The #80 Mercedes triumphed at the Nurburgring 24 Hours as Max Verstappen’s mission to win on debut abruptly ended with three and a half hours of the race remaining.
Team Verstappen led the #80 Mercedes from the early hours of Sunday morning – courtesy of Verstappen finding his way past Maro Engel and bolting clear in his first ever night stint on the Nordschleife.
And Team Verstappen looked well on course for victory until disaster struck when vibrations started with Dani Juncadella aboard the Mercedes.
Juncadella tried to continue but had to pull the car into the pits just three laps into his stint.
The team diagnosed a driveshaft problem, a killer blow to its chances of a respectable finish, let alone a dream debut victory. The team did fix the car enough for Juncadella to join the last couple of laps, finishing over 20 laps down and outside the top 35.
It handed the lead to the sister #80 Mercedes – piloted by Engel, Luca Stolz, Fabian Schiller, and Maxime Martin – who claimed the German manufacturer’s first Nurburgring 24 Hours victory in a decade, with Engel once again at the wheel.
The #80, having driven a great recovery drive from 25th on the grid to the front, had been “frozen” into a holding pattern behind the Team Verstappen car, according to Schiller, in order to secure the victory for Mercedes.
It finished two minutes clear of the next driver on the road – Mirko Bortolotti, who started the #84 Lamborghini from pole at the rolling start, but he had suffered a major setback when he clashed with the Team Verstappen car in the hands of Juncadella and picked up a puncture.
The pace of the Lamborghini was electric throughout the 24-hour race, with the clear fastest lap – an 8m08.758s.
That was enough for Bortolotti to mitigate the damage of an 86-second time penalty picked up by the car for a Code 60 violation.
Mattia Drudi completed the podium in the #34 Walkenhorst Aston Martin.
Laurens Vanthoor brought the #99 Rowe Racing BMW in fourth place, and Jens Klingmann gave the unique BMW M3 Touring car an impressive top-five finish on what’s currently a one-off race appearance for the car.
A race of attrition
Team Verstappen weren’t the only big names to hit trouble, as a number of the pre-event favourites were eliminated early on.
Marco Mapelli in the #130 Lamborghini jumped into the lead at the start but was hit with a 32-second time penalty for a jump start.
Kevin Estre in the Grello Porsche encountered oil on track that sent him backwards into the barrier.
He sustained race-ending damage – as did Arjun Maini in the #64 Ford Mustang, with a similar incident just moments later, having slipped on the same oil patch.
Alexander Sims inadvertently drove the #16 Audi into the back of Jesse Krohn’s #47 Mercedes, an incident not helped by an inconsistent Code 60 signal that race control admitted was a mistake. Neither driver was punished.
The defending race-winning #1 BMW had its race ruined by a recurring fuelling issue that eventually proved terminal.
Thierry Vermeulen, son of Verstappen’s manager, Raymond, suffered an early end in the #45 Kondo Racing Ferrari when he speared into the barriers while trying to negotiate past a Porsche Cayman GT4 car.
