Verstappen blitzes the Nordschleife on GT3 debut — and the 24h talk just got real
Max Verstappen picked the Green Hell for his first proper GT3 run. Then he did what Max usually does: he won.
Sharing the #31 Ferrari 296 GT3 with Brit Chris Lulham in round nine of the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie, Verstappen opened with a two-hour stint that stretched the field until the stopwatch looked a little embarrassed. The lead peaked at 62 seconds before Lulham brought it home, the final margin trimmed to 20 seconds after four hours. Not a bad way to meet the Nordschleife.
Yes, that was a Red Bull F1 driver in a Ferrari GT car. No, it didn’t seem to bother him.
“Of course I would love to compete in the 24-hour race,” Verstappen said afterwards, keeping the ambitions realistic. “Whether that happens next year or later, we still need more experience for that. Hopefully we can compete in more races next year.”
The lap times made people sit up. Verstappen’s best was a 7:51.514 — within two seconds of the NLS GT3 lap record (7:49.578) — and it came in traffic and far-from-perfect conditions. Dutch racer and endurance veteran Jeroen Bleekemolen didn’t need much convincing.
“If he is going to drive the 24 hours, that will be nice,” he told RacingNews365. “He was one minute ahead after two hours of racing. Do the math, and you’re one and a half laps ahead of a 24-hour race. That’s how good he was!”
Bleekemolen went deeper on the detail: Verstappen was repeatedly under eight minutes through traffic; he was peeling three, four, sometimes five seconds a lap from proper Nordschleife hitters like Frank Stippler and Christian Krognes. “It was just bizarre. Verstappen was faster than the rest, better than the rest.”
Five-time Nürburgring 24 Hours winner Timo Bernhard — not a man prone to hype — sounded moved, even from afar. During the weekend’s 6 Hours of Fuji broadcast he tipped the cap to an F1 champion who actually wants to sample the other stuff.
“Hats off to Max Verstappen to tackle the Nordschleife,” Bernhard said. “Endurance racing has so much to offer… Nordschleife is something special, and he really honours the place. I like that.”
There’s a practical angle to all this. The 2025 Nürburgring 24 Hours is pencilled in for May, slotted between Formula 1’s Miami and Canadian Grands Prix on the calendar. It’s tight, but not impossible, and Verstappen’s line about “more experience” is the tell. To seriously chase the 24, you need reps on the Nordschleife in traffic, a nailed setup for night running, and a crew that won’t blink at 3 a.m. in drizzle. The speed is there; the tooling-up starts now.
The pairing with Lulham worked. Verstappen did the heavy lifting early and built the cushion; Lulham closed it efficiently to seal the trophy. But the 24 is a different animal entirely — bigger roster, factory depth, strategy pressure, and 35 GT3s all thinking the same podium thoughts. That’s why Bleekemolen’s “do the math” line landed so hard. Over four hours, Verstappen had time in hand. Over 24, that advantage only counts if you avoid the Nordschleife’s many traps and share a car with three other drivers who can match the beat.
Still, for a debut, it was a statement. The lap time, the traffic management, the discipline. And the sight of the reigning F1 World Champion carving up Hatzenbach in a Ferrari GT3? That’ll travel.
If he comes back for the big one, people will circle the date. And if he doesn’t, Sunday was a reminder of why the sport keeps asking more of him: different car, different discipline, same story — the stopwatch tells it better than anyone.
