Nürburgring Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Gruppe C Photography/SRO

***Mercedes-AMG scored its third Nürburgring 24 victory in the race’s GT3 era, and first in a decade, with the No. 80 Ravenol-sponsored, Winward Racing-run Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Maro Engel, Maxime Martin, Luca Stolz and Fabian Schiller taking top honors after late-race issues for the Verstappen Racing entry that had been leading.

***The German manufacturer’s last N24 victory also came with Engel, in 2016, in a Black Falcon-run Mercedes-AMG with co-drivers Bernd Schneider, Adam Adam Christodoulou and Manuel Metzger. It’s only other GT3 win in the Eifel endurance classic came in 2013, with a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 driven by Schneider, Jeroen Bleekemolen, Sean Edwards and Nicki Thiim.

***The pair of Winward-run Mercedes-AMGs combined to lead 129 of the 156-lap race.

***Head of Mercedes-AMG Motorsport Christoph Sagemüller said: “The 24h Nürburgring is one of the biggest and most important endurance races for us, and we were determined to win it again. I am overwhelmed that we have managed to do so after ten long years with the Mercedes-AMG Team Ravenol. As is so often the case in motorsport, however, joy and disappointment are never far apart. For long stretches, we witnessed a close battle between our two performance cars. That is why it is particularly unfortunate that the race came to an early end for Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing.”

***Winward Racing team owner Bryce Ward joined the winning drivers on the top step of the podium, with the American national anthem having been played for the U.S.-flagged team, which took its first N24 triumph. Ward’s son, two-time and defending IMSA GTD champion Russell, was also in attendance.

***Mercedes-AMG, which scored its tenth Intercontinental GT Challenge win, extended its lead in the manufacturer standings following its second win out of two races this season. It now holds an 11-point advantage over second-placed Porsche, with BMW sitting two points further behind in third.

***Engel and Martin, who were also part of the winning lineup in February’s Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour with GruppeM Racing, have a 17-point lead in the IGTC drivers’ standings over Stolz, who started the season in 75 Express’ Mercedes-AMG. Max Hesse now sits third in the title race, 20 points behind.

***Kerong Li has taken a commanding lead in the IGTC Independent Cup, with the High Class Racing driver again scoring maximum points in the FIA Bronze-rated drivers contest, as the only registered driver to have tackled the N24. However, all Independent Cup drivers will have a drop score over the course of the five-round GT3 globe-trotting season, which could still give the likes of Kenny Habul, Jonathan Hui and Ralf Bohn a chance of title glory.

***With the Verstappen Racing Mercedes-AMG finishing 37th overall, and several other contending customer entries dropping out over the course of the race, Toyo Tires with Ring Racing’s SP 9 Pro-Am class Mercedes-AMG of Yuichi Nakayama, Andreas Gulden and Tim Sadtler, which finished 18th overall, scored IGTC points for the German manufacturer.

***Dani Juncadella completed the final ten minutes of the race at the wheel of the repaired No. 3 Verstappen Mercedes-AMG, which was forced to the garage with driveshaft failure after leading the race with three-and-a-half hours to go. Four-time Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen impressed during the race in his N24 debut, putting in multiple race-leading stints in both the day and night.

***Both Lamborghini and Aston Martin scored its first-ever N24 overall podium results, the latter coming in the British manufacturer’s 20th anniversary of its first appearance in the race. Aston’s previous best finish came in 2018, with a fourth place result with a factory V12 Vantage GT3 driven by Martin, Marco Sorensen, Nicki Thiim and Darren Turner.

***While Michelin took its ninth consecutive overall victory, a Pirelli-shod car ended up finishing third for the second consecutive year, following Walkenhost’s off-season switch to the Italian rubber on its Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Drudi, Nicki Thiim and Christian Krognes.

***A fourth place finish was all that defending race winners BMW could achieve according to Andreas Roos, who said the Munich brand was unable to “hang on” to the sheer pace of the Mercedes-AMGs and Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2s in the race. The No. 99 ROWE Racing BMW M4 GT3 EVO of Dries Vanthoor finished a mere 17 seconds away from a podium result, after Mattia Drudi was held up by a Code 60 on the final lap on the Dottinger Hohe.

***The BMW M Motorsport director said: “I think generally from the beginning of the race we didn’t have the pace to go with the front-runners. This is where we were lacking, on pure speed. We tried to keep the race clean and make no mistake and try to hang on and I think that’s what paid off in the end to have three cars in the top-ten. This was the maximum we could do.”

***The No. 1 ROWE BMW of 2025 race winners Kelvin van der Linde, Raffaele Marciello, Augusto Farfus plus Jordan Pepper retired in the eighth hour with a refueling issue. “We know the fueling didn’t work,” said Roos. “We’ll take the car back to the workshop and disassemble it to check what is the program.”

***With the No. 911 Manthey Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo retiring early after Kevin Estre was swept up in an oil spill at Brunnchen, which also caught out the No. 64 HRT Ford Mustang GT3 EVO, the No. 24 Lionspeed GP entry of Laurens Vanthoor, Laurin Heinrich and Ricardo Feller was the top-finishing Porsche in sixth, after a relatively trouble-free run.

***The German squad, in its first internally-run SP 9 Pro class effort, rebounded from an accident by Feller in Thursday’s opening practice, which Heinrich said led the team starting the race “a little bit blind.” He told Sportscar365: “We just followed our strategy, followed our plan and had a pretty clean race. The team, honestly, execution-wise, did everything right. We just lacked pace to fight for more than where were finished, which was sixth, but still third in IGTC, is something to be proud of.”

***HRT’s No. 67 Mustang of Chris Mies, Fred Vervisch, Dennis Olsen and Frank Stippler managed to come home seventh despite facing several setbacks, including a right-rear puncture for the Belgian with nine hours to go that dropped the sole-surviving Mustang to 14th at the time.

***Mies said: “The Mustang GT3 felt really good when I drove into the night and this morning. I was really happy with the car, with the balance, everything was good. We were a bit unlucky with the Code 60s and the puncture this morning, which put us on the back foot. I think we could have fought for the podium, but it is what it is.”

***Of note, SP 10 class honors, for GT4 cars, went to the No. 145 Riller & Schnauck powered by Cerny Motorsport BMW M4 GT4 EVO of Jeroen Bleekemolen, Joshua Bednarski, Tom Schutze and Peter Cate, the latter who was taking part in his 24th Nürburgring 24. The quartet finished one lap ahead of the second-placed Hofor Racing by Bonk Motorsport entry, in a 1-2 class finish for BMW.

***SP 2T victory, meanwhile, went to the No. 130 Scuderia Avus Opel Corsa Line 130 featuring former Opel Motorsport boss Volker Strycek, who scored his 16th N24 class triumph. Strycek was also entered in a SP9 Am class BMW Z4 GT3 entered by Koopman Racing, which finished 20th overall and second in class.

***The two Toyota Gazoo Rookie Racing Toyota GR Yaris entries in SP2 T, featuring Toyota Motor Company chairman Akio Toyoda, under the pseudonym ‘Morizo’ , were both not classified after various issues but they did take the checkered flag, finishing 32 and 62 laps, respectively, behind the class-winning Opel.

***Hyundai Motorsport scored its sixth consecutive win in the TCR class, with its Elantra N TCR of Marc Basseng, Manuel Lauck, Nico Bastian and Mikel Azcona. Of note, the Korean manufacturer entered two Elantra N1 RPs (rolling prototype) in the SP 4T class, equipped with pre-production engines for durability testing.

***No fewer than three drivers, including ex-Formula 1 and DTM star Timo Glock, as well as former GP2 and LMP2 racer Nathanael Berthon, were stripped of their Nordschleife permits mid-race for exceeding penalty points in the DMSB registry. Both Glock and Berthon were given two penalty points each for Code 60 infringements, the former in which was clocked at going more than 110 km/h in a controlled 60 km/h zone.

***Overall pole-sitter and runner-up finisher Luca Engstler was also handed two penalty points late in the race after being caught going 116 km/h through a Code 60 slow zone. It led to the car’s 86-second post-race time penalty that resulted in a dramatic final few laps between co-driver Mirko Bortolotti and the No. 34 Walkenhorst Aston Martin of Drudi.

***Sportscar365 understands the GR GT3 could make its competition debut by as early as next month’s NLS6 round on June 20. The Japanese manufacturer has earmarked the Nordschleife for the car’s race debut, which would come in the SP-X class and likely operated by KCMG.

***BMW M CEO Frank van Meel confirmed to RSL’s John Hindhaugh during the race broadcast that the M3 Touring 24H was pre-sold to an investor and reaffirmed no plans to build another version of the car. BMW M Motorsport boss Andreas Roos previously told Sportsar365 that the car was “one of one” but hinted post-race that it could make further appearances.

***Sportscar365 understands that a run at the Goodwood Festival of Speed is likely being lined up. “It’s difficult because the car is not according to any GT3 homologation because at the end, GT3 starts with having to be a two-door car and not a five-door car,” said Roos. “There are some plans with what we can do with the car and you will see it somewhere.”

***Neil Verhagen set the car’s fastest lap, a 8:13.580, which was quicker than all three of the best times from the works-supported BMW M4 GT3 EVOs in the race. It finished an impressive fifth overall in the race after running as high as second at one stage.

***HWA AG, which finished second, third and fourth in the SP-X class with its debuting retro Mercedes-Benz 190E DTM-inspired EVO.Rs, announced a customer version of the HWA EVO, limited to 15 units. The “exclusive” HWA EVO.R will based on the cars that raced this past weekend.

***The Nürburgring reported a new event attendance record of 352,000 people, surpassing the previous record of 280,000 spectators that was achieved last year and marking a 70 percent increase in attendance from the 2023 event. A large part of the sold-out crowd could be attributed to Verstappen’s participation.

***Nine-time FIA World Rally Champion Sebastien Ogier was a guest of ABT last weekend. The Frenchman took part in the 2022 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans at the wheel of a LMP2 car and also has previous Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup experience.

***Departing Lamborghini chief technical officer Rouven Mohr was spotted on the grid, with this event marking the last major 24-hour race outing for the Huracan GT3 EVO2 in a factory supported capacity. Mohr’s final GT3 endurance race in his role with the Italian manufacturer is expected to come at next month’s CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa before he fully transitions to Audi and is replaced by Fermin Soneira from July 1.

***The 24-hour Belgian endurance classic will also serve as the next IGTC round, which is scheduled for June 27-28. A two-day pre-event test gets underway at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps on Tuesday. Next year’s Nürburgring 24, meanwhile, has been confirmed for May 27-30.

Stephen Lickorish & Jamie Klein contributed to this report

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John