Max Verstappen's debut at the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring looked destined to end on the top step. For 20 and a half hours of the 24-hour race, the four-time F1 world champion and his number 3 Mercedes-AMG GT3 led the field — until a drive shaft failure with roughly three and a half hours to go gave the win to the sister number 80 car instead.
The race was decided not in the cockpit but on a single, lonely lap. Verstappen had handed the car back to Daniel Juncadella after a double stint described by senior officials at the circuit as a master class. The number 3 had a 30 to 45-second cushion when Juncadella took over. Within two laps, the gap had collapsed to 14 seconds. By the next time the timing screens updated, it was three seconds. Then the sister car was past.
Fellow co-driver Ryo Hirakawa, taking over later, was left to detail what had broken. "I came out of the pits, everything was fine. But after about a third of the lap, I saw an ABS fault message that kept flashing on and off," Hirakawa said. "I reset the message and that was okay, but then I realised there was no ABS. I was driving without it, but it wasn't too bad. I could manage it. I adjusted the brake balance and the car was still controllable."
The ABS warning was the symptom, not the cause. "It started to get worse. The car became undrivable. Something was about to break and he had to slow down. That's when the number 80 takes the lead," Hirakawa explained. "I drove slowly back to the pits. We found a problem with the drive shaft. Then that caused extra collateral damage to the rest of the car. That's probably what caused the issue where the electronics went haywire and the ABS went off."
The team repaired the car well enough to send it back out for a classified finish — P20 in the SP9 GT3 category, 38th overall — but the chance of a debut Nordschleife victory was gone.
Hirakawa was clear that the failure was bad luck rather than a punishment for over-driving. "We drove very carefully the last six or seven hours because both cars were in very good position. There was no reason to take risks. We didn't abuse the curbs. We were just careful," he said. "The drive shaft was totally new. We'll be back next year. It's endurance racing at the end of the day. These things happen, but it's so brutal to happen in this manner when you've driven such a perfect race."
Verstappen himself, speaking after stepping out of the car following his final stint and before the failure, had already flagged the appetite for another go. "I've tried to keep the car safe. It feels good. You know, I nearly had an accident. That was when the two Porsches collided," Verstappen said. "I'll try and come back next year depending on my agenda."
That agenda is the part Formula 1 may now have to weigh. The Nurburgring 24 Hours pulled an unusually large F1-fan audience this weekend on the back of Verstappen's appearance, and his stated intent to return in 2027 will sit uncomfortably with any F1 calendar that puts a race against it. For a champion who told reporters at Suzuka he is using moments away from F1 to "think about life," the Eifel mountains have just given him another reason to come back.
Source: youtube.com