Kevin Siggy and Ferrari dominate the DTM Esports Championship powered by MediaMarkt at the Norisring © DTM 25.03.2022: Ferrari dominates at virtual Norisring - Kevin Siggy dominant points' leader in DTM Esports Championship powered by MediaMarkt • Superior: Ferrari scores sextuple and quadruple victories at Nuremberg street circuit

Ferrari dominates at virtual Norisring - Kevin Siggy dominant points' leader in DTM Esports Championship powered by MediaMarkt
 

•    Superior: Ferrari scores sextuple and quadruple victories at Nuremberg street circuit

•    Man of the day: Kevin Siggy with two pole positions and victory in the 60-minute race

•    Disappointment in home race: champion Löhner not in the top 10 but with high pulse rate



A Ferrari festival at the virtual Norisring: the legendary sports car brand from Maranello dominated proceedings in round two of the DTM Esports Championship powered by MediaMarkt with a sextuple victory in the sprint race and a quadruple success in the endurance race.


Man of the day was Slovenian Kevin Siggy from Team Redline, who, following second place in the sprint race, won the 60-minute race by a huge margin. Defending champion Moritz Löhner (BMW/Dörr Esports), meanwhile, had a disappointing home round.




With his second victory of the season, 23-year-old Siggy extended his championship lead to 160 points and now holds a commanding lead from the Italians Alessandro Ottaviani (R8G Esports/107) and Gianmarco Fiduci (Team Fordzilla/106). As a result, Siggy made a big step to becoming one of the five best-placed drivers at the end of the season to receive a test with a real-world race car with the chance of earning a full season in the 2023 DTM Trophy.



At the just 2.3 kilometers long street circuit in Nuremberg, where Maximilian Götz was crowned as the champion in the grand finale of the real-world DTM last October, the sim race series on the DTM platform staged two thrilling races with numerous car to car brushes and wall contacts as well as entertaining position fights. Götz, who is at home in Lower Franconia, attentively watched the virtual Norisring race and admitted to being impressed by the performance of the esports racing driver colleagues.



“For me, practicing and racing on the simulator are part of the pre-season preparation as well,” said the 36-year-old, for whom the title defence gets underway at Portimão in Portugal from 29 April till 1 May.



Already during the second outing of the Ferrari 488 GT3 evo 2020, only licenced by DTM partner RaceRooom for the season opener at Imola a fortnight ago, there was no way around the “prancing horse” and Kevin Siggy. With his red-and-black Ferrari with starting number eleven, Siggy claimed pole position in both qualifying sessions and six valuable points as a result.


In the 15-minute sprint race, Siggy got off to a perfect start and pulled away from the rest of the field more and more. With his eyes set on an undisputed win, however, he briefly clipped the wall coming out of the Schöller-S just before the end of the race and dropped back to fourth.




He still managed to move up into second, but it was his Swedish fellow Ferrari driver Christopher Högfeldt (R8G Esports) who drove victory home while Fiduci finished third. In fourth to sixth place, Ottaviani, Adam Princzes (HUN/Arnage Competition) and David Nagy (HUN/M1RA Esports) rounded out the sextuple triumph for Ferrari. The best-placed German was BMW driver Florian Hasse (Dörr Esports) in seventh place.



In the endurance race, Kevin Siggy didn’t put a wheel wrong, putting numerous drivers a lap down in a safe and commanding way and ended up taking the chequered flag with a twelve-second margin over Ottaviani and Fiduci, a massive gap in esports. In spite of the Slovenian’s dominance, the race was anything but boring. Ottaviani and Fiduci staged a thrilling, but absolutely fair duel for almost the entire duration of the race with countless entertaining position changes.




This time, it was Ottaviani who finished second, followed home by Fiduci while Princzes rounded out the quadruple win for Ferrari and Hasse again ended up as the best-placed German by finishing fifth. Lie in the sprint race already, eight cars in the top ten again underlined Ferrari’s dominance.



Moritz Löhner staged the position fight of the day: in the duel for twelfth place, Löhner started one attack after another but failed to find a way past the BMW with compatriot Marc Gassner (MRS Esports) for many laps. Eventually, Löhner applied a special trick from his book, initially went all the way to the outside in the run up to the Grundig hairpin and then surprised Gassner by moving over to the inside line at a late stage and worked his way past with a breath-taking move.


With his BMW, Löhner, who got his season off to a blinding start with second place and a win at Imola, had a hard time at Norisring as he had expected. On top of that, he had bad luck, so he only ended up 17th and twelfth. “At this track, the BMW wasn’t that strong, I wasn’t able to put in a good performance.




Then I also had bad luck. In the first race, I was hit and tapped into a spin at the start and in the second race, I made a mistake myself. I was able to make up a few places in both races, but not enough for a possible top 10 result,” said Löhner, who fought with utmost commitment, his pulse rate rising to over 130 according to the data logging. In the points’ standings, Löhner dropped back from second to fifth with 90 points.



Unusually relieved, Kevin Siggy commented his lights-to-flag win and also was unfazed about brushing the wall in the first race: “In over 500 practice laps, I only made that mistake twice,” he confessed with a smile. “The Ferrari was the strongest car at Norisring, but it will be different again at the tracks that are coming up.” Asked about his set-up, he was reluctant to reveal anything, he just referred to his wing position. For his lap time of 49.989 seconds, Siggy also received the Fastest Lap Award powered by MediaMarkt.



Like at Imola already, Florian Bodin, classified in 17th and 15th place, was the best of the driver trio that had qualified for the championship through the DTM Esports Cup by DTM partner MediaMarkt



The third of the six rounds of the DTM Esports Championship powered by MediaMarkt will be held at DEKRA Lausitzring Turn 1 on 7 April and, as usual, be broadcast as a live stream on YouTube and DTM Grid (grid.dtm.com) with commentary in English and German from 7.05pm onwards.




Aline Proll- photos DTM