Max Verstappen and Lucas Auer have been handed a three-place grid penalty for causing a collision in qualifying for Saturday\u2019s four-hour NLS4 race at the Nordschleife.<\/p>\n
Auer was at the wheel of the #3 Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing entry when he collided with the #941 Porsche Cayman GT4 car in qualifying.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Auer\u2019s Red Bull-liveried Mercedes GT3 car encountered the lesser-powered GT4 car at a double-right-hander deep in the forest section of the Nordschleife circuit that\u2019s in excess of 25km.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Auer attempted to pass the Porsche on the inside into the second right-hand turn, but the Porsche closed the door and made contact at the apex of the corner, sending the Porsche into a spin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Auer recovered, handing the car over to Verstappen, who was unable to best Auer\u2019s time of 8m13.012s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That was good enough for sixth place on the grid in a stacked GT3 field as drivers and teams – including Verstappen – prepare for the Nurburgring 24 Hours next month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But they\u2019ve been shunted back three places on the grid by the stewards as Auer was deemed at fault for the incident. <\/p>\n
Pole position went\u00a0the way of\u00a0the #23 BMW M4 GT3 entry, which has Nordschleife regulars Anzal Zsigo, Moritz Kranz and David Jahn at the wheel. They took pole with an\u00a08m09.488s,\u00a0three and a half seconds clear of Verstappen’s team.<\/p>\n
NLS4 grid top 10<\/p>\n
1. Zsigo\/Kranz\/Jahn #23 BMW
2. Heyer\/Mo Hartling\/Fittje #11 Mercedes
3. Fukuzumi\/Gamo\/Krohn\/Pittard\u00a0#47 Mercedes\u00a0
4. Assenheimer\/Mueller\/Pereira\u00a0#48 Porsche\u00a0
5. Engel\/Stolz\/Schiller #80 Mercedes
6. Engstler\/Bortolotti\/Niederhauser #84 Lamborghini
7. Haase\/Sims\/Green #16 Audi
8. Paul\/Lefterov\/Stalidzane #7 Lamborghini
9. Verstappen\/Auer #3 Mercedes
10. Rump\/Buennagel#123 Porsche <\/p>\n
The 127-strong field will compete over four hours in the first of two races this weekend on Saturday evening – officially NLS4 as it\u2019s part of the\u00a0Nurburgring Langstrecken-Serie (NLS). NLS5 will then take place on Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Significantly, NLS4 will be Verstappen’s first proper taste of racing on the\u00a0Nordschleife at night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can watch all of the action live and free on The Race\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a>, including an onboard camera<\/a> of Team Verstappen\u2019s entire race!\u00a0<\/p>\n The schedule<\/p>\n All times local (CEST, GMT+2)<\/p>\n Saturday Sunday
5.30-9.30pm\u00a0Race (NLS4)<\/a><\/p>\n
8.15-9.45am Qualifying
10.40-11.40am\u00a0Top qualifying<\/a>
1-5pm\u00a0Race (NLS5<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen and Lucas Auer have been handed a three-place grid penalty for causing a collision in qualifying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-614918","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614918","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=614918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}