A Max Verstappen masterclass has put his team in contention for a debut victory at the Nurburgring 24 Hours as it leads a Mercedes 1-2 after almost nine hours of racing.
The #3 Mercedes that Verstappen shares with Daniel Juncadella, Jules Gounon and Lucas Auer leads the #80 AMG (Maxime Martin, Maro Engel, Fabian Schiller and Luca Stolz) by approximately a second.
It has been a manic race so far with mixed weather conditions that are to be expected of the Nordschleife, but the Verstappen Racing Mercedes is going strong with the night stint underway.
The team started fourth but Juncadella took second on the opening lap, overtaking Christopher Haase (Scherer Audi) before polesitter Mirko Bortolotti suffered a puncture.
It came after the Lamborghini was tagged by the #3 AMG at Turn 2, which Abt boss Martin Tomczyk labelled as “not acceptable”, but it was deemed as a racing incident.
Things soon got even worse for Abt as its sister Huracan, which started second, was given a 32s penalty at the end of the opening hour after a jump start for Marco Mapelli.
That meant Juncadella finished his stint in third, having dropped from second to fourth due to troubles negating traffic, with Verstappen jumping aboard the Mercedes after 60 minutes.
This is where Verstappen Racing truly put itself in victory contention as the four-time Formula 1 world champion remained patient behind traffic before launching attacks.
#3 Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing, Mercedes AMG GT3 EVO: Max Verstappen, Daniel Juncadella, Jules Gounon, Lucas Auer
Photo by: Marc Fleury
Amid overtaking cars which were yet to pit, having joined the track in 10th, he took net second from Christian Engelhart (Konrad Lamborghini) down the inside of Sabine Schmnitz Kurve.
Thomas Preining in the Manthey Racing Porsche was next in Verstappen’s sights for the overall fight and after once again overtaking traffic, the Dutchman finally had his man just over two hours in.
He did it by overtaking the 911, which was now being driven by Ayhancan Güven, down the inside of Turn 1 while rain began falling for the first time.
That didn’t affect Verstappen though who was setting lap times that nobody could match, allowing him to finally end his two-hour stint with a 23s advantage over the Porsche.
“Initially I was a bit stuck in traffic,” said Verstappen, “so it was a bit difficult to clear the cars. But once I cleared a few of them and then the weather kicked in with a few laps of slippery conditions, that’s I think where we made a difference.
“And then the car was good. Trying to stay out of trouble, but at the same time you have to push and you have to try and be on the limit, which is always, I think, a difficult compromise to find, but it worked out fine.”
His efforts were slightly unravelled though in the next stint, as Gounon simply struggled for pace with Estre (in for Guven) taking 20 minutes to cut the gap to six seconds.
Suddenly, however, the 2024 World Endurance Championship champion encountered an oil spill at Brunnchen which caused the Porsche to spin out almost four hours into the contest.
Manthey Porsche
Photo by: Leon Merkle
Although the initial assumption was that Verstappen Racing now once again held a huge advantage, others soon closed on Gounon who was overtaken by three cars in overall contention.
Those were Christian Krognes (Walkenhorst Aston Martin), Schiller and Connor de Phillippi (Schubert BMW) amid a stint the 31-year-old had called “difficult” with rain falling harder.
Thankfully for Verstappen Racing though it managed to re-overtake the Aston and BMW through the pitstops, before Gounon’s co-driver Auer overtook Schiller to give the #3 Mercedes the overall lead again.
But that didn’t last for very long as Stolz, in for Schiller, moved past Auer at the end of the seventh hour though was then overtaken by Juncadella midway through the ninth hour.
In third is currently the Walkenhorst Aston Martin being driven by Nicki Thiim, while Jens Klingmann (Schubert BMW) and Max Hesse (Rowe BMW) complete the top five.
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