The four-time Formula One world champion Max Verstappen\u2019s chances of victory in his 24-hour racing debut at the famed N\u00fcrburgring track have been ended by an apparent mechanical problem with his car.<\/p>\n
Verstappen had been leading in Germany on Sunday morning by more than half a minute, sharing a Mercedes AMG GT3 car with the experienced sportscar racers Lucas Auer, Jules Gounon and Dani Juncadella. Juncadella had just taken over from Verstappen when he had to slow down with a problem affecting the rear-right of the car and lost the lead before pulling into the pit lane. The car had not returned from the garage after an hour.<\/p>\n
Coming a week before F1 returns at the Canadian Grand Prix, the N\u00fcrburgring race was a bucket list project for Verstappen. He is a keen racing fan and has questioned his future in F1<\/a> this year because he is unhappy with the 2026 cars\u2019 reliance on electrical power. F1 has agreed to make engine changes<\/a> for the 2027 season after the widespread criticism from drivers.<\/p>\n Verstappen made an immediate impact in his first stint on Saturday evening with a fast, aggressive style typical of his driving in F1, going from 10th to the lead with a series of overtakes. At one point, he lost grip over a bump and ran wide on to the grass, narrowly missing the barrier, and he was later in a close battle for the overnight lead.<\/p>\n Verstappen was familiar with the N\u00fcrburgring after taking part in a series of shorter races in recent months to add to his years of virtual experience from online simulator races. It was still a challenge unlike anything in F1.<\/p>\n With 161 cars spread out along a 15.8-mile circuit, Verstappen had to weave past much slower cars and deal with constantly changing weather conditions on a hilly track where it can be raining hard at one point and dry at another.<\/p>\n It was also his first real test of night-time endurance racing without the huge floodlights that F1 uses to light up the track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The four-time Formula One world champion Max Verstappen\u2019s chances of victory in his 24-hour racing debut at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-675486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}