Team Verstappen looks locked in a two-horse race for the Nurburgring 24 Hours victory with the sister Winward Racing-run Mercedes #80, as Max Verstappen made his nighttime racing debut on the Nordschleife.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of the pre-event favourites fell by the wayside in a frenetic opening few hours. Those such as the \u2018Grello\u2019 #911 Porsche and the #45 Kondo Racing Ferrari crashed, while the defending race-winning #1 BMW retired with a recurring fueling issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That, combined with some inch-perfect tyre calls during some early race rain, means the Team Verstappen car and the #80 Mercedes appear to be in a race of their own at the front.<\/p>\n
Having put in back-to-back storming stints where he charged from 10th to first early in the race, Verstappen next returned to the cockpit around 1.30am local time – with 13 and a half hours on the clock remaining.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He\u2019d completed just one lap in the Thursday night qualifying session in wet conditions, meaning his first nighttime stint in a real-world endurance race is a significant first for Verstappen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Team Verstappen car – with Dani Juncadella, Lucas Auer and Jules Gounon taking turns at the wheel before Verstappen’s night stint – has been routinely trading the race lead with the #80 Mercedes. Both cars are run by the same Winward Racing outfit and appear to be controlling the pace at the front, with little threat behind.<\/p>\n
It was Juncadella who handed the Mercedes over to Verstappen, having run second just behind Maro Engel in the #80 Mercedes. <\/p>\n
The next best car – the #99 BMW with Kelvin van der Linde at the wheel – was several minutes behind the race-leading Mercedes duo, having lost time to an opening lap spin. <\/p>\n
It essentially means it\u2019s an intra-Winward Racing fight for the victory, unless either car suffers a significant setback. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team Verstappen looks locked in a two-horse race for the Nurburgring 24 Hours victory with the sister Winward…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-675851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675851","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=675851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}