Max Verstappen’s clever trick at the 24h Nurburgring has amazed all the drivers.
Max Verstappen has been using a clever technique while racing at the Nurburgring Nordschleife that has surprised many top sportscar drivers. He started in endurance racing last year during a GT3 test event, where he raced under the fake name ‘Franz Hermann’. Verstappen earned an FIA Platinum racing license to compete at the Nordschleife and even won his first GT3 race there in September.
In March, he returned to the Nordschleife, driving the #3 Mercedes-AMG GT3 with his teammates Daniel Juncadella and Jules Gounon in the Nurburgring Langstrecken-Serie (NLS). They crossed the finish line first but were disqualified for using too many sets of tyres.
All this experience led up to the big 24 Hours of Nurburgring race. Verstappen and his team qualified fourth in the top SP 9 Pro class on Friday. The race started at 3pm local time on Saturday, with Verstappen taking the first stint in the #3 car.
Markus Winkelhock, another driver in the race, shared how some drivers were amazed at the way Verstappen handles one of the Nordschleife’s famous corners. Flugplatz, turn nine, is a fast left-hander taken almost at full speed, with the track going uphill before the corner.
Winkelhock told PlanetF1 that there’s a common way sportscar drivers take this turn. He said Verstappen picked up this technique faster than most. “F1 drivers aren’t used to the big speed differences in traffic here,” he explained. “There are around 160 to 180 cars on track, and sometimes the speed difference can be 80 km/h or more. Managing this traffic well can gain or lose a lot of time.”
He added, “At Flugplatz, the worst thing is to get stuck behind a slow car and then try to accelerate. It’s smarter to slow down a bit, create a gap, and then use the extra speed on the exit to overtake. Many drivers without experience just get stuck and lose time. Max knows how to keep the flow through the traffic perfectly. I watched his onboard footage from his second race, especially when he followed Christopher Haase’s Audi – it was amazing to see how much experience he has. Truly awesome.”
Besides Verstappen and Winkelhock, Timo Glock is the only other current or former F1 driver racing at this year’s 24 Hours of Nurburgring. Glock raced for Toyota and Virgin in F1 from 2008 to 2012 and is driving the #69 McLaren 720S in the SP 9 Pro class.
Christopher Haase, who was Verstappen’s closest rival in the NLS race, is also competing. The #1 BMW team, featuring last year’s winners Augusto Farfus, Raffaele Marciello, Kelvin van der Linde, and Jordan Pepper, are among the top favorites to win again this year.