NÜRBURG, Germany -- Max Verstappen's dream of winning the Nürburgring 24 Hours is over after his car suffered a driveshaft issue with three hours of the race remaining.
The four-time world champion had set his sights on victory at the legendary Nordschleife, using spare weekends between F1 races to prepare for this weekend's daylong race at the 15.7-mile circuit.
The No. 3 Mercedes AMG GT3 was leading the race on Sunday morning when the problem forced Verstappen's teammate, Dani Juncadella, to make an unscheduled pit stop.
Juncadella initially received an ABS warning and attempted to keep the car on the track, but it soon became clear the issue was more serious.
The Verstappen Racing car, which was running in a Red Bull livery, returned to the pits with three hours and 20 minutes of the 24 hours remaining.
"Just after the pit stop Dani reported some noise from the rear right, and first of all we had an ABS failure, which leads us to assume an electric failure-something we could reset," Stefan Wendl, head of Mercedes-AMG customer racing, said.
"We tried to recover in two laps and left him out because it was not so much influencing the driving.
"But then he recognized more and more noise, vibrations, and suddenly had to slow down to save the car, and limped it to the pits. And here in the pits we saw that the whole rear axle had a major damage resulting from a driveshaft failure.
"It needs us to change the whole rear axle now which takes whatever, 45 minutes or an hour."
Juncadella initially stayed in the car as the team removed the right rear wheel and worked on the problem, but as the Mercedes plummeted down the order it became clear any hope of victory was long gone.
Up until the issue, Verstappen and his teammates Juncadella, Jules Gounon and Lucas Auer had been leading the race.
At the end of Verstappen's third stint just before the issue occurred, he had extended the lead to their nearest rival to over 30 seconds.
All of that lead, and more, was lost even before Juncadella could make it back to the pits, with car No. 80 -- a sister Mercedes AMG-GT3 run by Winward Racing -- passing him for first place on the run up to Steilstrecke.
The disappointing finish comes after a year of preparation for the 24 hours for Verstappen, in which the four-time world champion returned to the classroom to attain a special racing permit while dovetailing preparatory races with his packed F1 schedule.
His debut at the Nürburgring 24 Hours, which has been run on the fabled Nordschleife circuit since 1970, resulted in a sellout crowd and grabbed the attention of the motorsport world.
The vast majority of the race was dominated by an intense battle between the No. 3 and No. 80 car -- driven by Maro Engel, Luca Stolz, Fabian Schiller and Maxime Martin -- which went on to take the overall victory at the end of the 24 hours.
Inevitably, Verstappen's stints at the wheel on Saturday afternoon, in the middle of the night, and again on Sunday morning garnered the most interest.
The four-time champion did not disappoint: gaining or extending the lead every time he was at the wheel and pushing to the limit -- including a brush with the barriers early in his opening stint -- through day and night.
Verstappen was box office when on track
Verstappen's first stint behind the wheel came on Lap 8 when he took over from Juncadella, who had been given the responsibility of starting the race from fourth on the grid.
The Red Bull-liveried Mercedes dropped to 10th as a result of the pit stop, although it was running third among the cars to make stop on the same lap. The four-time champion wasted no time trying to make progress, latching onto the rear bumper of Christian Engelhart's Lamborghini, who had also made a pit stop, in ninth.
As he hounded the car in front, Verstappen received an early reminder of how unforgiving the Nordschleife can be. Tucked up behind Engelhart on the run toward the famous Pflanzgarten, Verstappen's heavily fueled Mercedes became unsettled, briefly lifting its two front wheels off the circuit and spitting the car towards the barriers.
With two wheels on the grass, Verstappen somehow avoided disaster and managed to avoid anything more than a brush with the barriers before regaining control and negotiating the next right-hand corner.
"I had a little moment but you have to keep yourself together and stay calm," he told TV reporters at the circuit after the stint.
Verstappen passed Engelhart as the cars embarked on their 11th lap of the Nordschleife, twice nudging the Lamborghini before making the move on the inside of Sabine Schmidt corner. The pass meant he was now seven seconds behind the only other car among the top SP9 class to have made a pit stop: the Manthey Porsche 911 of Thomas Preining.
As Verstappen set about reeling Preining in, he came across another Mercedes AMG GT3 of Jesse Krohn at the high-speed uphill run through Kesselchen. Verstappen slotted his car alongside the other Mercedes, but ran out of circuit on the right -- again dipping two wheels off the track as he remained flat out and took the position around the outside.
With rain in the air, Verstappen remained in the car for a second consecutive stint at the next pit stop at the end of Lap 15. He was still behind the Manthey Porsche, which had switched Preining for Ayhancan Guven, but with the help of traffic, yellow flags and slow zones, caught up with the 911 and passed Guven at Turn 1 of the Grand Prix circuit on Lap 17. That meant Verstappen was at the front of the group of cars on similar pit strategies, but third overall.
For two laps Verstappen pushed in the changing conditions, and he soon had the race leaders in sight. As the cars entered the long Dottinger Hohe straight, Verstappen saw his opportunity and lined up a double overtake on the No. 67 Ford Mustang and No. 34 Aston Martin Vantage as the cars caught traffic at Tiergarten corner.
Over the next four laps, Verstappen extended his overall lead to 23.5 seconds before handing over to teammate Gounon in the pits. In total during his first back-to-back stints, Verstappen completed 16 laps, gained three positions and built a lead of over 23 seconds. It was a marker in the sand, but with less than four hours on the clock of a 24-hour race, such a lead counted for next to nothing.
Just as Verstappen had cut through the field with a bit of help from slow zone and yellow flags over the past two stints, Gounon lost the lead within two laps of his first stint as the Nordschleife gods -- who can throw traffic, speed-limited zones and weather at any car they please -- turned against Car 3. But at no point up until the retirement was the Verstappen Racing car out of contention.
As pit stop strategies evened out and the race clock ticked into its fifth hour, Car 80 -- another Mercedes AMG GT3 that, like the Verstappen Racing entry, was being run by Winward Racing -- emerged as Car 3's closest rival. Ultimately, No. 80 would go on to win the 24 Hours, but at that stage the race was finally poised between the two.
Following an unscheduled pit stop for wet tires on Lap 36 -- a call that the No. 34 Aston Martin made one lap later, losing crucial time slithering around a soaked Nordschleife -- Car 3, now with Auer at the wheel, and Car 80 started to run in tandem. The newly formed Mercedes train would run long into the night, with the two AMG GT3s occasionally trading position as they ran nose to tail through sunset and into darkness.
Verstappen raced into the night
The battle between the sister cars seemed relatively friendly early on, with suggestions the two were working together under orders from Winward Racing to pull away from the field. But as the clock ticked toward 2 a.m. and the race closed in on its 12th hour, Verstappen took over the No. 3 car and the nature of the battle changed dramatically.
Despite it being his first ever experience of night racing, Verstappen was all over the back of Car 80, which was now being driven by the experienced Maro Engel, within a single lap. The ensuing battle lasted 20 minutes as Verstappen flashed his lights, looked to the inside at a couple of corners, but consistently had his advances blocked by the vastly more experienced Engel.
Then, on their 68th lap, Verstappen slipstreamed Engel on the long Dottinger Hohe straight and completed the pass by the time they reached the next braking point at Tiergarten. Initially, Verstappen pulled a multiple second lead and lit up the timing screen with fastest sector times, but Engel wasn't giving up and by the time they returned to the Dottinger Hohe, some eight minutes later, he was the one slipstreaming Verstappen.
Engel's passing attempt started from further back, which meant there was still plenty to do under braking for Tiergarten to make the move stick. As the two cars ran side by side at 165 mph, they were bearing down on the taillights of a couple of much slower cars from a lower category.
Engel had committed to the inside, but just as he got the nose of his Mercedes level with Verstappen's, the pair were on top of the backmarkers and the SP9 cars made contact as they slammed on the brakes. Engel had no choice but to bail out to the right and take to the grass on the inside of Tiergarten, while Verstappen split the two slower cars, retained the lead and disappeared back onto the pit straight and the relative safety of the modern Grand Prix circuit.
Engel handed the No. 80 over to his teammate Maxime Martin at the next pit stop, and by the time Verstappen's double stint came to an end at 4 a.m., the No. 3 Mercedes was 27 seconds clear. Once clear of Engel, and when the circuit conditions allowed during the night, Verstappen was regularly setting the fastest sector times of anyone all race, and when he handed over to Gounon before sunrise, the No. 3 car was the clear favorite for victory.
A cruel finish
Verstappen impressed again during his third double stint in the car, extending his team's lead, which had dropped back to six seconds when he jumped in the car for the final time, to over 30 seconds when he handed it to Juncadella.
It wasn't clear if he would return to the car for one final stint to take the chequered flag, but any such planning would have been entirely premature given what came next.
Verstappen had just spoken to TV crews about his final stint, in which he narrowly avoided a collision between two Porsche's on his in-lap, when it became clear something was amiss with the car on track.
The rest is now Nürburgring history.
Even with Sunday's disappointment, Verstappen's love for this form of motorsport is clear. And given the mismatch between his performance and result at his first attempt, it's impossible to think he won't return to the Nüburgring 24 Hours.
