The #911 Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R 992 crossed the line first at the end of the 2025 Nürburgring 24 Hours, but it was the #98 ROWE BMW M4 GT3 Evo that took the victory in dramatic fashion after a penalty was applied to the leading crew at the finish.
Manthey’s penalty was 100 seconds added to its race time, imposed on the team with three hours remaining (following a lengthy investigation) for causing a collision with the #179 Dörr Motorsport Aston Martin GT4.
Kevin Estre was deemed to be at fault for his controversial lunge up the inside of the Vantage, which sent Rolf Scheibner and his car into the armco barriers and onto its roof between Kallenhard and Wehrseifen.
The Manthey team opted not to serve the penalty before the end of the race, though, and instead held track position for the run to the flag while appealing the decision.
It put a sour note on a dominant performance for the #911, which led all but eight of the 141 laps. During the second half of the race it only fell to second for three tours of the circuit, after Augusto Farfus made a daring pass on Ayhancan Güven on the Döttinger Hohe before the 15th round of stops, during which the cars swapped positions again.
Kevin Estre, who was in at the end, took the chequered flag with a 22-second gap to the #98 after a shorter final stop a lap later than the M4. He did well to hold off a hard-charging Kelvin van der Linde, but would drop down to second when the time penalty was applied.
The result appears settled, too, as with just three minutes remaining on the clock, confirmation came through from race control that the Manthey team’s protest had been rejected.
So it’s BMW’s day, after ROWE put together a remarkable run as the only bullet in the Bavarian marque’s gun. Augusto Farfus, Jesse Krohn, Raffaele Marciello and Kelvin van der Linde all played their part in delivering a record 21st overall win for BMW and a second win for ROWE in front of a record crowd of 280,000 fans trackside.
It was a stunning comeback drive, after the car sat more than two and a half minutes off the lead at the halfway mark, struggling to keep tabs on the ‘Grello’ Porsche that was rapid when the temperature dropped.
But the team refused to give up, with Marciello standing out through the morning, doing the heavy lifting by reeling in the Porsche, setting up the team for a famous victory.
ROWE Racing team boss Hans-Peter Naundorf said of the result: “On Thursday, it looked completely different for us. We had completely different thoughts. But of course, you always want to win. Today, the car won, but the team that made the fewest mistakes. That was us, and we are proud of that.”
Completing the podium was another car that impressed throughout, the Pirelli-shod #54 Dinamic Porsche, which gradually climbed the order by staying out of trouble.
It inherited third in the final hour after the #28 ABT Sportsline Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO II had to undergo a rear-brake change at its final stop, costing the Italian marque its first-ever top-three finish in the event.
The ABT Huracan, which stayed almost entirely fault-free for 24 hours, dropped to fifth, retook fourth on the final lap, before being sent back to fifth again by a 32-second post-race time penalty for causing a collision.
The #65 HRT Ford Mustang GT3, running on Yokohama tyres, was the beneficiary of the penalty doled out to the Lamborghini. It claimed the SP 9 Pro/Am honours with a fourth-place finish in the team’s first N24 as a Ford partner team.
“This weekend was bittersweet because we lost two overnight, but winning the Pro-Am class and placing fourth overall is really more than we expected,” said Ulrich Fritz, Haupt Racing Team GmbH managing director. “It’s the first major Mustang GT3 win in Europe. It was a great team effort, and the drivers did not receive any penalties. We’re very happy. Thank you to everyone involved.”
There was plenty of attrition in the SP 9 GT3 division through the race, despite it staying bone dry.
Falken Motorsports’ long wait for a first overall victory continues after a double retirement from its Porsche 911 GT3 R 992s. The #33 was hugely unlucky, retiring early in the race on Saturday night after a head-on collision.
Headlights blinded Julien Andlauer as he piled into the #94 Sante Royale Racing Team Cup 2 class Porsche that had been turned around at Turn 2.
That left the #44 sister car to pick up the baton, but a puncture overnight and a drivetrain failure on Sunday morning brought the Japanese tyre manufacturer’s challenge to an abrupt end.
Mercedes-AMG’s chances of a third overall win faltered long before the chequered flag, too. The two GetSpeed AMG GT3s had pace but suffered technical issues. The #14 was out before the 12-hour mark when Maro Engel was pushed back into the garage after stopping at pit-out with a drivetrain issue.
Ralf Aron managed to limp across the line in the #17, but the car only completed 101 laps as the team opted to park the penalty-hit, mechanically-challenged car through Sunday morning, into the afternoon.
The single Ferrari in the race from Kondo Racing also had a shot at victory but failed to deliver. The Rinaldi-run 296 started on the front row, led before the red flag, then ran most of the race off-sequence after two punctures before crashing out.
Felipe Fernandez Laser was in the car when it was involved in a tangle with a lower-class BMW that led to a hard hit against the guardrails at Schwalbenschwanz.
Scherer Sport PHX’s #1 Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II and the #65 HRT Ford Mustang GT3 may also have featured in the fight for podium positions, but retired from crash damage.
Scherer Sport’s N24 defence met a cruel end before midnight when the team opted to withdraw its Audi from the race following an off for Luca Ludwig just after 10 pm local time.
The car ended up in the barriers and sustained what looked like suspension damage on its trudge back to the pit lane. Scherer Sport’s team manager, Ron Moser, confirmed that an electronics fault was to blame.
That added to what’s been a forgettable week for the team, in which its #16 Porsche was withdrawn from the event before the race began after Laurens Vanthoor wrote off the new 911 in an incident during Top Qualifying.
“It wasn’t our weekend, but we’ll come back stronger and attack again next year,” Moser said.
The #64 Mustang also failed to make it through the night. An incident for Frank Stippler at Flugplatz saw the car damaged beyond repair after 27 laps.
Walkenhorst’s #34 Aston Martin, meanwhile, featured in the fight for a top-five finish during the first half of the race, but was pulled from the race after a fuel filter issue dropped it out of contention. The team opted to preserve the Vantage rather than send it back out, as it will also take part in the Spa 24 Hours next weekend.
In the other classes, the best-placed car outside of SP 9 is the #948 Losch Porsche 911 GT3 Cup in Cup 2, which enjoyed a metronomic run en route to a class win and an 11th overall finish.
Hyundai’s factory team claimed a fifth consecutive TCR win with a 1-2. The #830 Elantra N TCR dominated the four-car category, beating the sister #831 with N24 rookie Robert Wickens in its driver line-up by three laps. The #831 did well to finish 25th overall after nursing a turbo issue throughout the race and suffering multiple punctures.
The #67 AV Racing by Black Falcon BMW M4 GT4 EVO won the GT4 battle in SP 10, after FK Performance’s #187 BMW M4 GT4 controlled huge chunks of the race.
The new BMW M2 Racing operated by FK Performance enjoyed a dream N24 debut, winning SP 3T in 36th overall. Dörr Motorsport’s McLaren Artura Trophy Evo also turned heads by winning SP 8T and finishing 19th overall on its first attempt.
Images courtesy of Frozenspeed
