Verstappen puts Germany under spotlight as Nürburgring crowds send F1 message
The 'Max Verstappen effect' saw the crowd swell by over 70 thousand people from 2025, and Germany should be "thanking him", according to Timo Glock.
Max Verstappen’s high-profile involvement in the Nürburgring 24 Hours is something that GT racing and Germany should be “thanking him for”, believes Timo Glock.
The four-time F1 World Champion made use of a weekend off from his day job to head along to Germany to race in the high-profile 24-hour endurance event at the Nürburgring Nordschleife.
Max Verstappen’s Nürburgring impact sparks fresh German Grand Prix spotlight
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- Max Verstappen’s Nürburgring appearance helped attract huge crowds to the 24 Hours.
- German motorsport figures believe Verstappen has boosted attention on GT racing.
- The event reignited discussion over Formula 1 potentially returning to Germany.
Verstappen entering the Nürburgring 24 Hours in a Red Bull-backed Mercedes-AMG GT3, operated by Winward Racing as his own Verstappen Racing entry, boosted the German venue’s attendance to a heaving 352,000 sold tickets over the weekend.
This was a marked increase from the official 2025 attendance figure of 280,000, marking a 26 per cent increase just on official ticket sales; the nature of the Nordschleife’s extensive public road network layout means there have been many more ticketless fans in the area of the circuit.
The huge turnout for a GT3 race was in stark contrast to the reality of Germany’s position as a tail-off in F1 interest means that neither of its historic race tracks, either the Hockenheimring or the GP layout of the Nürburgring, currently hosts a Grand Prix, despite ample German representation through Mercedes and Audi, as well as drivers such as Nico Hulkenberg and the successes of others like Nico Rosberg, Sebastian Vettel, and Michael Schumacher over the last 25 years.
With no governmental support, whether at national or regional level, the funding to secure a race on the F1 calendar against the deep pockets of newly interested countries simply isn’t available for either venue, and it’s meant the most recent Grand Prix in Germany was the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix at the Nürburgring – a sparsely-attended race due to limited ticketing in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the weekend of the 24 Hours proves that, if the ingredients are correct, interest in motorsport remains thriving.
“I mean, we have 350,000 people showing up… it’s fully packed!” former F1 driver Timo Glock told PlanetF1.com in an exclusive interview at the start of the weekend.
The German, a familiar contributor to Sky Sport Deutschland’s coverage of F1 and the subject of an upcoming 45-minute documentary about his race, said there are a number of factors behind the huge turnout.
“It’s multi-class racing. It’s one of the really old-school tracks, which, every time when I drive here, I say, what an insane place. How crazy it was when they drove F1 cars here,” he said.
“The last couple of years, I think that the Nürburgring boosted itself already, massively. I think the event just got bigger and bigger, year-by-year.
“It’s the only race-track where you can be right next to the track on a campsite.
“I think there is nothing else… maybe Bathurst is maybe a little about the way how it is here, it’s crazy.”
But it’s the ‘Max Verstappen’ effect that counts the most, Glock believes, and said that German motorsport needs to be thankful to the Dutch driver for shining a light on the sheer quality of racing in the Nürburgring GT environment.
“To see Max coming to that place and giving the respect to all the others here, we need to be thankful to him 100 times that he put so much spotlight onto the Nürburgring, and onto German motorsport, which is unfortunately dying at the moment, officially,” he said.
“But here you see, it’s still alive. It’s alive, and it’s the biggest event worldwide, that happens in Germany. No one talks about it.
“Yes, this is down to Max. This is down to because it’s proper racing here, and it’s just a pure event, pure motorsport.
“That’s what we try as well with Sky [Germany] to do documentation about the race, and that’s what we try to show the outside world. It’s special. It’s different.”
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Speaking later in the weekend, PlanetF1.com asked Verstappen’s teammate Jules Gounon about Glock’s comments on the effect the four-time F1 World Champion is having on the German motorsport scene.
In his opinion, Verstappen’s presence can only continue to convert fans to the true spirit of endurance racing.
“We can only thank Max for putting the spotlight on our category,” he said.
“A few years back, GT was not maybe well respected, and since Max also joined with his programme in GT World Challenge and so on, I can really see that a lot of fans are converting, and they actually like GT.
“Because it’s true that GT can be very entertaining. The cars are very close, there’s a lot of fighting.
“We can thank Max, in my case and Dani’s [Juncadella] case, to drive for his team in GT World Challenge, but, like Timo said, to just help us to grow our sport… it’s something pretty special.”
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