It’s the return of the Green Hell’s showpiece event as Lamborghini lock out the front row for the first time, with Max Verstappen making the headlines before we’ve even begun. Can he cement his status as one of the true greats of our sport with a win here and break Mercedes’ longstanding curse that has stood now for a decade? It will certainly be no easy feat, as this year’s edition has attracted a record high of 41 SP9 entries all set to battle it out over the next 24 Hours.

The #3 Winward Mercedes of Joules Gounon leads at quarter distance ahead of the sister #80 of Fabian Schiller amid a truly wet track and now running on the same strategy thanks to a sudden shower forcing everyone to remove their wets.

Walkenhorst had held the lead but were caught out, losing 40 seconds as they ran the final lap of their stint as the only front runner on slick tyres and now sit fourth overall, nearly 3 minutes down on the leading Winward pair and behind the #81 M3 Touring of Connor Di Phillipi.

With Grello and the #64 out Porsche and Ford’s hopes now lay with the #24 Lionspeed GP Porsche of Ricardo Feller, Laurens Vanthoor and Laurin Heinrich down in 8th overall and nearly 2 minutes back from the leading #67 Ford of Dennis Olsen with Christian Krognes also running up toward the front.

Pitstops began again at roughly 7.30 local time with the Walkenhorst #34 making an early stop that saw Mattia Drudi get into the Aston Martin for the first time this race after Krognes’s triple stint. with Olsen holding the lead over the Winward Mercedes duo of Gounon in the #3 and Maxime Martin in the #80, with Sheldon Van Der Linde’s #1 BMW now being their best hope in fifth as the race finally settled down.

Porsche meanwhile saw to of its contenders move into the top 5 during the pitstops as Maximilian Paul climbed back into the #7 Lamborghini of Konrad Motorsport, with the Lionspeed #24 running 4th behind the #44 Falken Motorsport 911 GT3.R of Klaus Bachler before dropping to ninth and seventh after making their own stops.

Meanwhile the #80 Winward Mercedes was taken over by Fabian Schiller and was immediately thrust into battle with the #3 – still raced by Joules Gounon with the #81 M3 Touring of 2016 overall winner Connor Di Phillipi closing the gap from fifth position. Schiller meanwhile would move up to second behind the leading #34 Aston Martin of Mattia Drudi. Further back the #47 KCMG Mercedes was confirmed to have stayed in the pit following its earlier contact with the #16, and its chances of victory were all but over as the light began to fade.

Di Phillipi meanwhile found some strong pace and moved past both Gounon and Schiller to take second overall on the road, just 35 seconds back from Mattia Drudi’s race leading Aston Martin while further back the former race leading #130 Team Abt Lamborghini found the gravel trap and picked up a puncture with Nick Yelloly at the wheel, while Nico Menzel also made slight contact in his Dunlop Motorsport #17 with the #82 Porsche Cayman GT4 running in SP7 as the rain worsened which caused the #11 Mercedes of SR Motorsport to suffer identical consequences as Yelloly.

By now it was deemed bad enough with cars going off left, right and center that both Winward Mercedes were called in to switch to wet tyres and soon only the race leader was running on slick tyres. With the #67 having lost time by switching to wets one stint too early, Ford now had to find a way back into the overall battle, while the #34 had pitted for wets one lap too late and saw its lead shrink by 40 seconds before it finally pitted. After the 3 minute stop was Drudi emerged in 4th, just behind the #7 which took on some steering fluid during its stop.

The #34’s stop left the two Winward Mercedes cars to battle for the race lead, and indeed the #3 of Joules Gounon moved up ahead of the sister #80 of Fabian Schiller and also now running on the same strategy having pitted together to remove their slicks.

image credit: REZAG, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons