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? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The big news was that of the #911’s penalty, which gave a huge advantage to the rival #98 ROWE BMW. The moment of truth would have to wait as the Guven would return to the track without serving his penalty – something he was legally allowed to do – with the hope of a successful appeal from the team. Either way, Grello led Rafaelle Marciello by just under 10 seconds with under 3 hours left. There was still much of this script yet to be written, it seemed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taking a brief overview of the top ten runners in SP9, Grello leads from the #98 with the #28 Abt Lamborghini still running third, with the Pro\/Am Ford Mustang GT3 incredibly sitting less than fifteen seconds ahead of fourth place ahead of Dinamic GT’s #54 entry. Sixth is the second Abt Lamborgini, the delayed #27 that was involved in controversy early this morning while seventh is the PROSport Aston Martin, that’s been a great effort from the #37 crew. Completing the top ten is the all Austrian Eastalent Racing #84 of Simon Reicher, with the Konrad Motorsport #7 Lamborghini holding ninth and the top ten rounded out by Hankook Competition’s #55 Porsche with Marco Holzer at the wheel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With just two hours left, Manthey and ROWE were pushing each other so hard that only the top three cars were still on the lead lap, with the third placed #28 Lamborghini over five minutes back from Marciello and Ayhancan Guven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, sitting third in SP7 was the #77 of BSL Racing Team was trundling slowly round and its podium was now threatened in the last two hours of the race, losing a wheel on the Nordschleife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then SP9 Pro saw its next casualty, namely the #27 Lamborghini that had already been delayed. With just an hour and forty minutes remaining the Red Bull Abt #27 pulled into the garage with a broken gearbox, eventually opting to retire with just over an hour remaining. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Grello camp it soon became apparent their strategy to win the race was to deliberately not take the penalty, and gamble on finishing at least 1 minute and 40 seconds ahead of the ROWE BMW so as to lose the least amount of time and win on the track. And the #11 SR Racing had fought its way from almost dead last to thirteenth overall in what’s been one of the great comeback stories of this edition of the N24.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rest of the penultimate hour so virtually no changes or anything of note occurring, aside from the lead battle it’s been a relatively quiet Sunday after the initial wave of attrition at sunrise. But heading into the last hour the top ten ran as they had for few hours now, save for pit cycles. Either way, it was Grello in prime position to take the win on track with the ROWE #98 running a close second and in fact just under two seconds behind. When the final pit stops were run, half an hour was left and with both cars running fresh tyres it was Estre versus Marciello to win on track. The gap was just 8 seconds, and with an estimated four or five laps remaining it was still do-able for the BMW. Meanwhile in the pitlane after a longer stop than planned was Marko Mapelli’s #28 Lamborghini, leaving Bastian Buus’s #54 Dinamic GT Porsche now taking over third place. The HRT Ford #65 of Dennis Fetzer now ran in fourth place as the leading Pro\/Am car with the Lamborghini’s slow stop dropping to two places down the order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With 2 minutes left on the clock the decision finally came through: The Manthey #911’s appeal was rejected, the penalty would stand and though they’d take the win on the road it would be the only BMW car in the field to win. And so that means that after an excellent drive throughout the entire race it would be the ROWE #98 BMW of Jesse Krohn, Augusto Farfus, Rafaelle Marciello and Kelvin Van Der Linde to win the 2025 24 Hours of Nurburgring! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A fantastic race, and the third major victory of the year for the new BMW M4 GT3 Evo, having already taken victories at the 24 Hours of Dubai and the Bathurst 12 Hours the German marque take another huge win for their car. It’s a first major 24 hour win for both Jesse Krohn and Kelvin Van Der Linde’s third victory in this great race. Rafaelle Marciello also takes his second overall victory in a 24 Hour race and adds this to his burgeoning CV in GT races, while Augusto Farfus wins again, fifteen years after he first did so. Hard luck to the #911 Grello crew, but ultimately I think its the fairest decision that could’ve been made, and I’m glad it was made before the chequered flag fell. And for ROWE its their first victory in 5 long years at this race. And the overall podium was completed by Dinamic GT’s #54 Porsche of Bastian Buus, Matteo Cairoli, Loek Hartog and Joel Sturm after an excellent drive in which they profited from the intense attrition of this race. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overall, this one will definitely go into the ‘slow burner’ category, but nevetheless it’s nice to have night running again at the Ring, and spare the red flag yesterday we ran completely green all the way through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that’s two down, just the 24 Hours of Spa to go to complete my blogging challenge of covering every single one of the 72 Hours of June. I’ll see you then!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thomas<\/p>\n\n\n\n