Maximilian Benecke wins the first main race of the PECCD24 at the Hockenheimring
The Porsche Esports Carrera Cup Deutschland 2024 season officially opened this weekend. The traditional racetrack Hockenheimring was the venue for the exciting season opening of the virtual one-make cup. Over a track length of 4,574 km, 17 sharp bends awaited the sim racers, providing lots of driving fun and action.
The season kicked off with the two pre-qualification sessions on Friday and Saturday in the brand-new PECCD24 livery. Not unexpectedly, Moritz Löhner, the 2020 PECCD champion, and Maximilian Benecke, the 2021 PECCD champion, qualified for the first grid positions of the qualifying session on Sunday.
The action continued straight away in the qualifying - the high level of competition was reflected in the close results. All drivers finished within four hundredths of a second. Maximilian Benecke secured his first pole position in the qualifying with a gap of 00:00.061 ahead of Moritz Löhner. Therefore, he started at the front of the first race, closely followed by Moritz Löhner and Jiri Toman. Benecke was able to hold his front position throughout the first race and showed that the new platform RENNSPORT is no challenge for him. The results of the first race decided the grid for the second race, whereas the drivers are now scoring their points for the leaderboard. As a result of this, the sim racers, especially at the front, drove very carefully to avoid any mistakes.
In the second race, the drivers battled even harder over the nine laps. Especially, at the back of the field the drivers fought hard for their positions. Because of a few collisions Lukas Mateja and Alessandro Ottaviani were forced to vacate their positions and therefor fell to the last two places of the leaderboard. Whereas Nico Nünninghoff benefited from this chaos and passed them to the 10th place on the leaderboard. At the front, the top racers finished their lines without any major position changes. Maximilian Benecke took home the win of the first race weekend of the season, followed on second place by his MOUZ teammate Moritz Löhner. Jiri Toman from R8G Esports completed the podium in third place.