N\u00dcRBURG, Germany \u2014 Four-time\u00a0Formula 1\u00a0champion Max Verstappen’s chances of victory in his\u00a024-hour racing debut\u00a0at the famed N\u00fcrburgring track were ended by a mechanical issue with his car Sunday.<\/p>\n
Verstappen had been leading in the morning by over half a minute, sharing a Mercedes AMG GT3 car with experienced sportscar racers Lucas Auer, Jules Gounon and Dani Juncadella.<\/p>\n
With three and a half hours left, Juncadella had just taken over from Verstappen when he had to slow down with a damaged driveshaft and lost the lead before entering the pits, where the car was pulled into the garage.<\/p>\n
Victory went to the team’s sister Mercedes car driven by Maro Engel, Luca Stolz, Fabian Schiller and Maxime Martin.<\/p>\n
About three hours after his incident, Juncadella was able to get back on track and ensure the team was counted as a finisher in 38th.<\/p>\n
Coming a week before F1 returns at the Canadian Grand Prix, the N\u00fcrburgring race was a \u201cbucket list\u201d project for Verstappen. He’s a keen racing fan and has\u00a0questioned his future\u00a0in F1 this year because he’s unhappy with the 2026 cars’ reliance on electrical power.<\/p>\n
Verstappen made an immediate impact in his first stint 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 onto the grass, narrowly missing the barrier and he was later in a close battle for the lead overnight.<\/p>\n
Verstappen keen to try again<\/p>\n
Speaking shortly before the incident that dashed his hopes of a win, Verstappen said he enjoyed his longest race yet and hoped to be back again in 2027.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think in general it\u2019s just the competition, the endurance style racing where you share with teammates. The 24-hour race here, the track is super challenging, so it\u2019s a whole combo,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As for next year, \u201cI will for sure try. It always depends a bit on my schedule, but let\u2019s first enjoy now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Darkness, rain and overtaking<\/p>\n
Verstappen was familiar with the N\u00fcrburgring after taking part in a series of\u00a0shorter races\u00a0in recent months to add to his years of virtual experience from realistic online simulator races.<\/p>\n
It was still a challenge unlike anything in F1.<\/p>\n
With 161 cars entered \u2014 159 took the start \u2014 on a 15.8-mile (25.3-kilometer) circuit, Verstappen had to weave past much slower cars and narrowly escaped a crash when two slower Porsches collided in front of him. He also had to 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":"N\u00dcRBURG, Germany \u2014 Four-time\u00a0Formula 1\u00a0champion Max Verstappen’s chances of victory in his\u00a024-hour racing debut\u00a0at the famed N\u00fcrburgring track…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-675851","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\/675851","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=675851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}