For a manufacturer as successful in GT3 racing as Mercedes-AMG, a 10-year winless run at the Nürburgring 24 Hours was beginning to blemish its otherwise standout record.
That streak ended this weekend, however, with the three-pointed star conquering the Green Hell for the third time thanks to a dominant display from its performance team Winward Racing.
The German-American outfit, in its first start at the race since 2019, was in control from the moment it made the correct call on tyres when the rain was at its heaviest on Saturday evening, with its pair of AMG GT3 EVOs gaining two minutes over the rest of the field.
Its #3 Verstappen Racing and #80 Ravenol entries then fought out victory among themselves, with the former edging clear until a driveshaft failure struck with under four hours remaining. This meant that the #80 AMG GT3 EVO shared by Maro Engel, Maxime Martin, Fabian Schiller and Luca Stolz could cruise to the finish, claiming the victory by a comfortable two minutes and 10 seconds despite running conservatively in the closing stages.
“I think today the Nürburgring chose us as a winner,” Stolz told DSC post-race. “We saw that the Lamborghini was super strong, even came back in the end, so they definitely had more pace than us. Then the #1 ROWE went off, the [Manthey] Porsche crashed.
“It’s really hard this race, and in the end you need to survive, but you also need to be there in the beginning to make the distance to the others. You have to have zero issues, and then then you can fight for the win.
“We had a big issue on Friday, but luckily the boys and girls at Winward did an outstanding job to bring the car back in perfect shape for the race, and after that we had zero issues and just did our race.
Remarkably, it’s Stolz’ maiden 24-hour race victory – anywhere. “It’s the first 24-hour victory ever for myself,” he said. “It’s really nice to have it in front of friends and family, because I live quite close to here, so that’s cool. They’ve come out to celebrate, and I guess we will have a nice party. It means a lot to me.”
Behind the winner, the leaderboard is very different to a decade ago, when Mercedes-AMG showed up with its new AMG GT3 and placed five cars in the top six. The #80 entry was the only AMG GT3 EVO to finish in the top 17 this time around, with the rest of the marque’s SP 9 Pro efforts, split across Winward Racing and a pair of customer teams, running into difficulty.
The #47 KCMG car was eliminated early on after an accident triggered by a flagging miscommunication, whilst a front splitter problem saw the #26 PROsport Racing AMG withdraw.
The highest-profile casualty though, was the #3 AMG GT3 EVO, with the car driven by Max Verstappen, Lucas Auer, Jules Gounon and Daniel Juncadella having looked on course to deliver on the expectation placed on it by the presence of the four-time F1 champion. Instead, it had to settle for 38th overall, with Juncadella re-emerging in the final laps to secure a classified finish.
After a close battle between the cars overnight, the advantage increasingly swung in Verstappen Racing’s favour, especially once team orders were implemented to maximise the chance that both cars made it home.
Although naturally an unpopular decision, it’s hard to criticise Winward too hard for making the call to neutralise its intra-team duel, after Engel and Verstappen made contact on the approach to Tiergarten in Hour 12.
It was, however, a major blow to the #80 Ravenol crew, but for Martin, decisions like this form part of the job of a factory sportscar driver.
“You always stay professional as a team, it’s our job as well,” the Belgian explained. “I’ve been in many situations where the luck is not on my side, and to win a 24-hour race, you need some luck at some point, and we had it this time.”
This luck, which came in the form of a mechanical issue on the sister car, naturally brought about mixed emotions.
“For sure you’re disappointed, because we were 1-2, so for Mercedes AMG and for Winward it was something very special,” Martin stated.
“But on the other hand, I would be lying to say that I was not happy that we had a chance at that time to win it. We still had to close the race, we still had a lot of things could happen, but we had a much bigger chance to win, so it’s mixed emotions, but I will take the pleasure of winning.”
The win was Martin’s first in the event, with the Belgian finally adding the Nürburgring 24 Hours to his 2016 24 Hours of Spa success after several near-misses. “15 years to get here.” he reflected.
“I’ve been second three times, always close with different manufacturers, different conditions and different teams, but at the end I’m very proud to be able to win this race.”
On the Verstappen Racing side of the garage, the mood was naturally more downbeat, although the #3 crew is clearly proud of a run which took them so close to victory. “It’s obviously frustrating, but I’m also proud of our group,” Auer said. “It was an absolute pleasure to share the car with the guys and with the whole team.”
The contact with Engel was one of several heart-in-mouth moments experienced by the #3 AMG GT3 EVO, which also ran through the grass at high speed early on, but the Austrian doesn’t think that any of them played a role in the car’s driveshaft problem.
“This is what you do here, with traffic management and different categories. It’s a survival for everybody, but it was actually quite clean from our side,” he stated.
It was Juncadella who was in the car when the driveshaft issues set in. The 35-year-old initially attempted to manage the then-mysterious problem, before electing to back off once it became clear pushing flat-out was no longer feasible.
“It was getting worse, worse, worse, and at some point I thought something was loose, something was going to snap, so I just drove it slowly back to the pits, because around here it’s dangerous to take too many risks like that,” the Spaniard explained.
‘When we pitted, we found out that we had an issue with the driveshaft. I don’t know exactly what it was, but it’s just something getting loose in the driveshaft that created collateral damage in the rest of the car.”
For Juncadella, who is still chasing a maiden 24H Nürburgring victory, this one especially stings, given how competitively, and cleanly, the #3 AMG GT3 EVO had looked all weekend. “It’s sad because it was looking really good,” he said.
“We had a perfect weekend, were lucky on many occasions. I always think you need to be extremely lucky here, with incidents, with traffic, with weather.
“The team made an amazing call on the weather when it was wet. We gained two minutes on the rest of the field, going on to wet tyres. Jules [Gounon] was super lucky in an incident which took away the Manthey and Ford with oil on track. It was meant to be for us, but unfortunately the race was three hours too long.”
Verstappen, meanwhile, has been dealt a cruel lesson in the nature of the Nürburgring 24 Hours. The Dutchman barely put a foot wrong on his 24-hour race debut, but will leave the Eifel empty handed.
“He will not leave this place happy without a win, that’s pretty clear,” Juncadella said of his friend and co-driver. “But on top of that, what he showed to the world, not only by committing to this, because that says a lot about him already, but then just excelling at his driving, it’s just incredible to witness, and it was cool to be a part of.
“We enjoyed driving together, sharing everything together, and we needed that cherry on the top with the win, but it didn’t happen this time.”
Images courtesy of Frozenspeed and Gruppe C Photography
