CoRe With TCR Podium At NEO 24H Series Season Opener!
The fall is coming on with a brand new NEO Endurance Series season – this time it is the NEO 24 Hours Series including the GT3, Porsche Cup and the brand new TCR class which consists of the latest iRacing model, the Audi RS3 TCR. CoRe decided to give the iRacing TCR car a shot and started a new challenge in the fresh NEO league. The season opener, which was a 6h race at Spa, was finished 2nd by Carl Jansson and Ross Balfour after an intense fight against contender CraigSetupShop.
The pre-season testing phase was extensive for the TCR squad, also including Marius Golombeck and Thomas Gibson who are on the CoRe SimRacing line-up for this NEO season aswell. As the front-wheel-drive Audi tends to burn tyres fast a comprehensive setup was built to achieve a nice balance throughout the endurance race. Carl Jansson, who was behind the wheel at qualifying, was able to set a lap time for the 2nd position on the grid, just missing out a few hundreds for the pole position. The start was clean in the TCR and Porsche class – nevertheless a huge crash in the GT3 category down to Eau Rouge let everyone flinch, but the race started to sort itself out fast though. Carl put himself right behind the TCR leader after the start and continued playing the long game.
Ross Balfour took over after a solid double stint by Carl. CoRe was even able to take a short lead after pitstops, but main contenders CraigSetupShop and SimRC started to catch up fast. Due to an amazing stint by Jack Sedgwick, CoRe had to give the lead back to CraigSetupShop after the last pitstops and balanced themselves into P2. The tyres started to fade more and more in the last part of the race which made attacking difficult – for the last time, Ross gave over to Carl for the final stints. After 6h of racing the CoRe TCR squad finished the race in 2nd and secured their first podium in the new NEO 24h Series. The race broadcast can be found here.