This year’s Nürburgring 24 Hours delivered the goods: a record 280,000-strong crowd, 30-degree heat, and 140 cars. Throw in an electrical outage, a penalty, and many crashes into that mix, and you end up with a spectacular 24 hours of racing that ended with a BMW M4 on the top step of the podium.
The 4pm kick-off saw plenty of teams proceed with caution to avoid cooking their engines, particularly those in the lower classes. Underdogs Ollis Garage Racing and their hearty Dacia Logan stalled at the start, ending up in the pits after being cheered on by a lively crowd. You love to see it.
After just two hours, the race was halted due to said outage at the pit building. That meant no comms were available between drivers and their teams, and come nightfall, no lights anywhere along the track, either. We suspect someone got a major telling-off after that.
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Anyway, the rogue fuse was found and fixed after another three hours, and racing resumed with the 911 GT3 R of Manthey Racing in the lead, followed closely by Falken Racing’s 911. Behind them were various Aston Martin Vantages, Ford Mustangs, Lamborghini Huracans, and Mercedes-AMG GTs.
There was a lone Ferrari 296 GTB nestled among the chasing pack, as well as the M4 of Rowe Racing. The latter started the race in 17th position after missing out on the final qualifying session, but managed to gain ground superbly. The Dacia also got back out onto the track at this point. That thing just doesn’t give up, does it?
Dusk approached, and disaster struck for Team Falken. With a gap of around 10sec to Manthey, their #33 GT3 R had a head-on collision with a GT3 Cup at the Mercedes-Arena curves, having been tapped by an old 3-Series. Mercifully, no serious injuries were reported.
It was game over for Falken’s lead car, and much-needed breathing space for Manthey, who stayed strong throughout the night shift and looked certain to cross the checkered flag as the winner. The Nürburgring, it seemed, had other ideas.
The heatwave picked back up as the cars headed into the afternoon stint, and ’Ring legend Kevin Estre was at the wheel for Manthey. As he wolfed down a backmarker Vantage, he dove onto the grass to pass and made contact, sending the Vantage into a flip. Officials deemed it a punishable offence, slapping a 100sec penalty on Manthey and Estre with only a few hours of racing to go.
The Rowe BMW garage went into a frenzy: They’d been making ground and staying consistent with their laps, eventually crossing the line a few seconds behind Manthey. But with the penalty attached, they’d won by a fair margin. Impressive, considering most BMW customer teams chose to rest their cars for the forthcoming Spa 24 Hours, so Rowe fielded the only M4 this year.
It means BMW has now wrestled bragging rights back from Audi, after it won the shortest-ever N24 last year. It’s also BMW’s first win at the event in five years, when Rowe claimed victory in 2020 with an M6 GT3.
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
