Eat Sleep Sim Repeat Media Desk

Inside Eat Sleep Sim Repeat’s Sebring Saturday

Two races, one studio, and 12 hours of adaptation as Eat Sleep Sim Repeat balanced endurance strategy, spectators, Twitch coverage, and a strong recovery run for the #772 Porsche.

By Eat Sleep Sim Repeat Media Desk
March 30, 2026

Eat Sleep Sim Repeat’s Sebring effort extended beyond a single car, with the #772 Porsche and the Eat Sleep Sim Repeat-backed #36 LMP2 team both shaping the rhythm of the day.

Event Snapshot
#772 Porsche Result 12th overall, 7th in class	Starting Position 24th overall, 12th in class
Laps Completed 339	Best Lap 2:01.959
Total Incidents 59

Sebring started early for Eat Sleep Sim Repeat.

Four hours before the #772 Porsche 911 GT3 R took the green, the Eat Sleep Sim Repeat-backed LMP2 entry was already racing in another split. The EAT SLEEP SIM REPEAT LMP2 Team, running the #36 Dallara P217 with Ryder Poe, David Bautista, and Darek Koman, gave the studio an early race to follow and set the tone for the rest of the day.

By the time Eat Sleep Sim Repeat’s own GTD race began, the room was already locked in. Screens were up, the stream was live, comms were active, and one part of the team was already deep into Sebring while another was still waiting for its race to start.

That overlap ended up defining the day.

Preparation, then a late lineup change

Eat Sleep Sim Repeat’s main effort, the #772 Porsche, came into the event after more than two weeks of preparation. This was not a casual one-off. Dave Okun, Chris Savino, Tyler Otoole, Marcus Barnes, and Christian Marrero had all put in real time ahead of race day. By Friday night, the final prep was still going after midnight. Saturday morning started early, and by the time the green flag approached, the team was already carrying the fatigue that comes with a serious event weekend.

Then the lineup changed.

About 45 minutes before the race, Marrero was ruled out by a licensing issue. It didn’t create panic, but it did change the mood. He had been part of the preparation and part of the plan, and losing him that late was a hard reset just before the start. The team adjusted and moved on, but it was a reminder that special events do not always wait for perfect circumstances, and the green flag waits for no one.

About 45 minutes before the race, the lineup changed. The team adjusted… it was a hard reset just before the start.

The #772 Porsche had shown pace before the race ever started. In qualifying, Chris posted a 2:01.0635, good for taking the race start at 24th overall and 12th in class. That left Eat Sleep Sim Repeat with work to do before the opening stint even began.

A clean opening, then a long recovery

Okun opened the race, and the goal was clear from the start. Stay clean, avoid unnecessary fights, and hand the car over in one piece.

That approach cost early track position, at least on paper. The Porsche dropped as far back as 44th in the opening phase, but the opening stint did exactly what it needed to do. Okun kept the car out of trouble in heavy traffic and brought it back to pit lane in P20. For a 12-hour race, that was a better trade than forcing the issue in the first laps and paying for it later.

 

The #772 Porsche climbed steadily through the field and converted a survival-first start into a meaningful recovery by the finish.

Driver workload and off-track execution

The workload inside the Porsche effort was split clearly across the lineup. Savino carried the biggest share at 111 laps and also set the team’s fastest lap of the race at 2:01.959. Otoole logged 88 laps and ran a best of 2:02.998 through some of the most stressful traffic of the day. Barnes completed 84 laps, posted a best of 2:02.547, and handled the closing phase when the fuel story became critical. Okun opened the race, completed 56 laps, and gave the team the clean first phase it needed, with a best lap of 2:04.048.

Just as important as the driving was the work being done off the wheel.

Savino and Barnes were major assets on comms throughout the race, and their spotting support became one of the quiet strengths of the #772 effort. In a 12-hour event built around traffic management, pit cycles, handoffs, and avoiding unnecessary trouble, that support mattered. The team was at its best when the driver out of the car was still actively helping the one in it, and Savino and Barnes both delivered there.

A studio becomes race control

What made the race unusual was the setting.

Eat Sleep Sim Repeat was not running Sebring from a quiet private room. The race unfolded inside a working sim studio. The lights stayed low, the music stayed on, and the stream carried the atmosphere of the room all day. There was no formal commentary team, just the natural sound of the studio, the music feeding into the Twitch stream, and occasional conversation with viewers and guests. Even in daylight, the room kept its usual dim, LED-lit look, with blue light from the rigs and bass rolling through the space.

Throughout the day, people were in and out of the studio watching the race. Some were local, some came through because they had been following on Twitch, and others were part of the wider Eat Sleep Sim Repeat orbit checking in remotely. Shelley and Wes were watching online before later stopping by. Marrero, despite missing the race, still tuned in on Twitch. Jon checked in from a concert he was working on in Colorado. Alex, Hayden, and other DRSCCA members followed along and checked on the team during the day. Even Okun’s mom stayed up late and tuned in to watch his final stint.

Inside the room, the support system stayed strong all day. Marcus had Anthony, PJ, and Bell there watching for most of the race. Kylie, Tyler’s other half, was there for much of the day. Okun’s wife, Alicia, who is also one of the team’s sponsors, arrived during his second stint and stayed through the close after 1:00 a.m.

The result was a race environment that felt serious without becoming tense. People understood the team was taking the event seriously, but the atmosphere never turned stiff. The race remained competitive and focused, while the studio still felt like itself.

The studio remained active throughout the event, blending race focus with Eat Sleep Sim Repeat’s usual atmosphere and community.

That atmosphere was obvious even to people walking in cold.

Around 3:00 p.m., pizza arrived for the team, and the delivery driver’s reaction said plenty about what the room looked like from the outside. He walked into a studio full of rigs, race feeds, spectators, and split-screen coverage following multiple Eat Sleep Sim Repeat threads at once, and he was immediately floored by it. The setup spoke for itself.

Middle hours, traffic, and real-world interruptions

On track, the race began to tighten in the middle hours.

Otoole’s first stint was one of the more stressful runs of the day. He exited the pits directly into traffic and spent much of the early portion of the stint fighting for space before the run settled down. It was the kind of stint that does not always show up clearly in final results, but it mattered inside the race. There is a big difference between driving a planned stint and being forced to manage traffic from the moment you rejoin, and it was exactly the kind of run where strong spotting help on comms made a difference.

The strategy also evolved as the day went on. The original iRacePlan gave the team a structure to work from, including a 98-liter fuel tank, 11 planned pit stops, and a projected 337 laps, but the live race did what long races usually do and pulled the plan into reality. Stints adapted. Back-to-back runs happened naturally. What began as a race built around planning turned into a race managed through decisions, timing, and feel.

At the same time, the real-world demands of running the studio never disappeared.

It was elbows out for Otoole from the second he left the pit for the first time.

One of the clearest examples came late in the day, when a 5:00 p.m. call led to a 7:00 p.m. booking. That interruption cost Okun what would have been his third stint. Instead of a three-stint race, he ended the day with two. It was one of those moments that says a lot about what made this event different. The team was not just racing. It was balancing race strategy with the realities of running a live business around it.

Later in the evening, another layer got added. Around 8:30 p.m., regular drivers began showing up expecting open rig time, not realizing they were stepping into the middle of an active 12-hour race effort. Even that could have become a source of friction, but it did not. The group that walked in quickly understood what was happening and settled into the atmosphere. If anything, it added to the sense that the studio had become a live race control room for the night.

Rain outside, fuel math inside

By then, the weather had added another layer.

Late in the evening, heavy rain moved in. Inside the studio, that raised the obvious concern. In a long sim event, power and internet stability matter just as much as pace once the race gets deep enough. The storm did not derail the event, but it became one more thing sitting in the background while the team managed the closing hours.

By that point, the race had also become more strategic. Fuel saving was no longer theoretical. It was part of the finish.

That shift changed the tone of the final phase. Earlier in the day, the race was still fluid enough to manage instinctively. Later on, everything became more exact. The question was no longer just where the Porsche sat on track. It was whether the numbers would connect cleanly enough to get to the end.

That is what made Barnes’ final stint such a fitting ending.

Late in the race, the team believed the #772 would need a splash and dash to make the final lap. Barnes brought the Porsche down pit lane for that expected stop. Before the car ever got to complete the last lap to the line, the checkered flag came out.

That left Eat Sleep Sim Repeat with the kind of ending only endurance racing can produce. After 12 hours of work, the team had prepared for one final stop just to reach the finish properly, only for the race to end before that lap ever happened. It was frustrating, but it was also funny in the way only a 12-hour race can be funny once the pressure breaks.

The parallel LMP2 thread

The broader Eat Sleep Sim Repeat picture made the day even stronger.

The LMP2 effort had started four hours earlier and remained part of the studio’s rhythm throughout the day. Even without a full stint-by-stint picture from that side, the official results show that Poe, Bautista, and Koman took the #36 Dallara through 340 laps, finishing 29th overall and 8th in class after their own 59-incident Sebring. Their race carried the Eat Sleep Sim Repeat banner in parallel with the #772 Porsche from the opening hours of the day to the final stretch of the night.

 

The Result

In the end, the Porsche’s result was solid on its own. From 24th on the grid to 12th at the finish, and from 12th in class to 7th, the #772 team made progress over the full distance and stayed in the fight long enough to earn the outcome. The LMP2 team did the same in its own split earlier in the day. Together, the two efforts gave Eat Sleep Sim Repeat a Saturday that felt bigger than a single race result.

Sebring Saturday at Eat Sleep Sim Repeat was the studio’s first major special event run at full stretch. It was a day that started with one team already racing and ended with another still working through fuel numbers, spectators, weather, and fatigue. It was a day where Twitch viewers became visitors, where friends and family stayed connected to the race from inside and outside the room, and where the normal energy of the studio held up through a full endurance event without losing what makes the place feel like Eat Sleep Sim Repeat in the first place.

The #772 Porsche finished with a strong recovery drive. The #36 LMP2 effort fought its own battle in another split. And for one long Saturday, Eat Sleep Sim Repeat turned a sim racing studio into something that was a legit paddock.

What’s next for the Eat Sleep Sim Repeat team?

Word from the paddock is the team has already begun preparing, as well as looking to expand their team for the next big special event. This one is considered one of the ultimate tests in motorsports… the Nürburgring 24h taking place May 1st – 3rd!

The 24 Hours Nürburgring is a 24-hour endurance event held on the Nürburgring Combined – Gesamtstrecke 24h in Nürburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It also utilizes part of the GP-Strecke course to form a total lap length of 16.1 miles (25.9 km).