Nurburgring 24 Hours: Everything you need to know about the world’s most chaotic endurance race

The Nurburgring 24 Hours is motorsport at its most unforgiving, defined less by order and more by controlled chaos on the Nordschleife.

A flat-out fight for survival and supremacy, the race is run on the fearsome 25.3km Nurburgring Nordschleife with elite factory professionals taking on ambitious amateurs.

Nurburgring 24 Hours: The world’s most chaotic endurance race

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For 24 hours, speed is only part of the battle in an event that is as much an endurance race as it is a rolling traffic jam on the most unforgiving circuit in the world.

An endurance race for touring cars and GT machines, the Nurburgring 24 Hours was first held in 1970.

Held on the full Nurburgring Nordschleife, up to 150 competitors race twice around the clock in machinery that varies from highly tuned GT3 cars to lightly modified road cars.

The variation in car speed, and driver skill, combined with the challenge presented by the circuit and the endurance element of the race, make the event a battle for survival.

For those at the front, lap times around the 170+ corner circuit take about eight minutes as they navigate their way around a never-ending train of slower cars.

Almost 300,000 fans journey to the Green Hell, creating a festival-like atmosphere around the venue, illuminating sections of the track as the party goes on well into the night.

Nurburgring Nordschleife

Arguably the most famous and feared racetracks on Earth, the full 25.378km variation of the Nurburgring is used for the race.

From the pit straight used by Formula 1, the circuit completes almost a full lap of the ‘GP-Strecke’, before turning left just prior to what would otherwise be the pit entry.

From there, drivers enter the Nordschleife, descending onto the famed venue on a lap that will last in the region of eight minutes for those at the front.

Located in the Eifel Mountains, the circuit has 300m of elevation change from its highest point, Hohe Acht, to Breidscheid bridge at its lowest point.

In between are terrifying sections such as the Foxhole (Fuchsröhre) where the circuit races downhill into a compression as the track climbs once more, all while weaving left and right.

Then there’s Bergwerk, a tough right-hander ahead of a fast, blind uphill section, and Adenauer Forst, a slower left-right combination with a blind entry that follows the Foxhole.

Perhaps the most famous corner, however, is the Caracciola Karussel, a 180-degree corner, the inside of which is banked and made of concrete slabs.

Who can race

Given the challenges that await teams and drivers during the Nurburgring 24 Hours, the event is not open to anyone.

Strict licencing requirements are in place to ensure drivers who compete have the appropriate experience to deal with the task presented with them.

The DMSB Permit Nordschleife, or ‘Ring Licence, is a pre-requisite. There are three different levels, A to C, with a minimum of a B-grade permit needed to compete in the 24 Hours, and an A Permit for the higher performance classes.

To earn an A Permit, drivers must compete in NLS events, as Max Verstappen did.

It’s not a measure of driver skill, or ability behind the wheel, but a means of ensuring drivers can keep themselves, and their competitors, safe in cars with wildly different performance characteristics on an unforgiving circuit.

Multi-class racing

The Nurburgring 24 Hours is a multi-class event, meaning a wide range of cars are eligible to enter, each competing for their own prize.

The headline class is SP9, more commonly known as GT3, with four sub-classes within.

The SP9 definition refers to the car, with defined sub-classes for Professional (P), Pro-Am (PA), and Amateur (Am). The fourth class, referred to as AT, is for alternative fuels.

GT3 cars share similarities to the road cars produced by each manufacturer but are, for all intents and purposes, fully fledged racing cars.

They are, however, production racing cars, giving amateurs the same opportunity as the professionals, with each sharing hallmarks of their respective brands in terms of engine placement or configuration.

Below the SP9 class is GT4 (called SP10 at the Nurburgring 24 Hours), a class that in many respects is the little brother of GT3 machinery. With less race-specific hardware, and significantly less in the way of aerodynamic work, the cars are considered an entry point for GT competitors. As such, it has Pro-Am and Am classes.

There are an array of other SP class designations too, accounting for high performance race cars and grouped typically by engine capacity.

A separate Cayman GT4 class also exists (Cup 3), specifically for Porsche Caymans, with Pro and Am sub-classes within it.

The broader Cup class encapsulates single-make competition, with BMW and Porsche both featuring.

There are a host of other classes, including one for TCR cars, and others for cars specifically tuned for the Nurburgring 24 Hours, which are grouped typically by engine displacement with varying degrees of modifications.

Called SPX, a special class exists for experimental machinery or, put another way, for cars that don’t fit into one of the more prescriptive classes.

These can be from one of the countless other racing classes that exist, or one-off specials.

The final class, VT2, is for production cars that are essentially road cars with a roll cage, with sub-classes based on engine capacity.

Balance of performance

A critical term in GT racing, the Balance of Performance (BoP) is the phrase given to the equalisation of cars from a technical sense.

While each car is unique, with characteristics familiar to the brand that has produced it, they are all put through an intensive process designed to create close racing.

The intent is not to create cookie-cutter performance, but instead to balance out performance over a stint, allowing for a degree of natural ebb and flow.

A number of different tactics are used, from car weight to boost levels, restrictor plates, even fuel capacity, aerodynamic tweaks, ride height, and more. The intent is not parity, but competition.

Each car maintains its own unique personality, with strengths and weaknesses to be exploited, or protect against.

BoP is fluid and, depending on prevailing conditions or events, can be modified to ensure a fair competition for all, regardless of engine capacity, configuration, or philosophy.

How many drivers per car

Teams must field a minimum of two drivers and a maximum of four, with time limits around how long they can each be behind the wheel for in a single stint.

Rules also outline the minimum time between stints in the car too.

A quirk of the regulations is that drivers are able to be cross-entered, meaning they can compete in two different vehicles in the race, provided they adhere to minimum rest times.

Qualifying

The grid for the Nurburgring 24 Hours is set by a multi-part qualifying process that takes place in the days prior to the race.

While ahead of the event there are races termed ’24 Hours of Nurburgring Qualifiers’, these are effectively dress rehearsals for the famed event. They also afford a potential pass into Top Qualifying 3 (TQ3).

Qualifying will begin on Thursday morning, however the fight for pole position will begin on Friday, with Top Qualifying 1 (TQ1).

A session for those in the hunt for top spot for the race, a three-part process akin to Formula 1’s own process is in place.

Competitors across SP9, SP9-LG, SP-Pro and SP-X classes who have already qualified, but don’t possess a ticket through to TQ3 can compete.

At the end of the 35-minute session, the 20 fastest cars will progress into TQ2, which follows 20 minutes after the flag falls on TQ1.

From there, the fastest seven cars will progress into TQ3, where they’ll join five cars that booked their place in the session during the NLS events earlier in the year.

That includes representation from five different manufacturers, including Rowe Racing (BMW M4 GT3 Evo) and Red Bull Team Abt (Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo 2).

Max Verstappen is not among them, meaning his squad will have to progress from TQ1 through to what amounts to a pole shootout on Sunday afternoon.

Code 60 and Code 120

Managing an incident on a 25.3-kilometre circuit is a challenge, with organisers employing a rolling yellow flag system as opposed to Safety Cars – which do exist, but are rare.

Instead, a local yellow flag zone is covered under either a Code 60 or Code 120, through which drivers are restricted to either 60km/h or 120km/h.

There can be multiple such zones on the circuit, with drivers alerted in the car and GPS and live vision directly from the car helping officials police those speeds.

Another nuance of the race is that recovery vehicles will occasionally appear on track, ferrying battle-weary cars back to the pits.

Full Safety Cars do exist, but given the field size and potential for field spread, are used sparingly.

It’s also not unheard of for the race to be completely halted while repairs are made to the circuit.

Stoppages also happen for heavy rain and fog, meaning the Nurburgring 24 Hours doesn’t necessarily mean 24 hours of racing.

Pit stops

The rapid-fire nature of most racing pitstops is distinctly absent at the Nurburgring 24 Hours, where minimum stop times exist.

The intent is to take the speed out of pit stops with a view to safety, more so for teams in the lower classes.

Over the course of the weekend, teams will have a maximum of 29 sets of tyres at their disposal.

The race

The race itself will begin at 3pm local time on Saturday. Unlike most endurance races, the clock doesn’t begin to countdown the moment the Safety Car leads the pack away from the grid on its formation lap, instead, the race commences at the strike of the clock.

It’s then a rolling start as the field comes by, with the victor the car to have completed the most laps as it crosses the line for the first time after 3pm on Sunday afternoon.

The race record, set in 2023, is 162 laps (4,111.2km), set by the Frikadelli Racing Ferrari 296 GT3.

Ferrari also holds the fastest lap, courtesy of Daniel Keilwitz, at 8:08.006s.

Last year, race winners Rowe Racing completed 141 laps, just over 3,500km.

The event has been won by ex-F1 racers, including Pedro Lamy who has taken victory on five occasions.

Niki Lauda drove a BMW 3.0 CSL to victory in the 1973 edition of the race, while Hans-Joachim Stuck has won it three times.

Other ex-F1 racers who’ve tasted success in the Nurburgring 24 Hours include Markus Winkelhock, Christian Danner, Emanuele Pirro, and Johnny Cecotto.

F1 Safety Car driver, Bernd Maylander, won the race in 2000 driving a Porsche 911 GT3-R.

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