With roughly three hours left on the clock and the No. 3 Mercedes-AMGGT3 sitting at the front of the field, a driveshaft took the decision out of everyone’s hands.
Max Verstappen was making his debut at the legendary Nürburgring 24 Hours, sharing the car with Daniel Juncadella, Jules Gounon, and Lucas Auer – and they were on course to win it before the Nordschleife had other ideas.
Stefan Wendl, head of Mercedes-AMG customer racing, explained what unfolded.
“Just after the pitstop Danny reported some noise from the rear right, and first of all we had an ABS failure, which leads us to assume an electric failure—something we could reset. And we tried to recover in two laps and let him out ’cause it was not so much influencing the driving.
“But then he recognized more and more noise, vibrations, and suddenly had to slow down to save the car, and limped it to the pits. And here in the pits we saw that the whole rear axle had a major damage resulting from a driveshaft failure. Which, yeah, needs us to change the whole rear axle now which takes whatever, 45 minutes or an hour.”
Despite the obvious frustration, the team did plan to send the car back out for a handful of laps at the end – less about result, more about giving something back to the fans.
“We spoke with Max and the other drivers and everybody is so much disappointed. But we said yeah, let’s send this beautiful car out again at the last two or three laps and present it to the fans who cheered all 24 hours or 20 hours long, and try to bring us to the victory.”
A Verstappen masterclass had put the No. 3 car into victory contention and it led the No. 80 AMG – crewed by Maxime Martin, Maro Engel, Fabian Schiller, and Luca Stolz – for a significant portion of the race. Wendl noted that over the course of the event the two sister cars had been separated by somewhere between 10 and 20 seconds for much of the distance, which is both exciting racing and an extremely uncomfortable way to manage a team running for an overall win. “Yeah, you saw probably the whole race and the track is very much demanding. So so much nice racing, exciting racing, maneuvers. The drivers gave everything, overtaking on the grass, using the curbs, and lap by lap. It was a sprint from the first minute to the last hour. And in this case, yeah, we have a damaged driveshaft.” At the 16-hour mark, Lucas Auer had been at the wheel of the No. 3 Mercedes while Philipp Schiller was closing on behalf of the No. 80, having trimmed the gap to under 16 seconds. The race was, at various points, closer than it looked on paper. The DNF is the kind of outcome that makes the Nürburgring 24 Hours what it is. Victory is never guaranteed in endurance racing, and even less so over 24 hours on a circuit as unpredictable as this one — technical failures and accidents are routine, especially when navigating slower traffic through the night. Verstappen’s team did almost everything right on debut. The Nordschleife just refused to cooperate at the worst possible moment. “We tried to bring both cars home, and after such a nice race, such a good performance from the team—after having the team I think from the first hour onwards in between 10 to maximum 20 seconds all the way. It was very much exciting, but also not easy to manage. “So now three hours to go, and we cross fingers for car number 80, and hope we can do it with this car.” The No. 80 Mercedes inherited the lead and the team’s hopes for the win. Given what the No. 3 crew put together over the previous 21 hours, that’s probably the right attitude – though it’s a long way from the result they deserved.The Sister Car Is Still Running, but the No. 3 Was Doing the Heavy Lifting