With over an hour of racing in the books and the first round of routine pit stops completed, Thomas Neubauer led the 2026 edition of the Nurburgring 24 Hours, with the #45 Kondo/Rinaldi Ferrari 296 having completed seven laps in total. Second and third were held by Christopher Mies and Nicki Thiim in the #67 HRT Ford and #34 Walkenhorst Aston Martin respectively, with Jesse Krohn fourth in the #47 KCMG Mercedes and Frank Stippler fifth in the #64 HRT Ford.
At the start, Marco Mapelli in the second-place-qualifying #130 Abt Lamborghini (above) got the jump on his team-mate and led by the end of the first lap. The polesitting #84 car of Mirko Bortolotti then had to dive into the pits at the end of the GP Loop with a flat left rear tyre, following contact with the fourth-place-starting #3 Winward Mercedes of Daniel Juncadella. Mapelli would later be judged to have jumped the start, resulting in a 42-second penalty for the #130 machine at its first pit visit.
Also having a torrid time before even hitting the Nordschleife was Dan Harper in the #99 ROWE BMW, who spun at the hairpin and rejoined the tail end of the SP9 field. Drama ensued almost as soon as Starting Group 1 caught up to the tail end of the field on the Nordschleife, with Juncadella getting shuffled down from second to his original starting place of fourth behind Maximilian Paul (#7 Konrad Lamborghini) and Kevin Estre (#911 Manthey Porsche, up from a starting position of eighth).
Mapelli and Paul were soon circulating almost nose-to-tail at the front of the field, with Estre staying in touch; there was then a slight gap to Juncadella ahead of Christopher Haase in the #16 Scherer Sport PHX Audi (above). David Pittard in the #47 KCMG Mercedes and Neubauer in the #45 Ferrari swapped positions as the first hour wound down, with Stippler, Adam Christodoulou (#26 Mercedes) and Mies completing the top 10 at this early stage.
At just after 3:40pm local, the stewards announced Mapelli’s jump-start penalty, while a robust move from Estre past Paul at around the same time got the Manthey machine into second. The first round of routine pitstops kicked off not long after, but the #35 Aston Martin (with Felipe Fernandez Lasr at the wheel) had to stop for longer than planned due to a fuel-pressure issue encountered during the opening stint. As the clock ticked past 4:00pm local time, there were reports from drivers of light drizzle at the Mutkurve section of the track.
Images courtesy of Frozenspeed & GruppeC Photography
