 2 but with an entirely new designed multiplayer part and a new userinterface which works as Content Manager does for Assetto Corsa. If they do this, they might have a small chance they can rescue rFactor, otherwise it will be very difficult.
 

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