That's what the crowd of 133 participators - or 28 vehicles respectively - was to sniff a whole day during the first joint venture between CityLiga and Virtual Racing e.V. on this june's third weekend. It was 24 hours, 1440 minutes or for the matter of the winner: 740 runs all around South City Long reversed. But before going through trials and tribulations of the race, let's have a word at the technics; as in real motorsports - though differently - they play a major role in simracing.
Despite minor misbelieving due to some slow connections VR's LfS-host did a good job as well as the TS3-server which was run by CL or Jörg 'Luder' Bauer respectively. Lastly it was one of the most important means to successfully follow race progress that needed a little warm-up: the live-tracker. But Klaus Adam, who wrote and hosted it, waited in the wings to give a pull at the crank-handle so that it went on without further hiccups during the whole event.

That said, we're already in the middle of action. This one and only hiccup saved Adrian Tomczyk, a penalty when he lost his internet punctually at 10 o'clock, right before the lights switched to green. After a great pursuit - having pulled his XRG out of the pits half a lap behind - he should encounter that fate a second time several hours later, which caused his team the due penalty lap this time. But also his mates where dogged by bad luck which can be witnessed on this little video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwJIVMElqZg), showing the race from the point of view of Conquest Racing, who ended up in 15th place (6th in their GTI-class). Nevertheless they weren't even given the title "most rejoins of the race" as Rapid Roadrunner Racing Team needed five of those to successfully finish the race. Don't be tempted though to say "women-driving". The two ladies Sabine Pieszkalla and Bianka Crass caused only one rejoin, while creation's crowning glory needed four 'irregular' rollouts.
Third lady of the day was Silke Schneider, who did a confident job, thus enabling her mates at Hot Pursuit Motorsports to easefully manage commenting the very neat livestream (Download). Being in competition on an inferior RB4 they rejoiced in following the rest of the TBOs. In analogy to Torsten Brandt and Andre Keidel also Robert Graf managed the challenge to talk and drive (one after the other of course) and - along with his team - placed his Wilgrave Motorsports-XRT right before the anchormen-colleagues.

With this interlude of moving pictures let's return to the matter of rejoins. Co-leader in this discipline are Gεηuine Racing GTI with Tatu Neijonen who lost connection several times in a period of only a few minutes. Ultimately he quit the race for the other teams' sake.
Being an odds-on favourite RING-POLICE.COM VS. RACE-STAR ConverTTable (*thankfully there is "copy&paste"* ;-) ) ended up with far more laps, but also without the chequered flag. After hours of "mishaps, missteps and misfortune" (Phil Rose) Bastian Blust left his wrecked-up XRT to the marshals in the wee hours of morning. Nevertheless, at this time they had completed more laps than SimSync PRO Racing should reach during the full 24 hours. This was of course mainly due to the latter racing a far inferior XFG, but also their race was equidistant from being perfect. As an example take a weird situation on lap 53, where Joachim Politzer, having a fully blown clutch, failed at climbing the hill on pit-entry. Shipwrecked in sight of the "harbour" he had to jump to the pits to continue his race.
Not less exceptional, M. Björndal cruising the highway - right before split one - changed steering. Note well: He was racing for nearly three hours at that point. Two rejoins in the further progress cost his team ineX Racing the possible win in their class. Laptimes where levelling (timewise even slightly lower) those of unified+pm» who also started in an XRG. Unimpressed by starting from the backseat of the grid Marco Schade did an awe-inspiring first stint. Plowing through the grid he ended up on top of his class. A lead which also Sebastian Seybold, Marco Schnieders and Paul Mante - who were equally fast - didn't hand over any more. This was also partly caused by P. Dolezal's nightly connection problems that took Team Inferno - a co-favourite of their class - out of the show. Out of it, considering first place of course, as they were still in battle for the podium of GTI-classement together with the other XFG-teams Heroes of Racing and Austria Team. Ultimately the Alpines were as well out of it, when Robert Karner suffered a broken tyre, as Uwe Bruschke who did a good job on his HoR-debut, but, along with his teammates, wasn't able to find the last fractions of seconds.

The rest of 'the little ones' wasn't able to keep that pace, although Immigrantenstadl-2010 with their captain Mika Radmer lacked little but perhaps a shovel of experience. Position 17 (8th out of GTIs) goes to Christian Schick and his team Krautracing, which was one of only few who managed to get a single car throughout the whole of 24 hours. Admittedly, with 15 of them they needed so many pitstops, that they might be entitled "Dukes of Hazard pitlane". In contrast to that, JallaSnails got their vehicle flipped over twice, forcing them to get some extra-rollouts. Unblamable for that was Frank Hütten who - doing one of his very first races in LfS - caught up with his flurry very fast and did an excellent job.
GTI's top ten is concluded by VoW Racing, where the brothers Andreas and Dirk Engelkeperformed creditably in their first long-run event. It was them, together with GTRS - a team with lots of experience all around J. Hecker - who gained from the bad luck R. Großmann of NOX Racing suffered with the last ingame-message of the day: '... lost connection'. These three teams gave a head to head finish, being only 25 ludicrous seconds apart after a whole day of racing BST Motorsport also had a passenger called misfortune, as Florian Hinz disconnected earlier, alongside with EXBUROS-RACING - who supplied the 'most eastern' driver, the Lithuanian N. Maciulis. Without their rejoins they might have been able to join the party. Same is true for Generationenkonflikt although Jan Esper decided not to show a live-performance of the so-called 'Esper' (turning half a cartwheel).

Enough from the backstages, let's turn to the TBO-show. Fifth place is to Concept Racing who got their XRT to breath some leader's air, when K. Leu stayed for a very long first stint. Right after them Independent Rookiesfinished with the second brotherhood Wolfgang and Dieter Schmid doing half the team's distance. Notwithstanding the name these guys were no greenhorns, as well as eXtrem Racing, where M.Peters did most of the steering. Due to a lack of preparation, they weren't totally satisfied with their performance. Nevertheless, they will be granted the unofficial title 'Lords of pitlane' which they share with Xcite Racing - Die Urlauber. Both of them needed 17 pitstops, the first of which was due in lap 17 (what a coincidence) when K. Egloff sustained a broken suspension on his FXO.
Three laps before that Gεηuine Racing FXO had to visit their crew, but with only minor damages managed to stay 'in the game'. At least until at twilight even their front-wheeler said good bye to winning the title. Insufficient communication cost them one, perhaps two laps when after Francois Maris' disconnect N. Vallée joined the race. Only half a lap later though he quit again, when he saw his mate back on the server and even back on track.

Now only two teams were left in the struggle for the title: Gεηuine Racing XRT and CityLiga Endurance Team. Weapons were chosen equally and laptimes levelled each other's. Thus, it's been mere peanuts to take the final decision. To undergo a drivethrough-penalty for crossing the pitline might be considered quite a bigger nut but that didn't turn out to be decisive as "CLET" was strikebound. After Franz Gröbmair had a minor impact on the walls of South City, his mechanics refused to work. Romour has it that they weren't pleased with all those cans of beer and caffeine-drinks already emptied. With joined forces Roman Pärschke, P. Kubinji, M. Fieseler, C. Barnick and Peter Suschlik were able to convince them to do their job at least during the second attempt. This mishap gained Gεηuine Racing their half lap of advantage to win the race after 740 times of running around the circuit. Thus Pierre Peron, Eric Bitan, J. Schein, Darren Lee and Morgan Trollé saw their chequered flag and achieved their merited victory with an average of 124.1 kph.

A last - even more impressing - figure are the 15955 blue flags, that were shown during the race, visible - among many other statistics - within the official results.
Finally the organisators would like to thank all of the competitors for their participation and fair racing and of course all those helping hands that made this event possible in the first place.