Max Verstappen’s weekend hasn’t been about parc fermé debates, tyre offsets or the usual 2026 F1 noise. Instead, halfway through the Nürburgring 24 Hours, he’s doing what endurance racing demands: managing chaos, traffic and a rival who wasn’t interested in playing nice.
At the 12-hour mark on the Nordschleife, Verstappen sat on top of the order in the #3 Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3, sharing the car with Lucas Auer, Jules Gounon and Daniel Juncadella. The lead wasn’t comfortable — it was earned the hard way, in an elbows-out scrap with Maro Engel in the sister #80 Winward Mercedes that set the tone for a night where nothing comes for free around here.
The timing screens showed Verstappen’s crew leading on Lap 75, with Engel’s #80 just 5.175s back. Behind them, the #34 Walkenhorst Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 EVO (Christian Krognes, Mattia Drudi, Nicki Thiim and Felipe Fernandez Laser) was the only other car still on the same lap, a reminder of how quickly the Nürburgring can stretch a field even before the attrition really bites.
ROWE Racing’s #99 BMW M4 GT3 EVO (Daniel Harper, Max Hesse, Sheldon van der Linde and Dries Vanthoor) was fourth, but already 2m38s adrift at halfway. After that, the gaps had the familiar Ring look to them: long, ugly and mostly beyond the reach of strategy alone. BMW’s #81 M Motorsport entry — the BMW M3 Touring 24h driven by Jens Klingmann, Ugo de Wilde, Connor De Phillippi and Neil Verhagen — completed the top five, just under three minutes off the lead.
If you wanted a snapshot of how competitive the front of this race has become, the top 10 did it nicely. Red Bull Team ABT’s #84 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 (Luca Engstler, Mirko Bortolotti and Patric Niederhauser) ran sixth, a little over four minutes down. Two Porsches from Lionspeed GP and Dinamic GT SRL followed, with HRT Ford Racing’s #67 Mustang GT3 EVO (2026) inside the top eight — Dennis Olsen, Christopher Mies, Frederic Vervisch and Frank Stippler keeping the blue oval in the fight.
But the headline, inevitably, is Verstappen. Not because he’s an F1 champion moonlighting — that novelty wore off years ago — but because of how quickly he’s looked at home in the particular brand of mayhem the Nordschleife serves up in the dark. This isn’t about laying down a single heroic lap and trending for 20 minutes. It’s about placing the car in the right part of the road when you’re threading GT3 pace through slower traffic, lap after lap, while keeping the tyres and brakes alive. It’s about knowing when to lean on someone and when to bank the time for later.
The fight with Engel had the familiar feel of two drivers who trust their own judgement more than they fear the consequences — and on this track, that’s always a thin line. Engel is one of the last people you’d expect to blink in a GT3 Mercedes, and Verstappen clearly didn’t turn up to circulate politely. Winward having both cars first and second tells its own story, too: it’s one thing to be quick here, another to keep two cars clean enough to control the race at halfway.
There was still a long way to go, of course. The Nürburgring 24 Hours doesn’t do foregone conclusions, and being “on Lap 75” at midnight-ish is the kind of detail that can look irrelevant once the circuit starts collecting victims. The order behind the leaders already hinted at how fragile everything is: plenty of strong line-ups not far down the list but down on laps, and big-name entries scattered through the timing like they’d simply been swallowed by the place.
As things stood at 12 hours, the top 10 read:
1. #3 Winward Racing – Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Verstappen/Auer/Gounon/Juncadella) — Lap 75
2. #80 Winward Racing – Mercedes-AMG GT3 (Engel/Stolz/Schiller/Martin) +5.175
3. #34 Walkenhorst Motorsport – Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 EVO (Krognes/Drudi/Thiim/Fernandez Laser) — Lap 74
4. #99 ROWE Racing – BMW M4 GT3 EVO (Harper/Hesse/S. van der Linde/Vanthoor) +2:38.237
5. #81 BMW M Motorsport – BMW M3 Touring 24h (Klingmann/de Wilde/De Phillippi/Verhagen) +2:48.973
6. #84 Red Bull Team ABT – Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 (Engstler/Bortolotti/Niederhauser) +4:21.341
7. #24 Lionspeed GP – Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) Evo26 (Heinrich/L. Vanthoor/Feller) +4:33.215
8. #67 HRT Ford Racing – Ford Mustang GT3 EVO (2026) (Olsen/Mies/Vervisch/Stippler) +5:03.749
9. #54 Dinamic GT SRL – Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) Evo26 (Buus/Christensen/Sturm/Hartog) +5:12.901
10. #48 LOSCH MOTORSPORT by Black Falcon – Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) Evo26 (Arrow/Assenheimer/Muller/Pereira) +5:51.924
From here, it becomes less about who’s fastest and more about who stays out of trouble. The Nordschleife rewards pace, but it crowns the crews who can keep the rhythm when the track turns greasy, the traffic gets thick and the night asks for just one more lap, again and again.
At halfway, Verstappen and Winward had put themselves in the best possible place. The only problem with leading the Nürburgring 24 Hours is that the Nürburgring still has 12 hours left.
