Test day tag for Löhner in the Dörr Motorsport McLaren 570S. 30 laps of the Hockenheimring in unsettled conditions. Sim racer impresses with good lap times.

Moritz Löhner, who won the ADAC GT Masters Esports Championship 2020 powered by EnBW mobility+, swapped his familiar virtual cockpit for a seat in a real car this week. The test day in a real McLaren 570S, belonging to Dörr Motorsport, was last season’s main prize and Löhner’s reward for winning the title.

Löhner completed over 30 laps of the Hockenheimring. He was supported by ADAC GT4 Germany driver Christer Jöns. The conditions in Hockenheim were far from easy: Löhner did enjoy a dry track for several laps, but he also had to get to grips with the McLaren in the wet. Despite the tricky conditions, Löhner set a fastest lap time of 1:54.1 minutes, just five tenths of a second slower than Jöns.

The McLaren 570S was also equipped with a special feature. The car was fitted with the Schaeffler drive-by-wire system - Paravan. This means that there is no mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the steering gear.

Moritz Löhner: “The track conditions I initially had to come to terms with first were very tricky. In the dry, it did not take me long at all to be able to push the car to the limit. In the rain, however, I still had to try out a lot of things and discover exactly where the grip was on the circuit. Despite this, I was still able to do this very quickly, as I know the Hockenheimring very well from the thousands of laps I have done in the simulation. I was able to transfer a lot directly to the real car. The new Space Drive technology was also new to me and very interesting to try out, as many of the components work similarly to a sim racing steering wheel.”

Löhner will be back on familiar ground again on 1st June 2021, when the new season of the ADAC GT Masters Championship powered by EnBW mobilty+ gets underway in Oschersleben.