Nürburgring Friday Notebook

***Max Hesse became the youngest driver in Nürburgring 24 history to take pole position on Friday at 22 years, ten months and one day. He also delivered the first event pole position for the BMW M4 GT3 in the car’s third year of competition.

***The German driver fell short of the qualifying lap record of 8:09.058, which was set by Raffaele Marciello in his final N24 as a Mercedes-AMG factory driver last year.

***Securing pole is far from a guarantee for success at the N24 in recent years, as the race hasn’t been won from pole position since Black Falcon did so in 2016. Last year’s winning Frikadelli Racing Team Ferrari 296 GT3 started from third, while pole-sitters Mercedes-AMG Team Bilstein finished the race in the same position.

***That podium finish actually brought to an end to a notably poor streak for cars starting from pole position. From 2017 to 2022, the car that topped qualifying would go on to retire from the race each time: Traum Motorsport, Manthey Racing, Black Falcon, Haupt Racing Team, ROWE Racing and Octane 126 all failed to finish after leading the field to green.

***The majority of the cars that qualified in the overall top ten set their fastest times during the first lap. Only three cars went quicker on their second attempt: both Scherer Sport PHX Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo IIs and the No. 4 Mercedes-AMG Team Bilstein entry of Maximilian Goetz.

***Ricardo Feller, who jumped from fourth to third with his second lap aboard the No. 16 Audi, revealed afterwards that he was able to improve because he made a mistake on the Grand Prix loop on his first attempt.

***Lionspeed GP secured SP9 Pro-Am pole position for its first N24 as an independent entry. Patric Niederhauser set a 8:13.770 aboard the No. 24 Porsche 911 GT3 R, beating Team Advan X HRT’s Ralf Aron by 0.538 seconds.

***Danny Soufi, who drove the No. 7 Konrad Motorsport Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo that is also entered into Pro-Am, aborted his second lap during the first segment of Top Qualifying after he heard a “strange noise” coming from the car at Tiergarten and opted to return to the pits as a precaution.

***Mercedes-AMG Head of Customer Racing Stefan Wendl told Sportscar365 that there are “no updates yet” with regards to the brand’s effort to get the Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo eligible for LMGT3 competition. Wendl and the manufacturer’s GT3 technical project manager attended the recent FIA World Endurance Championship round at Spa to meet with ACO figures, but has no further visits currently planned out.

***The Stuttgart brand is using the N24 as a centerpiece of celebrations for its 130-year involvement in motorsport. As part of festivities, it has put up a pair of significant cars from its history up for display in the fan village: a 1934 Mercedes-Benz W25 Grand Prix car is accompanied by a Sauber-Mercedes C9 that was driven to second place in the 1989 24 Hours of Le Mans by Mauro Baldi, Kenny Acheson and Gianfranco Brancatelli.

***The marque’s motorsport history was also on display during the Tourenwagen Legenden support race, in which Klaus Ludwig and Stefan Muecke raced the cars they competed in during the 1994 and 2006 DTM seasons, respectively.

***The German single-driver sprint series continues next week with the third round at Zandvoort, the Sunday race of which has been pushed back by three hours to accommodate drivers taking part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans test day.

***In total, 13 drivers on this weekend’s N24 grid will race at Zandvoort next weekend: Sheldon van der Linde, Marco Wittmann, Luca Stolz, Arjun Maini, Ben Doerr, Maximilian Paul, Nicki Thiim, Maro Engel, Lucas Auer, Ricardo Feller, Kevin van der Linde, Thomas Preining and Ayhancan Guven.

***Three of those drivers – Wittmann and the Van der Linde brothers – will then also travel to Le Mans test day on the same weekend.

***Jim Glickenhaus explained that he opted to forego his spot in Top Qualifying 1 in order to avoid an overnight engine change on the No. 706 SCG 004C, instead opting to do so on Friday afternoon and evening.

***Glickenhaus told the official N24 broadcast: “The original new engine that we were going to race [and] we put in the car earlier in the week, we didn’t like it. It had a vibration. So we took it out, I sent it back to Turin to our engine builder and they worked like crazy, they rebuilt it. As much as I would like to go out in the Top 30, I don’t want to kill the crew. If I go out in the Top 30 and then I make the guys work all night, they’re going to be too tired and they’ll make a mistake.”

***GM sports car racing program manager Laura Wontrop Klauser and Corvette GT3 program manager Christie Bagne will both be on-site at the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa next month, continuing the brand’s fact-finding missions ahead of Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R’s larger customer rollout for 2025.

***A promotional stand for the third Intercontinental GT Challenge round of the season can be found at the ring°boulevard. Notably, the ROWE Racing BMW M6 GT3 driven to victory in the 2016 race by Maxime Martin, Philipp Eng and Alexander Sims is on display.

***ROWE mechanics completed an all-night rebuild to get the No. 98 BMW back on track for Friday running after Raffaele Marciello’s accident during night practice on Thursday. A BMW spokesperson told Sportscar365 that the team replaced “more or less everything, except [the] chassis, gearbox and engine.”

***Former World Rally and World Rallycross champion Petter Solberg was spotted in the Manthey EMA garage on Friday. Red Bull Team ABT, meanwhile, has current Red Bull junior and FIA Formula 3 racer Tim Tramnitz and retired alpine skier Thomas Dreßen on site as guests this weekend.

***The 52nd running of the Nürburgring 24 will be preceded by a 45-minute warmup session at 12:40 p.m. CEST (6:40 a.m. EDT), with the race set to get underway at 4 p.m. (10 a.m. EDT).

John Dagys contributed to this report