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.

Winward – you guessed it – continue to lead 1-2 at half distance with on signs of slowing down, as further back more SP9 contenders have their races ended. There’s been relatively little change in the peckinging order, with the #34, #99 and #81 still cementing their position in the top five

At the top of the hour as Winward led 1-2 as they had for hours by this point the next SP9 casualty occurred, as the #39 ProSport Aston Martin went into the garage with significant damage to the rear bodywork, losing considerable time, and moments later the #17 Dunlop Racing team stopped on track at Bergwerk with Alessio Picarello losing the rear after contact at high speed and colliding with the barriers, wrecking his Porsche 911 GT3.R that had been running seventh overall and working its way up the order. There would be no recovering the chassis, as the night claimed yet another SP9 victim.

It meant that Porsche’s challenge took another hit, and now the best placed Stuttgart-backed cars were N24 debutant and 2024 British Touring Car Champion Jake Hill’s #18 and the remaining Dinamic GT #55 machine of Michele Beretta as the next round of pitstops were made. Both Mercedes pit again, with Daniel Juncadella handing over the #3 to Max Verstappen for his first night stint. Maro Engel was installed in place of Luca Stolz in the #80, running ahead of the Dutchman as they exited the pits and that’s how they would stay, following the trend set earlier, though the two would swap around halfway through the stint.

But approaching Tiergarten working another lap, the custom was broken as Verstappen and Engel ran side by side and contact was made as they jostled for position with traffic blocking any clear path up towards the GP-Strecke. It forced Engel to make without a doubt the save of the race, as he skipped over the grass and lost time, but crucially pulled off a brilliant piece of driving to keep his #80 mostly unscathed and still in the race.

Meanwhile further down the order, Patric Neiderhauser had driven the #84 back up to sixth overall, with Lionspeed’s #24 running directly behind it and making up time. The #34 Walkenhorst Aston Martin and ROWE BMW’s #99 still traded third and fourth seemingly locked together with Christian Krognes and Sheldon Van Der Linde behind the wheel respectively, before the #81 closed up and inserted itself into the fight for the last podium spot.

Further back, there was another SP9 casualty, and it was yet more heartbreak for Lamborghini, with the #7 Konrad Motorsports Huracan GT3 Evo II of Pavel Leftorov lost the rear, hitting the barriers on the Nordscleife and hard enough for it to limp to a stop, it’s day done. Lamborghini’s hopes now rested with the pole-sitting #84 that ran seventh at the time of Leftorov’s incident as more pit stops commenced.

Behind, the battle for eighth overall had closed up with Mikael Grenier’s Team Bilstein Mercedes #26 just 1.5 seconds back from Dennis Olsen’s #67 with the #54 Dinamic GT Porsche also in the fray.

Just before the end of the hour both Winward Mercedes cars pitted again, with Verstappen staying aboard the #3 and Maxime Martin climbing aboard the #80, both cars running line astern.

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