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Verstappen slams 'clown show' Virtual Le Mans after retirement

After a series of technical mishaps that affected his race, Max Verstappen elected to withdraw from the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual.

A frustrated Max Verstappen has branded the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual race as a "clown show" after connection problems saw him lose the lead and elect to retire from the event. Sharing Team Redline's number 1 car with Jeffrey Rietveld, Luke Browning and Diogo Pinto, Verstappen took the lead at the start and stayed there. With seven hours of the race remaining, he was more than one minute ahead of Team Redline's sister car. However, connection problems saw him briefly removed from the game and, when he managed to resume, he had lost a lap and a half and fallen down to 17th place. Around 90 minutes later, Verstappen was beset with similar connection problems, prompting the Dutchman to quit the game in frustration. Earlier in the event, the race had twice been red-flagged because of server issues, which organisers said were due to a suspected security breach. Upon restarting the event, organisers elected to resume in dry conditions, rather than with the wet weather that had been seen prior to the stoppage, as this was said to have been affecting the outage.

Verstappen points finger at organisers

Speaking on his Twitch stream, Verstappen aired his frustration at the event organisers, adding that he would not participate in future virtual races. "They can't even control their own game," Verstappen said. "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 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."

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