The Nurburgring 24 Hours race was a thrilling spectacle, with Max Verstappen's Mercedes team facing a late mechanical failure that ultimately handed the victory to the sister Mercedes car. The race began with Verstappen and his co-drivers, Daniel Juncadella, Jules Gounon, and Lucas Auer, enjoying a healthy lead of over 10 seconds. However, as the race progressed, a series of events unfolded that would ultimately determine the outcome.
Juncadella received an ABS alarm, which he initially thought he could manage, but then "noises and vibrations" emerged from the cockpit, causing him to pit two laps later. This setback put the #3 AMG in a difficult position, as the team had to diagnose the issue and find a solution.
The problem was eventually identified as a driveshaft failure on the rear right, which resulted in the #80 AMG of Maro Engel, Maxime Martin, Fabian Schiller, and Luca Stolz claiming the win. The issue put a bittersweet ending on an otherwise dominant race for the German marque, despite the #3 and #80 respectively qualifying fourth and 25th - Engel crashed in qualifying.
Verstappen, who replaced Juncadella after 60 minutes, delivered a performance masterclass to vault his car into contention. He remained patient behind traffic before launching attacks on Christian Engelhart (Konrad Lamborghini) for net second and Ayhancan Guven (Manthey Porsche) for first amid also lapping traffic as rain began falling. The Dutchman ultimately ended his stint with a 23s lead after three hours, an advantage that soon grew due to Kevin Estre (911) crashing the oil spill at Brunnchen.
However, the gap Verstappen built then dissipated as Gounon struggled for pace, being overtaken by Christian Krognes (Walkenhorst Aston Martin), Schiller, and Connor de Phillippi (Schubert BMW). The Frenchman called it a "difficult" stint but thankfully for Verstappen Racing, it re-overtook the Aston and BMW via the pitstops before Auer launched an attack on Schiller around six hours in.
From this point onwards, the Mercedes duo was dominant in the dry, the #80 getting up there thanks to good strategy and staying out of trouble, as they constantly squabbled for the overall lead. It reached a new level when Verstappen jumped aboard for a second time around the 11th hour, 2am locally, when he very quickly cut a six-second deficit to Engel. The world champion overtook at Dottinger Hoe before Engel fought back, trying to edge by at Tiergarten on the 12th hour, while they both also tried to overcome traffic.
But Verstappen didn't yield and while occupying the middle of the road, he and Engel banged wheels causing the #80 Mercedes to take the grass on the right and drop back a couple seconds. Considering Mercedes was searching for its first Nurburgring 24h win since 2016, the incident caused the German marque to instruct its cars to hold position and secure a dominant 1-2.
The #3 AMG built an advantage of more than 20 seconds, while the rest of the grid was minutes behind the top two so Mercedes didn’t need any more hair-raising moments. But then everything changed around the 21st hour when a driveshaft failure emerged that would ultimately deny Verstappen and co a memorable victory at the Nordschleife.
Verstappen, whose co-driver Juncadella denied it was down to banging wheels with Engel, on social media. "A really tough one to take. From the lead, our car suffered a broken driveshaft, ending our fight for the win. Thank you all for your support throughout the weekend."
The #80 Mercedes was effectively handed the win and crossed the line 1m18s ahead of the polesitting Lamborghini (Mirko Bortolotti, Luca Engstler and Patric Niederhauser) to give the German marque its third victory at the historic event. Completing the podium was the #34 Walkenhorst Aston Martin (Mattia Drudi, Felipe Fernandez Laser, Krognes and Nick Thiim) with BMW, Porsche and Ford all represented in the remaining top 10 positions.
Last year’s winner (Rowe BMW) retired after approximately eight hours due to a fuel tank issue. The Nurburgring 24 Hours race was a thrilling spectacle, with a late mechanical failure ultimately determining the outcome. The race began with Verstappen and his co-drivers enjoying a healthy lead, but a series of events unfolded that would ultimately determine the outcome.
