Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 52nd annual running of the Nurburgring 24 Hours, on "The Green Hell", the real deal, the most challenging motor racing circuit anyplace on the planet, the Nurburgring in the Eifel Mountains of Germany. This year, the Nurburgring 24 Hours also serves as a round (albeit only for points accumulation) for the SRO Intercontinental GT Challenge. The rules and regulations of the race itself, have remained intact as has the class structure which includes several types of production-based cars, with the SP10 (GT4) and, the ground pounding SP9 (GT3) cars, being given top billing. Grab a beverage and a snack, and let's relive a wild race from the 52nd renewal of the Nurburgring 24! Are you ready? Good. Roll tape!
Hallo zusammen, und willkommen zur 52. Auflage der 24 Stunden auf dem Nürburgring auf der "Grünen Hölle", der echten, anspruchsvollsten Rennstrecke der Welt, dem Nürburgring in der Eifel in Deutschland. In diesem Jahr dienen die 24 Stunden auf dem Nürburgring auch als Lauf (wenn auch nur zum Sammeln von Punkten) für die SRO Intercontinental GT Challenge. Das Reglement des Rennens selbst ist intakt geblieben, ebenso wie die Klassenstruktur, die mehrere Arten von seriennahen Autos umfasst, wobei der SP10 (GT4) und der SP9 (GT3) an erster Stelle stehen. Schnappen Sie sich ein Getränk und einen Snack und lassen Sie uns ein wildes Rennen von der 52. Auflage des Nürburgring 24 noch einmal erleben! Bist du so weit? Gut. Klebeband rollen!
Before we start, let's take a solid look at the eligible contenders for manufacturers' points for the GT3/SP9 class who can earn manufacturers' points for the Intercontinental GT Challenge. We will find out soon how much of a factor the IGTC eligible SP9 cars play into this race and they are the one we will be watching. Here are those entries.
#3 Mercedes AMG Team Bilstein Mercedes AMG GT3
Michele Beretta, Frank Bird, Jusuf Owega, & Arjun Maini
#4 Mercedes-AMG Team Bilstein Mercedes AMG GT3
Luca Stolz, Maximilian Gotz, Daniel Juncadella, & Arjun Maini
#5 Herberth Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R (992)
Robert Renauer, Vincent Kolb, Dennis Olsen, & Matt Campbell
#6 Team Adavan/HRT Mercedes-AMG GT3
Dennis Fetzer, Hubert Haupt, Ralf Aron, & Salman Owega
#8 Mercedes-AMG Team GetSpeed Mercedes AMG GT3
Lucas Auer, Adam Christodoulou, Philipp Ellis, & Mikael Grenier
#11 Schnitzelalm Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3
Marcel Marchiewicz, Jay Mo Hartling, & Kenneth Heyer
#24 Lionspeed GP Porsche 911 GT3R (992)
Antares Au, Patric Niederhauser, Patrick Kolb, & Indy Dontje
#33 Falken Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R (992)
Julien Andlauer, Klaus Bachler, Sven Muller, & Alessio Picariello
#44 Falken Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R (992)
Joel Eriksson, Tim Heinemann, Nico Menzel, & Martin Ragginger
#54 Dinamic GT Porsche 911 GT3R (992)
Marco Holzer, Marco Seefried, Bastian Buus, & Marvin Dienst
#72 BMW M Team RMG BMW M4 GT3
Daniel Harper, Max Hesse, & Charles Weerts
#98 ROWE Racing BMW M4 GT3
Raffaele Marciello, Maxime Martin, Marco Wittman, & Augusto Farfus
#99 ROWE Racing BMW M4 GT3
Robin Frijns, Sheldon van der Linde, Dries Vanthoor, & Augusto Farfus
*You will note the Brazilian Augusto Farfus is listed in both BMWs for Rowe Racing, so I believe he will be able to switch between cars throughout the race.
#130 Mercedes-AMG Team GetSpeed Mercedes-AMG GT3
Maro Engel, Jules Gounon, & Fabian Schiller
#911 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3R (992)
Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre, Thomas Preining, & Ayhancan Guven
Those are your IGTC eligible GT3/SP9 contenders. We join Radio Show Limited and our commentators, Jonny Palmer, and Bruce Jones, who, along with their colleagues John Hindhaugh, Peter Snowden, and Peter McKay, anchored the bulk of the race this weekend.
It is 4:00 P.M. here in Nurburg, Germany, on Saturday afternoon. We are ready for a start with several groups of cars, coming up on the front straightaway, starting with the top SP9 category for the GT3 cars. Porsche and BMW on the front row. Manthey EMA Porsche and Team RMG BMW on the front row, but wait just a second. The #72 Dan Harper driven Shell Oils sponsored BMW M4 GT3 from pole, is diving for the pit lane! Dan Harper, the Ulsterman from Northern Ireland, he realizes that he is on the wrong tires for the start of the race, and that is going to put him and his co-drivers Max Hesse and Charles Weerts immediately on the back foot!
He gives up the pole position allowing the #911 "Grello" Manthey EMA Porsche to move ahead. The lights flash green, and away we go! The 52nd Nurburgring 24 Hours presented by Ravenol motor oils is underway! Another of the BMW's for Rowe Racing sees the opening and it is Augusto Farfus, the Brazilian, who shoots out in front! Kevin Estre, though in the Porsche, is a demon on the brakes into turn one saying, "no you don't, sunbeam", and makes the pass on Farfus into the first corner on the Grand Prix circuit.
...And now, look, it is Maro Engel in the #130 Mercedes-AMG GT3, the Daimler Benz AG 130th anniversary tribute livery car, bravely going for the overtake there, and Engel makes the move stick for second place. That 6.2 liter naturally aspirated V8 in the front of the Mercedes really has the grunt compared to the 4.2 liter flat six atmospheric motor in the Porsche and the twin turbocharged 3.0 liter inline six cylinder BMW's should also have the real power. It is Lamborghini and BMW though, who are left in the collective dust of both Porsche and Mercedes to be squabbling over third spot very early doors here at the Nurburgring Nordschleife.
Throughout the opening hour it is indeed a seesaw battle between Augusto Farfus in the BMW and Kevin Estre in the Porsche. These two know each other not just from GT3 racing but from prototypes as well whether that is in the GTP class in the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship, or maybe even the Hypercar class in the FIA World Endurance Championship. Factory drivers, in factory cars, doing what they are paid to do. Going at it hammer and tongs to try and beat the other. With every single turn of the Grand Prix circuit, we surely have no idea in these opening moments who is going to be in the lead of this motor race.
Now, look at this! This is close competition, a bit later on, as there are four SP9/GT3 cars four abreast down the long Dottinger Hohe into Antoniusbuche, and Tiergarten towards the end of the lap. This is a tight, tight squeeze between the Frikadelli Racing Ferrari 296 GT3, one of the Audi Sport Scherer Phoenix Audi R8 Evo II's, the #130 Mercedes, and the #5 Herberth Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3R (992). #5, loses traction. #5, loses control. Vincent Kolb spinning 360 after 360 facing oncoming traffic! Oh, my heart! This is a truly scary moment as Kolb is hoping and praying that nobody T bones him!
Poor old Vincent Kolb must have been so shocked, he must've not had a breath in his lungs. That would take the wind out of anybody, perhaps, knowing that you are a moving target that a speeding race car could slam into with no warning! Later in the race, still in the afternoon, another horribly scary moment! This is the #99 Rowe Racing BMW M4 GT3 of South African Sheldon van der Linde who makes contact with one of the production-based hatchbacks. Hard to tell from the video, but I think he very nearly clobbered a VT2 class Volkswagen Scirocco! van der Linde spins all the way 'round, and... ker-runch! He makes contact with the steel Armco barrier on the right front corner.
He was tagged, clipped another BMW automobile which then did a spectacular barrel roll over the guardrail and ended up on it's lid in the forest, on the approach to Adenauer Forst still going up the mountain! Oh man! That was ugly! So, it appears, though I cannot say for sure, the second of the two Rowe Racing BMW's, it very well could be game over for Sheldon van der Linde, Robin Frijns, Dries Vanthoor, and Augusto Farfus. Farfus has a get out of jail free card, though, because he is also on the driver's strength for the sister #98 Rowe Racing BMW M4 GT3 with co-drivers Raffaele Marciello, Maxmime Martin, and Marco Wittman.
Now, as we move ahead in the race, it is mano e mano, Porsche vs. BMW. Charles Weerts aboard the #72 BMW M Team RMG Shell Oils liveried BMW M4 GT3 with mirrors full of the #911 Porsche! "Grello" means business! Of course, the nickname "Grello" and Manthey Racing, comes from the lime green and highlighter yellow paint scheme on the car that it has used for many years. Weerts cannot outrun the slipstream down to the Dottinger Hohe, and that is Laurens Vanthoor, the Belgian Porsche ace both in GT3 and in their Hypercar and GTP programs with the Porsche 963, coming from a long way back, down the straight, to make the pass.
Through the kink and into Tiergarten, book it! Job done! The light is beginning to fade rapidly, and we will be approaching the hours of darkness here at the Nurburgring, very soon. Now, we are having reports come in, that towards the evening, fog could roll in across the mountain here at the Nurburgring. That is nothing new in the mountains here in the Eifel region, but it has wreaked havoc on this race before. Dense fog blankets the whole of the Nordschleife and nobody can see anything which makes driving at top speed, impossible. Will we see fog? Will we see good old Mother Nature play her hand into the motor race? You will need to stay tuned to find out.
In the meantime, it is pit stop time at Scherer Sport PHX Audi, the team known formerly as Phoenix Racing Audi, or Audi Sport Team Phoenix. Of course, there is no longer customer support for the Audi R8 LMS as Audi have taken their racing interests elsewhere and all the SP9/GT3 Audi's are run completely by their respective privateer teams. Frank Stippler, a veteran here at the Nurburgring handing the #16 Scherer Sport PHX Audi to Dennis Marschall, from one German ace driver to another. I take that back. That is Marschall handing to Stippler who is already a two-time winner here at the Nurburgring 24 and looking for a third victory. Will it come, this year?
The #72 BMW Team RMG BMW M4 GT3 is still in this fight, and yes, you've guessed it, good old "Grello", the #911 Porsche 911 GT3R (992) is still definitely a contender and is in the picture as dusk is steadily giving way to darkness here at the Nordschleife. "Grello" was changing strategy. They had been on wet weather Michelin tires, but they have changed over to slicks, and to be perfectly truthful, I don't think they are making a wise decision. This is something, from a strategy standpoint, that could bite them. We'll have to wait and find out, but a lot of us are scratching our collective heads about this decision by the very experienced team that has won here so often before, under the direction of team boss Olaf Manthey.
Ah yes. This move of changing tires has caused the Manthey EMA Porsche to drop like a stone down the order in SP9. Daniel Juncadella, the rapid Spaniard who is a Mercedes-AMG factory pilot, makes his move around the "Grello" Porsche. Be that as it may, he too, would find trouble during the motor race in the overnight hours alongside German co-drivers Luca Stolz and Maximilian Gotz, and the Indian racer Arjun Maini. Just as it gets dark, we have huge trouble, and a massive fire for one of the VT2 Hecke, front wheel drive Audi RS3 LMS TCR's! Driver Christoph Dupre has an inferno on his hands!
This is the #510 Audi S2 Limousine (limousine in European parlance being even a mid-size sedan), and this is the all-German quartet of drivers in this automobile. Christoph Dupre, the man who is escaping this fireball, was to have shared the car with countrymen Timo Beuth, and brothers (or father and son), Jurgen and Joachim Nett. He came out of Brunnchen on the downhill side of the circuit, a popular place for spectators to watch and he knew that Audi "limousine" was on FiYah!, the colloquial spelling of fire. Fuel, from perhaps a ruptured tank or fuel cell, creating a trail of flames on the road. That looked like a brand-new car and now it is nothing more than a barbecued pile of junk, a flamed out hulk, and Thank God, Christoph Dupre got out of it, unharmed.
In the gloom, in the middle of the night, under a navy-blue night sky, we are treated to some awesome racing between Ayhancan Guven, the Turkish driver, in the #911 "Grello" Manthey EMA Porsche and another one of the Scherer Sport PHX Audi's. It is hard to tell which one, though, in the darkness. It is either the #15 of Frederic Vervisch, Christopher Haase, Markus Winkelhock, and Ricardo Feller, or the sister #16 which has an identical driving team consisting of Feller, Christopher Mies, Frank Stippler, and Dennis Marschall. Keep your pit stops clean and tidy, don't push too extremely hard, even in the middle of the night. Play it smart.
A minimum required pit stop time means there is safe facility to do the job right. Ayhancan Guven at Manthey EMA Porsche also makes a stop. Cars, in this phase of the race, at least in the top SP9/GT3 class were coming into the lane after cycles of four to six laps, and keep in mind, that is a long drive around a 16-mile loop like the Nurburgring is. Most of the time we look and see four or five laps and say, "well, that's not too long." Here at the Nurburgring, uh, uh. That's a long time to be out there for a stint up hill and down dale through the darkness on a Saturday night. Nobody was making the maximum stint length of eight laps because look what is coming, even in the darkness. We can see Dan Harper bringing the #72 BMW Team RMG BMW M4 GT3 to the pit lane for service, and yes, sound the foghorn. The fog has descended on the Nordschleife and the visibility is getting bad out there. These chaps, no matter how clean their windscreen is, no matter how many tear off's they have left, it is harder and harder to see.
Everyone has been chasing the track conditions with their tire decisions. Now, even in the dead of night, the fog is so bad out on the whole of the circuit, both on the Grand Prix section and on the Nordschleife, the marshals decide to throw a red flag and stop the race. It is far too dangerous for anyone to continue. Nobody can see anything, and you'd have to be a complete fool to drive through this radiation fog. 11:23 P.M., short of seven and a half hours into the race, and we have stopped due to the fog. Gentlemen, go back to the hotel, and get some rest. Let's see. The clock will continue to tick, but maybe it is best to go back, get a quick bite to eat, and get a good night's sleep because this fog isn't going anyplace anytime soon.
Stay tuned. There's more to come.
Well, well, well. Good morning, everyone. Guten Morgen. Glad to have you back with us at the Nurburgring on this Sunday morning. Grab a strudel and put on the coffee or boil water for a cup of tea and do join us. But wait. Don't get to brewing the coffee or tea just yet. Hold the phone. The red light is still glowing here at the Nordschleife. Alright. 9:30 A.M. Central European Summertime, which means, on the East Coast or in the Midwest here stateside it is about 1:30 or 2:30 A.M. depending on where you are. So, it is way, way before breakfast time. You might just want to go back to sleep. The cars are released down the pit lane thinking, "hey, maybe we can restart the Nurburgring 24 Hours and get it finished!"
A few hours of careful deliberation and discussion between the stewards and the teams. It is still wet and very foggy out on the Nurburgring, the whole track. What we are going to do is try and give the fans a show here for the final hours, releasing the field behind the safety car for a couple of long exploratory laps to see what the conditions are like. This could yield positive or negative ideas about either restarting this race or maybe, ending it early and declaring a winner, which has indeed happened here at the Nurburgring before, where races have indeed been cut short of the scheduled 24-hour duration due to bad weather.
It is now 1:30 P.M. Central European Summertime. We have been under red flag conditions for a further four hours and no doubt you have caught up on other things and had a bite to eat for lunch by now. Or, for those of us here stateside, again, maybe we've had a midnight snack or breakfast, and there is still a slim chance we might get back into the racing mode here. The fog has returned like it never left as the SP9 cars are lined up echelon style on the frontstretch. The lower portions of the track after the top section at Hohe Acht, Breidscheid, Bergwerk, it is completely clear. But, there is no visibility at the lower part of the course.
So, what we are going to do is run some slow laps behind the safety car to see if this might clear up and maybe, just maybe get a restart. Now, the cars are running slowly on these five exploratory laps meaning we are going to have about 20 minutes per lap which is going to take over an hour and a half off the clock, maybe 100 minutes if we are lucky. The visibility is still terrible. The fog hasn't gone anyplace. A decision from the organizers, the ADAC German auto club, and the Nurburgring circuit officials is coming, but what will it be? We have indeed made a reset and since the cars were not put into parc ferme conditions, the teams could refuel them, change drivers, and make adjustments during the red flag intervention.
The BMW Team RMG BMW M4 GT3 still owes us a pit stop from prior to when the red flag was shown earlier this afternoon. The stewards have decided to place it behind the #911 Manthey EMA "Grello" Porsche. The order has not changed however, and it is the #16 Audi R8 LMS EVO II leading the field off into the gloom. It is now a game of patience, a game of solitaire, really. Get your deck of cards out and start playing a game of Klondike solitaire because we are seeing lap times through the fog and the rain of 22 minutes, would you believe, around the Nordschleife. We are abiding by the speed of the safety car.
But just as one section of the track was cleared of the mist through the forest, it placed itself in yet another spot. With an hour and 15 minutes left on the board, and five laps slowly completed behind the safety car, the race was set to be declared over. No chance of a final hour and a quarter dash to the checkered flag because as we said earlier, Mother Nature just will not allow it at the Nurburgring this year. Victory, therefore, goes to the #16 Scherer Sport PHX Audi R8 LMS EVO II of Frank Stippler, Christopher Mies, Ricardo Feller, and Dennis Marschall!
Frank Stippler and Christopher Mies now have three wins in the Nurburgring 24 Hours and the team celebrates for the seventh time! Audi and Phoenix have become level with the record of seven wins by the Manthey EMA Porsche team. Disappointment for Manthey EMA Porsche and for BMW Team RMG because they knew they also had a wonderful chance of possibly going for the victory. Again, the fog, the Eiffel, have decided this one. Everyone will be back in the future to try and go for another one.
#16 Stippler/Mies/Feller/Marschall Scherer Sport PHX Audi R8 LMS EVO II.
Everyone has gone over the line slowly. Christopher Mies and Dennis Marschall, smiling, cheering like crazy for their teammate, bringing it home. Ricardo Feller must be grinning for ear to ear under his helmet. In only his third Nurburgring 24 Hours, Dennis Marschall has won it! Three manufacturers on the top three steps of the podium here at the Nurburgring 24 Hours. Not even seven and a half hours of racing completed due to the fog. The new shortest race distance record at the Nurburgring, with 7 hours and 23 minutes put in.
Phoenix Audi is now tied with Manthey Porsche for seven overall wins in the Nurburgring 24 Hours. Christopher Mies and Frank Stippler are now three-time winners at the Nurburgring 24 Hours which puts them in company with such fabled luminaries of the Nurburgring 24 as three-time consecutive winner Herbert Hechler who won the event in 1976, '77, and '78 in a Porsche 911 Carrera with co-driver Fritz Muller, with the one and the only Hans Joachim Stuck, who had wins in 1970, '98, and 2004, all with BMW, and with two other Nurburgring legends, Markus Winkelhock, and Klaus Ludwig. With seven victories at the Nurburgring 24 Hours, Audi are third on the all-time list of winning manufacturers behind Porsche with 13 and BMW with 20.
It has been a record-breaking race as we have gone even shorter than the 59-lap distance, equaling 930 miles, from three years ago in 2021. Only 50 laps, 788 and a half miles of racing, completed in 2024. A strange race, but it is done and dusted, and another Audi victory for Frank Stippler, Christopher Mies, Ricardo Feller, and Dennis Marschall, who, through it all, spray the champagne. Many crews will be kicking themselves based on their results. We hope for a full 24-hour race next year in 2025, when the race returns to a June date, which hopefully will yield better weather. Auf wiedersehen, everyone. We'll see you next year. For now, so long, and take care, from the Nurburgring Nordschleife. Bye bye.
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