Max Verstappen has to beat the toughest grid of drivers outside of Formula 1 that he's ever faced if he's to win on debut at the Nurburgring 24 Hours this weekend.
There's no reason why Verstappen and his #3 Team Verstappen stablemates (Lucas Auer, Jules Gounon, Daniel Juncadella) won't be among the victory contenders on the Nordschleife.
Verstappen and Auer were on course for victory in the final pre-Nurburgring 24 Hours NLS (Nurburgring Langstrecken-Serie) race last month before a splitter failure left them several laps down.
And Verstappen's been on a frontrunning pace ever since his Nurburgring venture began last year - something that's continued through qualifying so far.
The likes of ex-F1 driver and Nurburgring 24 Hours second-timer Timo Glock have told The Race, “I will put my money on Max” when asked for a winner prediction.
Watch the rest of Nurburgring 24 Hours qualifying live on The Race YouTube channel on Friday and get Josh's updates from the paddock in The Race Members' Club
But victory this weekend will still be incredibly difficult, even with three top-quality team-mates sharing the #3 Team Verstappen Mercedes AMG with him.
That's because there's a whole host of star-studded driver line-ups in the top ‘SP9' (GT3) class, which makes up 41 of the 161 cars entered in the race.
We've picked out the likely biggest rivals that the #3 Team Verstappen entry will have to beat - as well as all the obstacles a 24-hour race throws up.
The sister Mercedes
It might not have won since 2016, but the Mercedes has been earmarked by many as the biggest improver on the Nurburgring for 2026 - and it's exactly why Verstappen chose it, having raced the Ferrari in 2025 and tested other cars.
The #80 Mercedes (the sister car to the Winward Racing-run Verstappen entry) stands out among the other Mercedes cars.
That line-up has veterans including Maro Engel and Maxime Martin as well as emerging GT talent such as Fabian Schiller.
Engel was part of the last Mercedes line-up to win back in 2016 and has secured three pole positions at the Nurburgring 24 Hours.
And he won the Bathurst 12 Hour earlier this year in a Mercedes he shared with Martin. That was the first round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge that also encompasses the Nurburgring event.
The #80 Mercedes also started the event on the best foot with Schiller posting the fastest time of Thursday qualifying.
The defending champions
There's a strong contingent of BMWs, the most successful manufacturer in this race's 55-year history.
They're headlined by the 2025 Nurburgring 24 Hours winning #1 Rowe Racing entry, with the returning Raffaele Marciello, Kelvin van der Linde and Augusto Farfus, now joined by Jordan Pepper.
Winning consecutive Nurburgring 24 Hours events is tricky though, no team has done so since the Manthey Porsche in 2008-09, and the competition level has grown since then.
But the #1 BMW has as strong a chance as any returning winner. It's already shown strong pace, having secured an early place in top qualifying back in the Nurburgring 24 Hours Qualifiers last month. Plus it was second-fastest in qualifying on Thursday.
The sister #99 Rowe racing BMW shouldn't be ruled out either with Dries Vanthoor (two-time winner with Audi) and Sheldon van der Linde among its drivers.
And you can't rule out the #77 Schubert Motorsport with Marco Wittmann, Philipp Eng, Charles Weerts and Robin Frijns, Nurburgring 24 Hours winner with Audi in 2022, at the wheel.
The Porsche hungry for revenge
Porsche has the benefit of one of its 911s being run by Nurburgring 24 Hours' joint-most successful team, Manthey Racing, with its unmissably iconic ‘Grello' (a beautifully garish yellow) Porsche that finished third in the last Nurburgring qualifier race.
The line-up, which comprises 2021 winner Kevin Estre, potential future Porsche Formula E driver Ayhancan Guven and 2023 DTM champion Thomas Preining, has some unfinished business with the Nurburgring 24 Hours.
They finished runner-up in 2024 and took the chequered flag first in 2025, only to lose it to the BMW because of a 100-second time penalty for Estre colliding with the #179 Aston Martin.
Verstappen's sparring partner
No driver has engaged Verstappen in such high-quality wheel-to-wheel combat as Christopher Haase in the #16 Audi - remember Audi, unlike the likes of Mercedes, BMW and Porsche, no longer offers factory support.
Haase has routinely scrapped with Verstappen during his initial Nurburgring races and proved to be a good match for the four-time F1 world champion.
Haase is joined by a pair of Brits, 2020 winner with BMW, Alexander Sims, and GT regular Ben Green, and they'll be hoping to make it eight Audi victories in the last 15 Nurburgring 24 Hours.
A surprise winner?
There's every chance we haven't named the actual 2026 Nurburgring 24 Hours winner in this feature. So we're going to quickly name-drop the #84 Red Bull-backed Team Abt Lamborghini entry that includes Italian veteran Mirko Bortolotti, and the sister #14 entry (Marco Mapelli, Nicky Catsburg and Nicholas Yelloly).
Ultimately, any 24-hour race is unpredictable, but the Nurburgring 24 Hours is something else.
Such a long circuit means all four seasons can unfold at any one point - and there are unusual weather variables like fog (which has red-flagged large portions of races before) in play too.
There are no safety cars on the Nurburgring either - it's down to the drivers to respect yellow flags, or they'll be handed a stern penalty - so if you have a problem and lose time, there's no hope of a safety car recovering it for you.
Traffic with 161 cars and a huge performance differential (there are three minutes per lap between the fastest and slowest cars) makes it an even harder, slower car negotiating challenge than the Le Mans or Daytona 24 Hours.
So Team Verstappen is the pre-race favourite for good reason. But it faces some stiff competition from all of the above - and the inevitable surprise package that fancies a bit of giantkilling.
from The Race https://ift.tt/QhcCJaL
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