Max Verstappen will make his debut at the Nurburgring 24 Hours later this year in a Red Bull-liveried Mercedes.<\/p>\n
The four-time Formula 1 world champion revealed his plans just one day after the 2026 F1 opener in Melbourne, where he raced from 20th to sixth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Verstappen hasn\u2019t hidden his strong dislike for the 2026 rules, something that was always likely to fuel his continued pursuit of racing outside of F1.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His participation in the 2026 Nurburgring 24 Hours was always contingent on how Red Bull’s first F1 season with its homegrown power unit started and how much time he\u2019d be able to devote to his Verstappen Racing team\u2019s Nurburgring efforts.<\/p>\n
His chances were boosted in January when one of the Nurburgring precursors that Verstappen would need to race in – NLS2 – was moved into the gap between F1\u2019s Chinese and Japanese GPs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now Verstappen\u2019s entry in NLS2 (March 21) and the Nurburgring 24 Hours (May 16-17) has been confirmed, with his team\u2019s entry to be driven by Verstappen himself, Dani Juncadella, Jules Gounon and Lucas Auer.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll compete in partnership with Mercedes-AMG and Red Bull, with a striking Red Bull livery revealed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Nurburgring is a special place,\u201d Verstappen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no other track like it. The 24h Nurburgring is a race that\u2019s been on my bucket list for a long time, so I\u2019m really thrilled we can make it happen now.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, I was able to get my DMSB Permit Nordschleife and participate in NLS9, that we won.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat preparation is very valuable, as we have learned a lot that we can take into our programme this year with NLS2 and the 24-hour race.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a strong line-up with Dani, Jules and Lucas and great support from Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG Motorsport.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow it\u2019s about putting in the right preparations before the events, so we can maximise everything in the races.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen will make his debut at the Nurburgring 24 Hours later this year in a Red Bull-liveried…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-528710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}