Max Verstappen has agonisingly lost a debut victory at the Nurburgring 24 Hours after his Mercedes was forced to stop from the lead late on.
The #3 AMG, which Verstappen is sharing with Daniel Juncadella, Jules Gounon and Lucas Auer, was in control of the hectic race in a Mercedes 1-2 from around the sixth hour onwards.
Brilliant stints from Verstappen were key to that with the most notable moment coming when he overtook Maro Engel in the sister Winward at 3am local time amid a thrilling fight between the two.
It even saw both drivers bang wheels when Engel tried to regain the lead, but he was forced onto the grass as it happened prompting orders from Mercedes to keep position.
Verstappen then built a 20-second-plus gap before handing over to Auer who was later replaced by Juncadella, where the first signs of a problem began to emerge around the 21st hour.
The Spaniard received an ABS alarm according to Mercedes customer racing boss Stefan Wendl, but believed he could manage it well so the car kept going.
“Noises and vibrations” then emerged and after two laps, Juncadella was forced to slow down and came into the pits with what has been diagnosed as a driveshaft problem.
“We’ve spoken to Max, we’ve spoken to the other drivers, and of course, everyone is mega disappointed, especially after fighting for the lead for so long,” said Wendl. “But we’ve decided that we are going to fix the car and go back out for the final laps to present it to the fans.”
The incident has handed a very healthy advantage of more than five minutes for Luca Stolz in the sister Mercedes, who is still in good position to take its first Nurburgring 24h win since 2016.
In second is now the #99 Rowe BMW (Dan Harper, Max Hesse, Sheldon Van Der Linde and Dries Vanthoor) with third going to the #34 Walkenhorst Aston Martin (Mattia Drudi, Felipe Fernandez Laser, Christian Krognes and Nicki Thiim).
