One week on from a historic hatrick for Scuderia Ferrari at Le Mans, Porsche and co. look to defend their glory on home soil. It’s the one and only 24 Hours of the Nurburgring, and it promises to be a brilliant one at that. But who will be victorious in the most unpredictable race of the year?

Throughout the opening minutes of the sixteenth hour the focus was all on the disruption casued by the #169’s huge accident another accident occured, this time for the eighth placed Cup 2 Porsche #912 of KKramer Racing which ended up in the barriers as Thomas Preining took over driving duties of the #911 Porsche. The leading order remained mostly the same, with the addition that there were now only five cars on the lead lap, the #65 having been lapped while in the lead of the Pro/Am SP9 subclass.

And though Grello was running around at the front as it had since the red flag restart, the gap was closing fast. The #45 Realize Kondo Racing Ferrari was now only 30 seconds back and Kelvin Van Der Linde was also hunting down Thomas Preining, closing the gap between those cars to just one minute. This race was far from over, even if Manthey had been the most dominant car this far. Meanwhile Jusuf Owega continued setting competitive times in his Ford Mustang GT3 and soon found himself chasing down the #45 of Axcil Jefferies.

The race had been one to forget for Falken Motorsports, and now finally their day was done. Coming down the Dottine Hohe straight the race ended in an instant for the #44 as it with no warning lost drive, gearbox giving up the ghost until it pulled over with an air of finality. Meanwhile, the battle for third was raging between Ralf Aron’s #17 GetSpeed Mercedes and the #28 Abt Sportsline Lamborghini. And they weren’t the only team to be pegged back somewhat, as the #7 Konrad Motorsport Lamborghini fell foul of Code 60 speed limits and gained themselves a massive four minute stop and go penalty, before another Lamborghini found itself at the centre of controversy. Accelerating somewhat recklessly out of a slow zone Daniel Juncadella made contact with the #303 Hyundai, sending the SP3T class car into the barriers with contact that shattered the bodywork and race of the #303, the Green Hell’s latest victim.

And then came another huge accident involving the #300 Dacia and the #74 Walkenhorst Aston in SP10 at Flugplatz, both cars out in a cloud of dust and heavily damaging the barriers. For the Dacia team especially its a gutwrenching way to end their N24, having not finished the race in 3 long years. And then, the #17 GetSpeed Mercedes pulled into the pits and was taken into the garage, meaning that both factory Mercedes had now experienced unwanted visits to the garage and that realistically the purple Mercedes was now out of contention for the race win and a lap down on the leader. The #17 did get back out but by the end of its outlap the car was struggling yet again and pitted, virtually guaranteeing any chance of an overall victory was over.

Up front, the gap between the top two had been cut down to around 20 seconds between the #911 Porsche and the #98 ROW BMW, with the re-emerged #17 Mercedes running down in tenth and three laps down, Lucas Auer leading the six hour drive home to the chequered flag. Thomas Neubauer was driving his #45 as best he could from third overall, with Luca Engstler in fourth and impressively the Pro/Am Ford Mustang was still running in fifth place after a great race so far.

But it soon became apparent that Estre was losing time and losing time fast. The gap came down from twenty seconds to fourteen in just one lap thanks to the outrageous pace of Rafaelle Marciello, and for the first time since the restart Grello looked well and truly under threat as the gap closed to within thirteen seconds at one point. Closing out the hour, the off-strategy #45 was the first of the SP9 runners to change its brakes from fourth on the road.

So with Grello seemingly having lost its advantage with the ROW BMW picking up speed and closing that gap, just who will come out on top as we enter the last six hours of the N24?

thumbnail credit – Philipp Ganjon, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons