CAS-iRacing Community

Setting

Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours, Burgundy — 4.411 km, 17 turns, the Grand Prix layout that hosted French F1 from 1991 to 2008. Coming off the Suzuka monsoon, the summer-attendance dip was visible: only 23 entries against 38 at Brands Hatch and 31 at Suzuka. Warm summer evening, drivers reporting sauna cockpits.

Two drivers lost before the start: Maurice Becker to a regional power outage at his ISP, Antonio Cursio to a wheelbase failure during qualifying.

Qualifying

Split 15-minute sessions, AM then Pro. In AM, Max Coldron (NEON Sim Sports Red, Mustang) took pole with a 1:37.032 — three thousandths ahead of Benjamin Schlosser (1:37.035). Justin Christiansen P3 (1:37.114) in the BMW, then Manfred Baar and Klaus Oberländer — the top five within two tenths.

In Pro, Yannick Wonnenberg snatched pole on his final attempt with a 1:36.175 in the Lamborghini — 31 thousandths clear of teammate Mike Zocher (1:36.206). Lukas Zörlaut P3 (1:36.501), Mario Severn P4, Hendrik Stanzel P5, and Kevin Osiewacz P6 two thousandths behind Stanzel. Dennis Ulli Richter, normally Pro front-running, struggled all evening with the Aston Martin and qualified P16 overall.

Race — first stint

The rolling start was unusually clean — the new iRaceControl restart procedure has fully settled in, no first-corner chaos. Wonnenberg led away from pole; Zocher held P2; Zörlaut moved up to attack, and the top five settled tightly. Wonnenberg built a 1.2-second margin in the opening laps before stabilising in the high 1:36s.

In the midfield, Justin Christiansen’s BMW gradually worked past Max Coldron, while Dennis Ulli Richter wrestled with the Aston Martin. Christoph Kiesel went off in his Mustang and dropped to the back early — he would later pick up a black flag for repeated track-limits infringements and serve a drive-through.

Pit phase & second stint

Cool surface, low wear — most front-runners stopped fuel-only with about 35–40 minutes elapsed. The decisive moment: Wonnenberg and Zörlaut pitted on the same lap. A marginally quicker Speed Monkeys stop briefly handed the net lead to Zocher (still running long), but once the cycle completed Wonnenberg was back in front with Zörlaut closed to within 1.1 seconds.

Pro fastest lap: 1:36.791 (Wonnenberg) — set deep into the second stint trying to break Zörlaut’s tow. Mike Zocher matched it within two thousandths (1:36.874) two laps later. The genuine surprise: Kevin Osiewacz set a 1:36.868 — the second-fastest race lap of the entire field — coming from P6 to finish P5.

Battles of the day

• Wonnenberg vs. Zocher (teammate duel): the two Speed Monkeys never more than a second apart; a late hairpin lock-up briefly put Wonnenberg behind, and he passed teammate Zocher around the outside to retake P1.
• Zörlaut vs. the Speed Monkeys: the NEON Sim Sports Blue Mercedes closed to 0.7 seconds after the pit phase but couldn’t pass on a Magny-Cours layout that is hard to overtake on outside of Adelaide and the Lycée chicane.
• Osiewacz vs. Stanzel: Kevin caught the yellow Porsche and pressured for several laps before getting through on a tow-and-out-brake, then set the fastest second-stint pace in the field.
• Christiansen vs. Coldron (AM class lead): Christiansen got past on the run down to the Adelaide hairpin; a Dennis Ulli Richter incident in front of Coldron broke up the chase and the gap stretched to nearly a second.

Notable incidents

• Christoph Kiesel — early gravel trip in the Mustang; black flag and drive-through for repeated off-tracks.
• Dennis Ulli Richter — struggled all race with the Aston Martin, multiple slow-downs and a late spin, finished P13 overall (last classified Pro).
• Chistian Schlosser — spin and an off-line slow-down, finished P21 with 11 incident points.
• Benjamin Schlosser — visible disconnect/reconnect blinking on the trackmap, stayed in the race, finished P18.
• Mike Girenz (FRAMIDI Racing, Porsche) — zero incident points across the full hour, cleanest race in the field, P8.

Final classification — top 12

P1 Yannick Wonnenberg · P2 Mike Zocher · P3 Lukas Zörlaut · P4 Mario Severn · P5 Kevin Osiewacz · P6 Hendrik Stanzel · P7 Gregor Micewski · P8 Mike Girenz · P9 Justin Christiansen (AM win) · P10 Max Coldron (AM P2) · P11 Fritz Morawetz (AM P3) · P12 Manfred Baar.

Off-track notes

• A team-result evening — a clean Speed Monkeys Pro 1-2, plus NEON Sim Sports taking Pro P3 (Zörlaut), AM P1 (Christiansen), AM P2 (Coldron) and AM P3 (Morawetz) across the Blue and Red sub-teams.
• Standings impact — Wonnenberg extends his Pro lead; the gap to Gregor Micewski (P7 today) grows. AM standings now apply drop scores from this round forward for drivers who have completed all 9 prior rounds.
• Maurice Becker DNS — ISP power outage at his location; he came back online mid-race but too late to start. Antonio Cursio DNS — wheelbase failure during qualifying; Cursio also announced he will sit out Season 13 for professional training.
• Season 13 registration open — auto-approval for returning Season 12 drivers; new entrants classified after the Season 13 Classification Event. A new Gentleman Driver Challenge sub-standings will run alongside, open to drivers who finish outside the top 10 of their assigned class (3 race minimum to qualify).
• Special Event finale confirmed for Phillip Island after a random-draw tie-break against Twin Ring Motegi.
• Next round: Thruxton Circuit (UK), Tuesday 2 June 2026 — Round 11 of 12. The fastest UK layout; GT3 expected to run mostly flat-out.
• Wednesday Post-Race Briefing: Dennis Ulli Richter is running a community poll on whether to hold it given the heat and low attendance.

Narrative based on the cas_sim_tv broadcast by Andreas. Qualifying times, race positions, fastest laps and incident counts verified against the authoritative iRacing event-result export (subsession 86033896) and the CAS League Scoring (CLS) classification.

The race — a disciplined start in a full monsoon

Qualifying ran dry; the race did not. With a near-total whiteout through Turns 1–2 and cold rain tyres on a late green flag, the room was unanimous: the standard of driving on lap 1 was excellent. Cars ran side-by-side through the opening sequence with no avoidable contact, and the early offs that did happen were rain-claimed slides rather than poor judgement. “Respect to everyone who raced — nobody behaved badly out there.”

The lap-1 chain in the final sector — and why no Full-Course Yellow

Five or six cars were collected in a chain reaction in the last sector of lap 1 — a slide, a nudge, and the low-visibility train did the rest. The room read it as a pure racing incident with no one to blame. The automatic FCY did not trigger: spread across the whole lap the incident count would have hit the threshold, but not the required ~40 points inside a rolling 15-second window. Opinion split — some felt a caution was warranted and the 40-in-15-seconds bar is set slightly too high; the majority still preferred the rolling-window rule, which deliberately only catches genuine mass pile-ups. Because this incident happened in the rear third of the field, the damage stayed contained. The wider point made: a real race director might not have started the race at all in those conditions.

Reading the rain line

The technical centrepiece of the debrief. Seen from above, the dry racing line is the dark, rubbered-in strip — and that rubber turns greasy the moment it rains. The wet line is therefore off the dry line: brake beside it, take a wider or tighter arc through the corner, and cross the rubber as little as possible. In iRacing the surface gives it away — genuinely grippy asphalt looks matte, not glossy. Painted lines offer almost no grip, the kerbs none, and the dip between kerb and track collects standing water — a classic aquaplaning trap. Gravel, by contrast, brakes surprisingly well in the wet. Reference point raised in the room: Verstappen’s Brazil 2024 charge from P17 to P1, won almost entirely on the outside wet line.

Wet setup & the TC-cut trick

Agreed wet-weather setup notes: turn traction control well up (2–3 clicks beyond the dry setting); move brake bias rearward so the fronts don’t trip ABS instantly and so a brake input adds rotation against the heavy understeer; and carry a little maintenance throttle (10–20 %) into corners to keep the car settled rather than coasting and snapping. The TC-cut toggle — a key or clutch binding that disables TC for a few seconds — is useful from second gear onwards, and, paired with a clutch kick, lets you spin the car back around on the spot after a spin instead of doing a slow three-point turn.

Driver notes — target fixation & a last-corner loss

One contact was resolved on the spot: a driver admitted he had been watching the car alongside rather than the road ahead, drifted into the wet off-line area and lost it — a textbook case of target fixation; the other driver was cleared of any blame. The cruelest moment of the day was a driver losing three places at the very last corner of the final lap. On blue flags: you need to be within roughly half a second to be shown one, so simply following a slower car through the spray is fine — no need to risk a puddle to make room.

Season ahead — classes, teams & the new sign-up

The off-track discussion ran long. On classes: several midfield drivers sit awkwardly between Pro and AM — quick enough to feel out of place in AM, not quick enough to fight at the front of Pro. A full third class is hard with only around 30 cars per race (iRacing caps the grid at 60), so the favoured idea is a Silver sub-standings — a separate classification for rear-of-field runners who still score in the main table, similar to the “hot iron” rankings other leagues use. Teams stay at three drivers, with only the best two results counting. The new Discord-based registration and scoring system caused early confusion — sign-ups clashed because old result files were matched on driver name; it now keys on the iRacing ID, and de-registration works again. Bonus: penalty points now survive a dropped score, and start fees can be paid through the same system. Feedback and ideas go in the dedicated channel.

Housekeeping — the in-lap

A reminder for the cool-down lap: incident points keep counting after you cross the line, right up until the last car finishes. Donuts or off-track excursions in that window can earn a drive-through you cannot serve — which iRacing then converts into a points deduction. The in-lap itself is not mandatory; just drive it cleanly, and do not stamp on the brakes the moment you cross the line.

Summary of the community post-race briefing following CAS GT3 WCT Season 12, Round 9 at Suzuka. Race facts cross-checked against the CAS League Scoring (CLS) export; some incidents may still be under review.

Setting

Silverstone GP — the Home of British Motor Racing, a wartime RAF bomber airfield that began hosting races in the late 1940s and is steeped in Formula 1 history (Lewis Hamilton’s famous 68-second wet win at the 2008 British Grand Prix even got a mention in the booth). Fast, flowing and committed — the long sweeps through Maggotts, Becketts and Chapel reward trust in the car. Dry all evening, air around 20 °C and track temperature about 21 °C, steady across both races. Eight drivers signed in — the familiar slow drift down from 13 at the season opener and 9 at Barcelona. André Rajkovic came into the night leading the championship on 340 points, 30 clear of Silvio Foth on 310, with Willi Brand third on 240 and still within range.

Qualifying

Practice had shown a 1:59 was on the table, but qualifying — only a handful of timed laps, tyres still coming up to temperature — settled into the low 2:00s. Silvio Foth topped the early order with a 2:01, Willi Brand just fourteen hundredths back, before André Rajkovic strung together a clean 2:00 on his final run to snatch pole. Starting grid: Rajkovic, Brand, Foth, Oberländer, Pfennig, Utz, Cavoto, Felix. Thomas Felix set no representative lap and lined up P8 — but was still on the grid, keeping the field at a healthy eight.

Race 1 — 25 minutes, standard grid

All eight cars made it cleanly through the opening corners. Silvio Foth quickly muscled past Willi Brand for P2, and the two settled into a long, close duel — exactly the kind of fight that bleeds lap time. With Brand and Foth trading the line behind him, André Rajkovic simply drove away at the front and was never seriously threatened.

Klaus Oberländer ran a lonely P4, Sean Pfennig a couple of seconds adrift in P5. The real entertainment was the midfield: Thomas Felix, Ricardo Cavoto and a recovering Don Utz swapped places repeatedly. Felix was the quicker of the trio, but — as the broadcaster kept stressing — Silverstone’s fast corners and short straights make a clean pass desperately hard. Cavoto eventually strung together a run of small mistakes and both Felix and Utz came through.

The night’s only retirement was Thomas Felix, who crashed out while running P6 and finished many laps down. The top five never changed once the first lap had shaken out.

Race 1 result: Rajkovic, Brand, Foth, Oberländer, Pfennig, Utz, Cavoto, Felix (DNF). Fastest lap: Silvio Foth, ~2:00.2. Incident tally: Rajkovic 4, Foth 5, Pfennig 5, Brand 13.

Race 2 — 25 minutes, reverse-grid top 8

The reverse grid would have put Thomas Felix on pole, but he did not take the restart — seven cars went green. Sean Pfennig swept into the lead early and produced the drive of the night: close to twenty minutes glued to the perfect line, never overdriving the car, turning Silverstone’s un-overtakeable layout into a fortress.

Behind him formed a four-car train — Pfennig, Brand, Rajkovic, Foth — nose to tail lap after lap, the timing screen lighting up with four cars inside touching distance. Brand probed hardest but ran wide into the grass, handing Rajkovic and Foth a way through. Then Rajkovic spun while battling and dropped to P5; the broadcaster saw no contact, just a car lost in a three-wide corner.

That gave Foth a clear run at P2, and shortly afterwards he became the only driver all race to pass Pfennig. Rajkovic recovered, picking off Oberländer again for P4. Out front Foth managed the gap home; Pfennig held a superb P2 and Brand took P3.

Race 2 result: Foth, Pfennig, Brand, Rajkovic, Oberländer, Utz — six finishers. Ricardo Cavoto parked the car late on; Thomas Felix did not start. Fastest lap: André Rajkovic, 2:00.6.

Notes from the booth

• Silverstone’s flowing layout makes overtaking brutally hard — no long straight to slipstream down, and nobody wants to run side-by-side through the fast sweeps. Both races were decided more by mistakes than by passes.
• Drive of the night: Sean Pfennig, who turned a reverse-grid Race 2 lead into a defended P2 against three of the field’s quickest cars.
• The familiar Foth–Rajkovic–Brand trio remain a class apart on outright pace. With the grid thinning as the season runs on, the booth wondered aloud how to keep entries fuller all the way to the finale.
• The broadcaster gave the league’s new CAS League Scoring (CLS) system an on-air mention — GT3 WCT sign-ups for next season are now open through it, and the IEC will run on it too.
• Next round: Hockenheim GP — a long straight into the hairpin should finally give the chasers a real overtaking chance — then Okayama to close the season.

Summary of the full sim_racing_broadcast stream by Thomas Herbrig. Official results are published to CAS League Scoring (CLS) shortly after each round.

Setting

Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya — 4.65 km, 16 corners, the GP variant with the tight final chicane. A long-time Formula 1 test venue, famously rewarding aero balance and tyre warm-up. Track temperature 21°C, fading daylight as the night went on — cars running with headlights for the closing stints. Nine drivers on the grid. Championship leader Silvio Foth absent, Olli also a late scratch.

Qualifying

6-minute session, 3 timed laps. Times tumbled across the session as tyres came up to temperature. Willi Brand stunned the booth with a 1:45.2 to take pole — the broadcaster called it “sensational.” Sean Pfennig matched a 1:45 to slot into P2; Rajkovic, normally the man to beat, found himself only P3 with a 1:45.4. Starting grid: Brand, Pfennig, Rajkovic, Oberländer, Schlosser, Felix, Cavoto, Mielke, Schrader.

Notable: Ralph Mielke joined the field as the third CAS Tech Performance car (Olli having cancelled), setting a 1:47.8 to qualify P8.

Race 1 — 25 minutes, standard grid

An exceptionally clean opening — nine cars through Turn 1 unscathed and not a single incident report flagged for the first ten minutes. Brand led from pole, Rajkovic glued himself to the gearbox for a couple of laps and then took the lead with a textbook slipstream pass on the start-finish straight after a perfect exit out of the final chicane.

Behind them Pfennig settled into a lonely P3, and the second pack — Mielke, Cavoto, Schrader, Felix, Schlosser — traded position over the long lap. Thomas Felix produced one of the moves of the race, a sweeping outside line on Schrader at the final chicane — only to give it back the next lap when Schrader returned the favour.

The night’s only real attrition came from Klaus Oberländer, who pulled into the pits and parked the car for reasons that never made it onto the broadcast — the booth’s incident overlay didn’t flag it either. Possibly a technical problem, possibly something else. Benjamin Schlosser also had a moment somewhere in the pack that the broadcast’s incident overlay missed; he dropped well off the back.

Race 1 result: Rajkovic, Brand, Pfennig, Mielke, Cavoto, Schrader, Felix, Schlosser, Oberländer (DNF). Fastest lap: Willi Brand 1:45.07.

Race 2 — 25 minutes, reverse-grid top 8

The reverse grid put Schlosser on pole and Rajkovic back in P8. Lights out and the script tore itself up at Turn 1 — Rajkovic was tagged into a half-spin and dropped to last. The booth’s read: “a touch, almost certainly unintentional.” A second small contact further back disrupted the chasing pack as well.

Schlosser used the chaos to build a 1.6-second cushion in clean air. The race’s defining storyline became Rajkovic’s charge: through the field, into the points, then onto the podium fight inside ten minutes — up to P2 by the halfway mark, with Brand keeping pace just behind. The broadcaster’s line: “unbelievable performance, no frustration, just heads down and back through them.”

Up front Schlosser kept his discipline. With Brand and Rajkovic engaged in a private duel over P2, Schlosser’s lap times stabilised at exactly the level he needed and the gap stretched back out to the two seconds he’d need to coast home. Behind, Klaus Oberländer spun on his own and dropped places he’d been recovering all race; Jan Tobias Schrader had a costly spin too. Felix and Cavoto traded positions repeatedly in the second-half scrap.

On the very last lap, Brand finally found a way through on Rajkovic for P2 — but the win was already gone. Benjamin Schlosser took his first PCCD race victory with the additional reward of fastest lap (1:45.45). Rajkovic, despite the spin, still walked away with P3.

Race 2 result: Schlosser, Brand, Rajkovic, Pfennig, Felix, Schrader, Oberländer, Cavoto. (Mielke did not take the restart.) Fastest lap: Benjamin Schlosser 1:45.45.

Notes from the booth

• Two CAS Tech Performance Porsches on track tonight: Willi Brand (P2/P2) and Ralph Mielke (P4 in R1, did not start R2). Olli cancelled.
• Without championship leader Silvio Foth, the night turned into a fight between Rajkovic, Brand and Schlosser — and the points table tightens slightly as a result, though the gap to Silvio remains substantial with three rounds to go.
• Klaus Oberländer retired from Race 1 with no public explanation — the broadcast’s incident overlay missed it and the cause never came up on stream. He returned for Race 2.
• The broadcast’s in-house Race Manager (built by Thomas Herbrig with Claude) missed a couple of flags tonight — sensitivity dial needs another pass.
• Next round: Silverstone GP, Wednesday 21 May 2026. Then Hockenheim GP and Okayama (Full Course) to close the season.

Summary of the full sim_racing_broadcast stream by Thomas Herbrig. Official results are published to CAS League Scoring (CLS) shortly after each round.