Mercedes-AMG won the 2026 Nurburgring 24 Hours on Sunday afternoon after the #80 Winward-prepared car driven by Maro Engel, Luca Stolz, Fabian Schiller and Maxime Martin completed 156 laps of the Nordschleife to clinch the marque's latest classic endurance scalp.
Engel and crew crossed the line 46.311 seconds ahead of the #84 Abt-Lamborghini of Mirko Bortolotti, Luca Engstler and Nicolas Niederhauser, with the Walkenhorst-Aston Martin Vantage of Mads Krognes, Mattia Drudi, Nicki Thiim and Augusto Farfus Fernandez Laser completing the podium two minutes and 28 seconds adrift.
The ROWE-BMW M4 GT3 of Dan Harper, Maximilian Hesse, Sheldon van der Linde and Dries Vanthoor banked fourth, while the privately built BMW M3 Touring 24h — originally floated as an April Fools' joke before being rolled into full programme — sealed a remarkable fifth overall in the hands of Jens Klingmann, Beitske de Wilde, Connor de Phillippi and Sebastian Verhagen.
The headline storyline, however, belonged to Max Verstappen. The four-time Formula 1 world champion, making his long-awaited Nurburgring 24 debut alongside Chris Lulham, Christopher Mies and Jules Gounon in the second Winward Mercedes-AMG, had led inside the final quarter of the race before a driveshaft failure dropped the #3 car out of contention. The car eventually crawled home 37th, 21 laps behind the sister entry, after completing only 135 laps.
Verstappen had spent the night trading the overall lead with the #80 sister car and the leading BMW and Porsche entries, drawing widespread praise from regulars in the Eifel paddock for his Nordschleife pace at night and in the rain. Race winner Engel acknowledged the cruel turn afterwards, conceding that Verstappen "would have deserved the victory" on outright pace before mechanical fate intervened.
Manthey-EMA's "Grello" Porsche, one of the pre-race favourites in the GT3 Pro field, was eliminated in a crash earlier in the night, and the defending winners from ROWE-BMW couldn't drag themselves higher than fourth in a race that punished any deviation from a clean lap on the 25-kilometre layout.
For Verstappen, the result is bittersweet rather than disastrous. He arrived at the Nordschleife describing the event as "one of the biggest races of the year" and leaves it with the respect of the German GT3 community fully earned, even if the trophy slipped through team Verstappen Racing's fingers in the last three hours. The signs from the Eifel suggest he will be back — and that this 24-hour itch is no longer scratched.
Attention now switches back to GT3's European leg with the Spa 24 Hours later in the season, where Engel, Stolz and Schiller will lead Mercedes-AMG's defence of crown jewel after a Nurburgring weekend that delivered everything from rain and red flags to a near-miracle finish for an April Fools' day BMW.
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