Verstappen, who briefly led the Nürburgring 24 Hours qualifying round, was forced to pit for repairs after his car was damaged, missing out on the SP9 class victory.
Although he initially led the race, Verstappen’s performance was significantly impacted by damage to his car.
Verstappen suffered a setback on Sunday (April 19th) in the second round of qualifying for the Nürburgring 24 Hours, missing out on the SP9 class win again after being forced to pit for repairs due to damage to his car.
His Verstappen Racing team, despite crossing the finish line nearly a minute ahead in the second round of the Nürburgring Endurance Series (NLS) last month, had their results disqualified after the race due to their operating team, Winward Racing, using seven more tires than permitted.
The four-time F1 world champion was paired with his Austrian teammate Lucas Auer, also driving a Mercedes-AMG GT3. Although this race is called a “qualifying race,” it doesn’t actually eliminate any cars, nor does it determine the starting grid for the 24 Hours endurance race held from May 14th to 17th. It simply gives teams that perform well in the NLS or qualifying race a chance to qualify directly for the final qualifying round of the main race next month. This is the last chance for teams to prepare for the 24 Hours in a race format.
The first round the previous day saw the tragic death of 66-year-old Finnish driver Juha Miettinen in a seven-car crash. The organizers observed a minute’s silence for him before the second round.
Starting from fifth, Festamina quickly moved up to third, then took second place from Dennis Marschall’s Ferrari in a daring overtake, and battled Christopher Haase’s Audi multiple times on the straight.
Thanks to the pit stop rule, Festamina opted for an early pit stop, successfully establishing a lead of over 20 seconds. However, around the 38-minute mark of the second pit stop, he had to return to the pits, the car was pushed into the garage, and his hopes of victory were dashed.
Wenward team operations director Steve Buschmann said in an interview: “We don’t quite know what happened yet, but the front spoiler was damaged. So we decided to push the car back to the garage to prevent the situation from worsening. We are now trying to repair it and plan to use the remaining race time as a test.”
About half an hour after Festapen’s pit stop, his teammate Orr returned to the track in the same car, but by then the team was out of contention for a decent position and could only use the remaining time for adjustments and testing.
In the end, the Festapen team finished 39th overall, three laps behind the winner, the Scherer Sport PHX team, whose members were Haase, Alexander Sims, and Ben Green.
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