Timo Glock will roll out at this weekend’s Nürburgring 24 Hours with a look that’s designed to hit German motorsport fans right in the memory bank: a Michael Schumacher-inspired livery that echoes the unmistakable Bitburger-backed Benetton B195 from 1995.
It’s not the sort of nostalgia wrap that gets thrown together for social media engagement, either. Glock’s McLaren 720S GT3 — the only McLaren in the top SP9 category — is the centrepiece of a wider tribute put together by Dörr Motorsport and sponsor Bembel With Care, in collaboration with the Keep Fighting Foundation. The foundation’s branding will appear not just on the car but also on Glock’s race overalls, while the crew have leaned into the theme with period-style protective suits reminiscent of Benetton’s mid-90s pit kit.
Glock, who spent the bulk of his Formula 1 career racing for Toyota, is one of three F1 Grand Prix starters on the Nordschleife entry list this year, alongside Markus Winkelhock and four-time world champion Max Verstappen. Verstappen is also in SP9, racing a Team Winward Mercedes-AMG GT3 — meaning the headline names from single-seaters aren’t tucked away in the margins; they’ll be in the thick of the fight where it matters.
For Glock, the story behind the livery is almost as important as the tribute itself. Speaking at the Nürburgring on Thursday, he explained it began as a simple idea between friends — and then gathered momentum quickly once Bitburger’s return to motorsport became part of the plan.
“The guy who runs the company [Bembel With Care], let’s say, is a very good friend of mine, and we had this idea to say we need to do something for the 24 hours race,” Glock said.
“They work together now with Bitburger, the beer brand. Bitburger was sponsoring [Benetton] in 1995 and haven’t been involved in motorsport for 25 years and we said, we need to bring them back.
“The only way was with the livery from 1995 and that’s actually how the whole story started, and how the [racing] project started in December last year.”
The Nürburgring 24 Hours has always thrived on these kinds of projects — serious attempts wrapped in emotion, history and a bit of theatre — but this one has a particular weight to it. Schumacher remains the central reference point for modern German racing culture, and any public-facing association with the Keep Fighting Foundation carries a significance that extends beyond the track.
It also helps that the execution looks spot-on. The colours and branding are instantly recognisable, and the car’s presence alongside the original Benetton in promotional imagery has only sharpened the intended connection: two eras, one visual language, and a nod to a driver who shaped both F1 and Germany’s broader motorsport identity.
On the competitive side, though, Glock isn’t pretending this is a fairy-tale tilt at the overall win. The programme has come together at speed, and their preparation has been compromised. Running in the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie qualifying races was limited — first by a tragic accident in the opening event, then by technical trouble in the second — leaving Dörr’s McLaren effort short on meaningful Nordschleife mileage.
That lack of track time is the sort of thing teams can usually hide behind guarded quotes and vague optimism. Glock went the other way, smiling as he laid out the reality of arriving at the world’s most unforgiving circuit with plenty of unknowns still on the table.
“We have no experience with the car on the Nordschleife. We just put a setup we think we’ll like and think, ‘This is okay’!” he laughed. “It felt all right this morning! It felt not too bad.
“Of course, we don’t have a chance against the top teams. That’s pretty clear.
“I think that the biggest target for us is like to finish the race without any problems, without any technical problems or penalties. That’s the main thing we need to do. Then we see where we end up. If we could manage to be in the top 10, that would be massive.”
That’s the Nürburgring 24 Hours in a nutshell: the romance is free, but the result is always earned. A tribute livery can turn heads in the paddock and flood timelines on Friday. On Saturday night, it still has to survive the traffic, the weather swings, the code-60s, the kerbs, the fatigue, and the relentless arithmetic of keeping a GT3 alive for a full day around the Nordschleife.
If Glock and Dörr can get that Bitburger-inspired McLaren to Sunday in one piece — with the Keep Fighting logo still cleanly visible on the bodywork and the mechanics still smiling in those old-school suits — it’ll feel like more than a branding exercise. It’ll feel like the kind of motorsport story the Nürburgring was built to stage.
