Once in a while something special happens and after our 10 year anniversary we are delighted to announce another very special occasion. We have been contacted by Autovisie, one of the most popular car magazines in the Netherlands. They also have a weekly insert in one of the biggest national newspapers: De Telegraaf.

Initially, we were interviewed about our sport and a photographer came over to take pictures of one of our drivers in action during a race. Autovisie soon concluded it would be much more interesting to participate in an actual simracing event alongside Simracing For Holland. Our core focus has always been endurance racing, so the next challenge was to find an event that could be fitted in everybody’s agenda.

So we set out to find an endurance event that could be fitted in everybody’s agenda. And we soon learned that something even more special was waiting for us!

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Car #50

As experienced simracers we are aware of the fact that that a guest driver might be unable to run quick laps and keep the car in one piece. Autovisie understood that well and provided us with two experienced drivers to race an extra car in Saturday’s 12 hours of Sebring.

Dries van den Elzen
Autovisie editor and test driver with a racing license and experience in real life racing like the Mazda MX-5 cup, which happens to be the series in which our teammate András Király is active as well.
Robin Frijns
The surprise: the other driver is going to be Robin Frijns, who is one of the most successful dutch racing drivers with, despite his young age, an impressive resume. Most of the readers will obviously already know Robin, since he is not only the 2011 Formula Renault 2.0 and 2012 Formula Renault 3.5 champion, but also an ex GP2 driver and ex F1 test driver! Currently he is active in both the new Formula E and the Blancpain GT Series. With his experience and talent it will be a great pleasure to drive together and see how close to real world racing our sport has become.

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Car #51

They will be joined by the drivers of the #51 car’s regular lineup, all longtime SFH team members.

Dennis Douna
András Király
Marcel Offermans
Robin Verdegaal
Johan Nieuwenhof
Ruud de Wit

Simracing For Holland (SFH) is a team of simracing enthusiasts. Named after the Dutch endurance team Racing For Holland, SFH also adopted their iconic chequered paint style. The team was founded in 2004 when a group of Dutch drivers joined forces to compete in the EEL 24H of Le Mans. Pole position and 2nd place in that race gave the team the momentum to go on and compete in other GT, Cup, Formula and Sportscars competitions.

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Equipment

Although it is quite common for us to all sit at home when driving such events, we decided to get together for this special occasion and race both our regular car and the extra entry from a single physical location. Niels and Svend from Heusinkveld Engineering offered to host this at their offices and also provide us with two state of the art professional simulators, fully equipped with the latest in simracing technology. Suited with HE Ultimate Pedals, a SimSteering direct drive steering wheel and three 1440p 144 Hz monitors attached to a beautifully engineered racing frame we are perfectly geared up to drive both cars this weekend.

Heusinkveld Engineering, located in Groningen, the Netherlands, develops cutting edge race simulation solutions. They originally started as a subcontractor in the field of automotive and motorsport simulations. In 2012 Heusinkveld Engineering set out to create a proprietary portfolio of services and products, both hardware and software. Their products and services are used by both prosumers and professional race teams and drivers, including teams and drivers active in Formula Ford, GP3, GP2 and Formula 1. The company also develops vehicle models for a number of software companies.

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Qualifying

Saturday’s race is part of the Virtual Endurance Championship (VEC), founded in 2008 as a multi-class endurance league which offers races that last between 6 and 24 hours. Teams of two to five drivers compete on classic tracks like Sebring, Spa and Le Mans. Season 8 features over 80 teams in total split over two different servers, which makes it crucial for teams to not only run a good race, but also be lightning fast in qualification to make the top split. Last weekend’s qualification saw Dennis qualify the #51 Corvette C7.R in fourth position in the GTE-Pro class, making sure that both cars start on server 1 this weekend.

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Race

The event will start at 17:00 CET and will be broadcast live on YouTube Gaming, with live timing available throughout the event as well. We will be driving with the rFactor 2 simulation software, which was created by Image Space Incorporated (ISI), founded in 1992. They are a well respected software developer specializing in building advanced racing simulations for consumers and professionals. Their highly skilled development team features both artists and programmers dedicated to the design and development of cost-effective, high quality software and computer products. After releasing Sports Car GT, their first racing simulation, in 1999 they went on to produce several simulations for Electronic Arts before releasing rFactor 1 and 2.

Simulation
Based on ultra realistic dynamics, immersive sound and stunning graphics, the simulation supports a full day-night cycle as well as dynamically varying weather conditions such as rain. Tracks feature “real-road” technology that changes the grip depending on where cars drive on it. You can run full 24 hour endurance events and in multi-player mode, driver swaps are also supported. Everything can be customized by the community, including adding new tracks and cars, and a wealth of add-ons are available on-line.

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Saturday 6 March 17:00 CET
Live broadcast
Live timing

Enjoy the race!

Thank you
We would like to finish with a big thank you to everybody involved in making this event possible. Autovisie for coming up with the great idea to experience such a race first-hand. Heusinkveld Engineering for providing us with a great place and technology to make this race as realistic as possible. VEC organizer Jimmi Allison for allowing us to field an extra car and finally ISI for making rFactor 2, a groundbreaking simulation that has paved the way for endurance racing.