Skip to content

Ferrari disqualified from iRacing Daytona 24, Grid-and-Go win

The 2025 top split of the most-participated sim racing event was initially won by the official Ferrari team, only for it to be disqualified for allegedly avoiding a crash by exiting and re-entering the race.

Ferrari reportedly disqualified from iRacing Daytona 24, Grid-and-Go win

Shop sim racing equipment

Update 5.55 pm UTC, 20th January

During the production of this article, the Ferrari disqualification was confirmed by the event’s partner Virtual Competition Organisation. As a result, the word ‘reportedly’ has been removed from the title.

Original article

By all accounts, the iRacing Daytona 24 was a success – the debut of rain during the popular event, an expected number of unique drivers well over 20,000 and a four-time world champion participating in the top class.

Max Verstappen wouldn’t have the easiest of races, however, hitting the barriers at the Rodriguez International Horseshoe twice. Nevertheless, the #20 Redline BMW would recover onto the podium in the top split, once the results were finalised.

The #50 Scuderia Ferrari HP Esports Team won the day-long virtual event initially, on the 499P’s competitive iRacing debut.

Drivers Niklas Beu, Michele Costantini and Ole Steinbråten diced throughout the event with the aforementioned Redline car, driven by Verstappen, Chris Lulham and Diogo Pinto.

However, with just under eight hours remaining, the leading Ferrari driven by Norwegian Steinbråten looked to be heading towards the same barrier that claimed the 63-time grands prix winner – until it vanished.

No, not a 00s-era James Bond Aston Martin that could turn invisible, but rather an apparent disconnection. The car then rejoined the session from pitlane and continued on its way.

Except, the official race results (publically accessible within the iRacing platform) show that the entry has now been disqualified from the results.

iRacing Daytona 24 2025 top split Ferrari disqualification 01

This could be due to the team, and/or driver, using a known trick that involves pressing the Alt and F4 keys together, which quits the simulation.

Doing so, in this instance, meant the Ferrari could have avoided smashing into the wall at just the right moment. It could also mean that the team avoided crawling back to the pitlane or waiting for any damage to be fixed.

Doing so is against iRacing’s sporting code, and looks to have resulted in a disqualification.

iRacing Daytona 24 2025 top split Ferrari disqualification 02

Consequently, the top split victory has been handed to Sean Campbell, Peter Zuba, Gabriel Streitmatter and Dumitru Dimcenco for Grid-and-Go.com Esports.

Second went to Apex Racing Team’s Markus Søholm and Alex Gal, ahead of the aforementioned Redline in third.

That team was victorious in the GTD category, however, with Gustavo Ariel, Florian Lebigre and John Thompson. In LMP2, it was Apex Racing Team’s Dan Amor, Aaron Vazquezz, Jordan Johnson and Daniel Sivi-Szabo who were victorious.