After winning the opening round of the Le Mans Virtual Series, the Vanwall-Burst cars arrived at the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza, with high confidence in maintaining and possibly extending the championship lead. The weather played a deciding role in the end – let’s catch up on the 4 hours of Monza!
As Martin Haven said in the race build-up, Monza has been a focal point of Italian Motorsport. The legendary race track set the scene for what turned out to be four dramatic hours of multiclass racing.
Tom Dillmann was behind the wheel of the No. 4 FLOYD Vanwall-Burst entry for the first time this season. He shared the car with Jernej Simončič and Jesper Pedersen, who was part of the line-up which claimed victory in Bahrain. was starting to fall over the Sakhir desert and the green light ignited the fire burning inside the drivers of the 40 cars before race start.
In the No. 444 Nextview Vanwall-Burst, Esteban Guerrieri joined Michi Hoyer and Dawid Mroczek, and they were determined to bounce back from the first round.
Lightning start and rainy day
The green flag was shown, and Jesper Pedersen was up to a flying start, going from sixth to third before the field got to turn one. Michi Hoyer lost a position at the start as a consequence of being forced to avoid colliding cars ahead, and with his experience and skill kept the car in one piece.
Things were pretty quiet and settled for significant parts of the race, but around the halfway mark, an incident at the Lesmo corners triggered a Full Course Yellow period, where all cars are forced to drive around the track at pit limiter speed for safety reasons.
This started an extremely hectic round of pitstops because in the meantime the rain had started to fall and this was perfectly timed for the Nextview Vanwall-Burst car. They switched to the wet tires and made a big jump up to sit in fourth place, where Esteban Guerrieri and Dawid Mroczek greatly managed the pace and came through the traffic very well to finish in seventh.
The championship leading FLOYD Vanwall-Burst weren’t so lucky and first arrived at the pit lane after the race had went green once again. They lost out on quite a few positions, but when the conditions became really tricky Jernej went on a charge and together with Tom Dillmann climbed from outside the top 10, to finish the race in fourth place. Magnificent recovery drive, which also ensured they after the race maintained their position as championship leaders.
Tom Dillmann – #4 Floyd Vanwall-Burst
“We had a solid race despite being unlucky with the timing of the first FCY, losing close to a minute. P4 are good points for the championship considering we finished first of the cars running with a Pro driver, and that all of our opponents will need to do that once in the next two races.”
Michi Hoyer – #444 Nextview Vanwall-Burst
“Tough race for us as we were lacking a little bit of pace initially which has put us more towards the midfield pacewise. During the race we made very good calls on strategy decisions. Sadly one of the FCY periods were not too helpful for us, but we are looking forward to the next round at Spa and come back as strong as in we were round one”
When is the next round?
Round 3 of the Le Mans Virtual Series takes place on the 5th of November around the Circuit de Spa Francorchamps.
