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.

As the final quarter of the race began, another round of pitstops rolled around in the heightening fight for third overall between the ROWE #99 BMW of Max Hesse and what was now Mattia Drudi’s #34 Walkenhorst Aston Martin, with the leading Winward pair of Max Verstappen’s #3 and Luca Stolz’s #80 sitting at roughly eight seconds.

Drudi’s fight for third took a huge hit as the #34 Walkenhorst crew were handed a damaging 32 second stop and go penalty, which it would need to serve before the end of the race. It was the lucky break the #99 ROWE needed, seeing it take a potentially decisive chunk of time out of the Aston, with Verhagen only six seconds up the road from the #81 but soon dropping back to around a minute from the overall podium.

But all were losing out to the #84 of Neiderhauser, who stormed up into p3 and was now just over 5 minutes back from the overall lead, with a good margin back to Verhagen’s #81 and Drudi’s #34, with ROWE too having dropped back. The gap separating the #3 and the #80 was now up to 25 seconds, and thats how things would remain.