P15 on the grid, P15 at the flag, and 0.227 seconds short of P14. On paper, the most uneventful race of my season. In reality: fifteen laps of the closest, fairest wheel-to-wheel racing I’ve had in the Porsche Cup this year — plus two spins, one of which was entirely my own doing.
Qualifying: Fast Until the Cold Tyres Voted
My first qualifying lap was quick. Genuinely quick — the kind of lap where you start doing the maths before the last corner and quietly promise yourself not to mess it up. Then the cold tyres reminded me they get a vote too, and the car snapped around in the penultimate corner.
Wide off track, lap deleted, two incident points collected before the race had even started. The second attempt wasn’t much better. Final qualifying time: 1:40.155, good for P15.
Here’s the part that made me laugh afterwards: P15 was last among the drivers who actually set a lap. All five cars behind me — Luvisi, Gawel, Jarvis, Pechan and Paquette — didn’t put a single valid time on the board. So the whole back half of the grid had a qualifying session roughly as productive as mine.
For the record, my best race lap was a 1:39.620. Half a second faster than anything I managed in qualifying, which tells you everything about how compromised that session was.
Lights Out, and an Apology to Car #11
The start itself was fine. As usual I was a touch hesitant through the opening two corners — a habit I keep telling myself I’ll fix and then don’t.
Then the Spitzkehre. Marcin Gawel in car #11 came across from the outside, and by the time the door closed there was nowhere left to go and no brake travel left to use. I spun him. Not intentional, not really defensible either — that one goes on my ledger. Sorry, Marcin.
Lap 7: Entirely My Own Fault
After that the race settled into exactly the kind of racing I love. Tight, honest, nobody giving anything away. I spent several laps working on the cars running P13 and P12, both of them driving really well and leaving me precisely zero room to be clever.
Then lap 7 — and it was Gawel again, the same driver I’d spun at the start. He made a small mistake ahead of me. I’d just cleared another car, arrived far too hot behind him as he cut tight into the corner, caught his rear, and put myself into the spin. Two positions gone.
That one genuinely annoyed me. I was sitting comfortably in P14 with a five-second cushion back to P15, and I threw it away without any outside help whatsoever. By the time I had the car pointed forwards again, both of them were long gone.
Lap 10: Same Corner, Better Outcome
The two cars ahead had their own moments, and I took one of them straight back. Then the pattern repeated: a few laps sitting in dirty air, waiting, building the move, resisting the urge to force it.
I got it done on lap 10, at exactly the same corner that had spun me three laps earlier. P16 to P15. There’s a certain justice in taking a position back at the corner that took two away from you.
The Final Laps: When the Corners Get Wider
Late in the race the Porsche does its usual thing. Every corner quietly gets a little wider, and putting the power down on exit turns into a negotiation rather than a decision. It’s one of the traits of this car I’ve come to genuinely appreciate — it makes you earn the last few laps instead of coasting through them.
I held on. P15, 38.851 seconds behind the winner, and 0.227 seconds behind Dusty Ieponskiy in P14. That’s the number that stings: the two positions I threw away on lap 7 came back to cost me by less than a quarter of a second at the flag.
Up Front
Shun Ito made this one look simple. Pole, lights to flag, all 15 laps led, zero lead changes in the entire race, and a 4.6-second cushion over Hjelte Hoeffner2 at the end. With a 6,914 iRating in a 3,066 SoF field, that’s roughly what you’d expect — though the eight incident points suggest it wasn’t quite the serene afternoon the timing screen implies.
The best drives were behind him. Hoeffner2 came from P4 to P2, Alex Chang from P6 to P3, and Artur Halemba quietly climbed from P13 to P9 with a single incident — the cleanest result of anyone in the midfield.
The most eventful race of all belonged to Marcin Gawel: no qualifying time, P17 on the grid, P12 at the flag, and 12 incident points along the way. Two of which, in fairness, I contributed to personally. Meanwhile Nils Müller5 started P7 and only saw seven laps, and both Luke Jarvis and Matteo Luvisi lost their races to disconnects.
The Rig
Hockenheim is brutal on the simulator, in the best possible way. That first right-hander after start/finish — the 90-degree Nordkurve — is an unbelievably hard corner. Run over the sausage kerb on the exit and you are genuinely convinced the car is about to go over. With the D-BOX 4250i Gen3 under the Sim-Lab P1-X, it shakes you properly, every single lap, and never once gets boring.
The rest of the package: Simucube 3 Ultimate wheelbase with the Alex-Racing AMG GT3 replica wheel — carbon fibre front plate, moulded silicone grips, magnetic aluminium shifters, under 990g including the hub. QUBIC QS-BT1 belt tensioner pulling me into the seat under braking, and LG UltraGear OLED triples for the view. Fifteen laps of Hockenheim on this rig is not a relaxing way to spend a Sunday morning, and that’s the point.
The Honest Bottom Line
Four incident points, P15 from P15, and 18 iRating gone. In a field with a 3,066 SoF — more than 800 points above my own rating — finishing where I started is a fair outcome, and the loss is close to a rounding error.
What I’ll actually remember is the racing. Great opponents, everything fair, and a circuit that keeps giving you opportunities right up to the last lap. That’s exactly how I like it.
Race Stats
| Series | iRacing Porsche Cup – Fixed by CONSPIT |
| Season | 2026 Season 3, Week 8 |
| Track | Hockenheimring Baden-Württemberg – Grand Prix |
| Car | Porsche 911 Cup (992.2) – #18 |
| Field | 20 drivers |
| Strength of Field | 3,066 |
| Start / Finish | P15 → P15 |
| Laps | 15 |
| Best Lap | 1:39.620 (lap 6) |
| Average Lap | 1:41.335 |
| Gap to Winner | +38.851s |
| Gap to P14 | 0.227s |
| Incidents | 4x |
| iRating | 2260 → 2242 (−18) |
| Championship Points | 48 |
Full Results
| Pos | # | Driver | Start | Laps | Best Lap | Inc | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Shun Ito | 1 | 15 | 1:38.136 | 8x | — |
| 2 | 6 | Hjelte Hoeffner2 | 4 | 15 | 1:38.476 | 6x | +4.600 |
| 3 | 3 | Alex Chang | 6 | 15 | 1:38.468 | 2x | +6.858 |
| 4 | 10 | Jeremy Stephen Smith | 3 | 15 | 1:38.528 | 5x | +9.737 |
| 5 | 8 | Nikolai Felix Wirsing | 2 | 15 | 1:38.630 | 3x | +11.089 |
| 6 | 2 | Juan Alba | 8 | 15 | 1:38.495 | 9x | +14.938 |
| 7 | 9 | Filippo Uber | 9 | 15 | 1:38.736 | 9x | +15.653 |
| 8 | 7 | Kevin Dsouza | 5 | 15 | 1:38.753 | 1x | +17.221 |
| 9 | 17 | Artur Halemba | 13 | 15 | 1:39.148 | 1x | +23.793 |
| 10 | 14 | Michal Mruk | 10 | 15 | 1:39.240 | 1x | +24.608 |
| 11 | 13 | Wesley Chang | 12 | 15 | 1:39.021 | 0x | +25.614 |
| 12 | 11 | Marcin Gawel | 17 | 15 | 1:39.083 | 12x | +30.284 |
| 13 | 15 | Gergő Ballai | 14 | 15 | 1:39.413 | 4x | +34.958 |
| 14 | 12 | Dusty Ieponskiy | 11 | 15 | 1:39.755 | 3x | +38.624 |
| 15 | 18 | Philipp Geppl | 15 | 15 | 1:39.620 | 4x | +38.851 |
| 16 | 19 | Martin Pechan3 | 19 | 15 | 1:39.963 | 5x | +41.289 |
| 17 | 20 | Francis Paquette | 20 | 15 | 1:40.064 | 14x | +43.479 |
| 18 | 4 | Nils Müller5 | 7 | 7 | 1:39.479 | 6x | DNF |
| 19 | 16 | Luke Jarvis | 18 | 2 | — | 6x | DNF |
| 20 | 5 | Matteo Luvisi | 16 | 0 | — | 0x | DNF |
Livery designed by Jeremy Kerr — Trading Paints
Catch the full race & behind-the-wheel shots
Full lap on YouTube, in-helmet snapshots on Instagram.