24 Hours of Forest Thunder: A Racing Romance Across Day and Night
Here is what happened.
That weekend, I originally only wanted to see what Max Verstappen's first serious attempt at the Nürburgring 24 Hours would look like.
Then I kept watching, and somehow I got pulled all the way in.
I really got pulled in.
I used to mainly watch F1. My interest in GT3 and endurance racing was never that strong. Endurance racing, for me, had mostly been something I saw in short videos. I knew Le Mans, I knew Spa 24h, I knew the Nordschleife was long and absurd, and I knew everyone called it the Green Hell.
But knowing that is one thing.
Actually sitting down for a weekend and watching the live broadcast is another.
Especially this time, because Verstappen was there.
What else was there to say?
The attention was always going to be massive.
A driver who already feels almost unreasonably strong in F1 suddenly shows up on a 25-kilometer circuit with more than 170 corners, weather you can never fully predict, nights that feel like disappearing into the mountains, and more than a hundred cars with huge speed differences. He is in a GT3 car, sharing it with teammates, trying to run 24 hours.
Just think about that combination. How could it not make people curious?
So I went online and found a stream.
Very quickly, I realized that this race asks to be watched in a completely different way from F1.
F1 is precise, modern, and almost like a high-speed sport being run inside a high-pressure laboratory. Every lap, every pit stop, every safety car window is broken down to tiny margins.
But the Nürburgring 24 Hours is not like that.
It feels more like a huge, noisy, damp automotive festival, with the smell of gasoline and grilled sausages in the air.
According to the official results, the 2026 race started with 159 cars, and 111 were classified at the finish. There were 352,000 spectators on site. The lead GT3 cars were fighting for tenths, while behind them were touring cars, cup cars, a Dacia Logan, a Subaru WRX, an Opel Corsa, and a pile of cars that make you wonder why they are allowed to share the same race as the overall-winning AMG.
But that is exactly the Nürburgring.
It does not only put the fastest people together.
It puts everyone who truly wants to prove something into the same forest.
Honestly, I went in for Max. By the end, my view of GT3 cars had changed completely.
These cars are so pure.
They do not have the alien-technology distance of F1 aerodynamics, or that feeling of a car body being as light as a sheet of paper. GT3 cars feel more like cars whose silhouettes you can still recognize from the road, but transformed into machines that breathe, roar, and bounce off the curbs.
You can hear violence in the AMG's sound, weight in the BMW's posture, and a sharp little streak of menace in a Lamborghini's taillights at night.
I was getting a bit carried away.
How carried away?
Before the race was even fully over, I impulsively bought Assetto Corsa and Assetto Corsa Competizione.
The awkward part is that I still do not have a steering wheel.
So there I was, foolishly holding the Xbox controller I usually use for Forza Horizon, running laps in the game for hours.
But even with only a controller, it was enough to get me excited. Every time I pressed the throttle and heard that pure engine sound, every upshift that sent the revs up, every time I thought I could brake a little later and then flew straight off, all of it helped me understand a little more why people are willing to pour a whole weekend, and sometimes many years, into this circuit.
Of course, what I did with a controller probably cannot be called driving.
It was education.
Nürburgring education.
Back to the race.
The two crews I cared about most were obvious: No. 3 Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing and No. 81 BMW M3 Touring 24H.
The first because of Max.
The second because of that car.
The BMW M3 Touring really is my dream car.
And this time it was not a normal M3 Touring. It was the SP-X race car built by BMW M Motorsport, officially called the BMW M3 Touring 24H. Its story is absurd too. It first grew out of a 2025 April Fools' joke, then BMW actually built it and stuffed in a lot of M4 GT3 EVO race-car components.
You think it is a joke project.
Then it finishes fifth overall.
Come on.
How is anyone supposed to resist that?
First, car No. 3.
Car No. 3 was entered by Winward Racing under the name Mercedes-AMG Team Verstappen Racing. The drivers were Max Verstappen, Lucas Auer, Jules Gounon, and Daniel Juncadella.
It qualified fourth.
That alone was already outrageous.
This was Max's Nürburgring 24 Hours debut. Even if he is an F1 world champion, even if he had already run plenty of Nordschleife laps in simulators, the real Green Hell is not a place where you simply show up and go fast.
After the start, car No. 3 quickly entered the main storyline.
But at 16:09 local time, while Verstappen was running through the famous Pflanzgarten jump area, the wake from the car ahead suddenly reduced the downforce. As the car landed, it snapped sideways, nearly hit the barrier, briefly left the racing line and slid onto the grass. With very sharp car control, he caught it, stabilized the car, and rejoined.
It was not a disaster, but it was very close. It also served as a reminder:
After that, he began pushing forward.
At 16:28, he passed the No. 7 Lamborghini at the Sabine Schmitz corner. At 16:50, he squeezed past the No. 47 Mercedes at Kesselchen, even touching the grass. At 17:52, he passed the No. 67 Ford Mustang and then the No. 34 Aston Martin, officially taking the lead.
That stretch had a real cinematic feeling.
Someone you know from F1 was dropped into a completely different battlefield. There were slower cars, damp surfaces, traffic, and Code 60 zones that could appear at any moment. He did not have the clean attacking space you see in F1, but he still worked the car forward bit by bit.
Then the evening rain arrived, and the race changed character.
More precisely, it became what the Nürburgring is supposed to feel like.
Cars No. 3 and No. 80, both Mercedes-AMGs, made the right calls on tires and rhythm, and began taking control of the race. At five hours, car No. 3 led and car No. 80 was second. At seven hours, car No. 3 was still first. By night, the race had basically become an internal fight between the two Mercedes cars.
That part was interesting.
It was not the neat teammate parade people sometimes imagine. Media recaps mentioned that cars No. 3 and No. 80 had very tight battles around Döttinger Höhe and Tiergarten, even with contact and trips across the grass. Only later did the team start asking both cars to control the risk.
I actually liked that detail.
Because that is a very real part of endurance racing.
In theory, you are on the same side. Your shared goal is to help Mercedes win the Nürburgring again after ten years.
But you are sitting in the car. The car ahead is your teammate. Behind you are 352,000 spectators, broadcast cameras, your entire racing career, and a 24-hour race victory.
Can you really not want to win at all?
People are not machines.
That dangerous tension made the race feel more real.
Deep into the night, car No. 3 remained strong. There was one official nighttime update that I especially liked. Around 02:50, car No. 3 caught the fifth-placed No. 81 BMW M3 Touring and tried to lap it, but could not complete the pass before pitting.
That scene was almost too perfect.
My favorite driver, in the leading AMG, chasing my dream BMW M3 Touring.
How was that not tailor-made for me?
By the nineteenth hour, car No. 3 was still leading overall on 122 laps. On lap 129, it set its own fastest race lap, 8:12.818.
If the script stopped there, it would have been perfect.
An F1 world champion runs the Nürburgring 24 Hours for the first time, qualifies fourth, leads for a long stretch, survives the rain and night, fights hard with a teammate, and brings the car home to win.
If that is not motorsport wish fulfillment, what is?
Unfortunately, this is exactly where endurance racing becomes cruel.
It does not care how beautifully the first 20 hours were written.
In the twenty-first hour, everything suddenly changed.
At 11:08, car No. 3 pitted, Verstappen having completed his stint and handed over to teammate Daniel Juncadella.
At 11:32, Verstappen, having just finished his drive, gave a trackside interview. He was in a relaxed and steady mood, talking about the need for constant focus and avoiding incidents, and said he truly loved the teammate-rotation and long-distance competition of GT3 endurance racing.
Then at 11:37, right after the interview, car No. 3 was pushed into the garage.
At 11:38, the team began working around the right-rear area.
Verstappen went from relaxed to somber, silent, shaking his head in an instant. He stood in the pit lane, watching car No. 3 being slowly pushed back to the garage, brow furrowed, saying nothing for a long while, visibly holding back anger and disappointment.
At 11:48, the official update confirmed a non-contact technical issue at the right rear. The final explanation pointed to a driveshaft-related failure.
When I saw that, I genuinely froze.
That is not an exaggeration.
Because after such a long time, you start to assume it can win. Even if you know endurance racing is cruel, human emotions work like that. You watch it for more than ten hours, watch it lead, watch it survive the rain, watch it fight car No. 80, watch it thread through slower traffic in the night.
You cannot help believing that this story should have a complete ending.
Then a driveshaft tells you: sorry, there is no "should."
The broadcast cameras caught Juncadella sitting in the cockpit, lifting his helmet visor and silently wiping tears from the corner of his eye, disappointment and regret pouring out of him.
At 11:51, Juncadella got out. Car No. 3 spent a long time in the pit lane. In the 23-hour update, he said something painful, roughly that the earlier part had felt almost like a dream, and for them the race was three hours too short and three hours too long.
That line felt brutally accurate.
If the race had been three hours shorter, they might have been champions.
If they had not lost those three hours in repairs, there might still have been a story.
But the Nürburgring 24 Hours is 24 hours.
Not one minute less.
In the end, car No. 3 was repaired, returned to the track, and was classified. The provisional official result was 37th overall with 135 laps.
That was obviously not the result they wanted.
But it made me like this race even more.
Because suddenly you understand that endurance racing is not a game of whoever is fastest wins. It is a game of who can be interrupted by fate the least over 24 hours.
That may sound a bit abstract, but after watching it, you understand.
That brings us to car No. 81.
I really like the M3 Touring.
Not in the sense that I analyzed the specs and decided it was excellent.
I just like it.
A wagon body, M power, enough practicality, enough speed, and a very German kind of practical violence. It does not put desire on its face like a supercar. It feels more like someone in a hiking jacket with a helmet in the backpack, ready to head out on track at any moment.
And this No. 81 M3 Touring 24H was even more wicked.
It ran in SP-X, not as a standard homologated GT3 car. In a sense, it could have remained a good-looking marketing project, a car for fans to photograph and social media to celebrate.
But BMW did not stop there.
It was genuinely fast.
It qualified 22nd overall with an 8:18.868. That may not sound like the very front, but almost everything ahead was top-level SP9 GT3 machinery. For an experimental race car wearing a four-door wagon shell, that position was already absurd.
The race was even more absurd.
After one hour, No. 81 was still 33rd overall. That felt normal, maybe even exactly what people expected before the race: keep it steady, avoid trouble, finish.
Three hours later, it was fifth overall.
I was confused when I saw that.
How did you get up there?
And then it was not just a brief flash. Fifth hour, sixth. Seventh hour, fifth. Eleventh hour, fifth. Thirteenth hour, fifth. By the fifteenth hour, it was fourth overall. In the twenty-first hour, after No. 3 fell back, it even appeared in third overall for a while.
An M3 Touring, in the final phase of the Nürburgring 24 Hours, had touched the shadow of the overall podium.
Can you believe that?
And its pace was not merely for show. In the official results, No. 81's fastest lap was lap 123, an 8:13.580. Put that next to a field of GT3 cars, and it does not look embarrassing at all.
One of the images that stuck with me most came with 18 hours and 33 minutes remaining. It used slower traffic as a screen and pulled off a beautiful move on both the No. 3 Verstappen car and the No. 80 car that would later win, briefly reaching second overall.
That kind of moment is hard to explain through a result sheet. The sheet only tells you the position, lap count, and fastest lap.
But watching it live, the feeling was: wait, this wagon is actually fighting.
Not sightseeing.
Fighting. Fighting very steadily.
It found space in traffic, used slower cars for momentum, survived in the rain, and drove into the night with yellow lights pushing forward. When you look at its body proportions, it has a strange pressure next to the GT3 cars.
Like someone who should not be there, yet somehow stands near the front.
That is the most charming thing about it.
It is not the most standard race-car answer.
But it gave a beautiful non-standard answer.
It did not make the podium in the end, and that was a little regrettable. Media recaps also mentioned the timing of Code 60 zones, oil on the track, and a few small off-track moments that hurt its podium fight. But fifth overall and first in SP-X is already beyond success.
That is overachievement.
You think they built it for fun, and then it can actually arm wrestle the top SP9 teams. It could even keep reappearing in the same storyline as No. 3 and No. 80.
Anyway, I enjoyed it.
Congratulations, BMW.
Really, congratulations, BMW.
After the race, BMW M Motorsport chief Andreas Roos said something that made people both happy and disappointed.
He said that because of GT3 homologation restrictions, this car would not race again. But he hinted that they had some plans for it, and that we would see it somewhere. If it becomes a Nürburgring taxi, I must ride it at least once in my lifetime.
From those two cars, there were many other things in this race that felt deeply Nürburgring.
For example, the No. 80 AMG.
The No. 80 Mercedes-AMG Team RAVENOL won overall. The drivers were Maro Engel, Luca Stolz, Fabian Schiller, and Maxime Martin. The official result was 156 laps in 24:05:27.664, with an average speed of 164.334 km/h across the entire race.
That car had a satisfying story too.
It was damaged in Friday qualifying and started from a relatively low position, then climbed back through the race. After No. 3 hit trouble, it took over the lead and finally ended Mercedes-AMG's Nürburgring 24 Hours victory drought dating back to 2016.
Throughout the race, the team controlled the rhythm perfectly, pit stops were efficient and clean, and the car stayed in stable condition without any major mistakes affecting the race.
Maxime Martin's part was also moving. He had been close to a Nürburgring win many times before, and this time he finally got it. Endurance racing is cruel, but occasionally it rewards those who have waited for a long time.
Then there was the No. 84 Abt Lamborghini.
It took pole position, then suffered a puncture on the first lap after body contact in traffic, fell all the way back, and spent the next 23 hours climbing back to second. It also set the fastest lap of the race, 8:08.758.
That car was like a short drama too.
Episode one: fall into the hole. The remaining 23 hours: climb out, and earn a highlight moment.
The No. 34 Walkenhorst Aston Martin met a dramatic Code 60 speed limit near the end on the long straight and could not catch the Lamborghini ahead, which was carrying an 85-second penalty. It finished third, which was painful, but still gave Aston Martin an important Nürburgring 24 Hours podium.
The No. 99 ROWE BMW M4 GT3 EVO recovered from a chaotic start and early slides to fight back to fourth overall, narrowly beating the sister No. 81 M3 Touring to the line.
That was a very BMW kind of result: a proper GT3 factory car nearly made the podium, and a wicked M3 Touring that came from an April Fools' joke fought all the way to fifth overall. BMW fans must have had the time of their lives.
And then there was Grello.
The No. 911 Manthey Porsche, that instantly recognizable yellow-green classic Grello, qualified eighth. This year marked Manthey's 30th Nürburgring 24 Hours, and from 2006 to 2009 they won the race four years in a row. That was serious dominance.
This time, they came for their eighth win, but oil on the track sent them off and out of the race early. For people who watch the Nürburgring often, that must have been a major regret.
Grello is no longer just a car.
It is a symbol inside this forest. You do not have to support Porsche, but when you see that yellow-green car, you know an old acquaintance has arrived.
This time, it could not stay.
Jules Gounon's description of the Nürburgring also stuck with me. He said this place chooses you. It is not that you choose the track, but that the track chooses you. That line feels incredibly visual here.
Then there are the locals and the grassroots feeling.
There was one car that, even without finishing, became the most romantic footnote of this year's race.
It is the No. 632 BLACK FALCON Team FANATEC.
Jimmy Broadbent, Steve Brown, Misha Charoudin, Manuel Metzger:
They are a sim racing superstar, a YouTube racing legend, the king of Nürburgring taxis, and a Nürburgring veteran who anchors the crew.
This is the most perfect crew of the internet era: from steering wheel screens to the real Nordschleife, from video comments to in-car heartbeats,
driving virtual passion into a 24-hour endurance race.
They led the AT2 class for a stretch, one step away from conquering reality from the simulator.
Unfortunately, Steve Brown crashed into the wall and retired. After 70 laps, they bowed out and were not classified.
But the result does not matter at all.
The meaning of this No. 632 is to tell everyone:
It did not win the race, but it won the romance of an entire era of internet racing.
But its presence itself was interesting.
Because you realize the Nürburgring 24 Hours is not only a giant machine of factory teams and professional drivers. It also has room for people who grew out of simulators and grassroots car culture.
There was also Dirk Adorf: this year he was racing the No. 992 Porsche in the 24 Hours while simultaneously providing in-car commentary for the German national broadcast.
Running the Green Hell's 25-kilometer circuit, managing dense traffic, enduring the fatigue of day and night, while also passing his real-time feelings, track details, and race situation back to viewers in front of the television.
Other people drive for 24 hours fully focused. He drives and commentates at the same time. This is literally putting a living map straight into the broadcast booth.
In another race, that might feel strange.
At the Nürburgring, it somehow feels reasonable.
And then there was the No. 300 Dacia Logan, the most classic grassroots hero of the Nürburgring 24 Hours, also called the race's mascot by fans.
It is a race car built out of a cheap family hatchback and held together by grassroots passion — the most contrasting and moving presence in the entire field.
During the broadcast, the commentator said that if you have no frame of reference for this car, imagine a Chery QQ running the Nürburgring at average speeds over 100 km/h through the Green Hell for 24 hours!
The legend of the No. 300 Dacia Logan runs deeper: born a cheap family car, twice crashed and written off as a total loss, twice resurrected through global fan crowdfunding and grassroots effort. Even with failures during the race, it stubbornly finished, breaking the limits of budget and origin through pure passion, embodying the most moving grassroots romance of the Nürburgring.
On the circuit, every time this car passed the grandstands, all the spectators erupted in warm applause and cheers — genuinely moving.
In the official results, it was 107th overall with 92 laps. You cannot call it fast, but when you see it listed in the same result sheet as the overall-winning AMG, the event suddenly feels very lovable.
Oh, and there was one especially funny thing. Former F1 driver Timo Glock, driving the No. 69 Doerr McLaren, accumulated four penalty points for speeding in a Code 60 zone, which led to his Nürburgring circuit permit being temporarily suspended.
A former F1 driver losing a circuit license because of speeding — this must be quite rare in Nürburgring 24 Hours history.
These cars and stories might not trend if you pulled them out individually.
But they form the real background color of the Nürburgring 24 Hours.
This is not a race where only the front-running crews are worth watching. It is like a huge automotive ecosystem exhibition: top factory teams, professional drivers, old teams, small cars, experimental cars, internet drivers, local workshop resources, camping spectators, all inside it together.
There are also very human details.
In the 19-hour official update, there was a story from Marco Seefried. He said he drove into a huge cloud of smoke and first thought something had happened. Then he smelled it and realized spectators by the track were having a generous breakfast.
That made me laugh.
That is the Nürburgring 24 Hours.
Drivers are fighting fate from inside the car, while spectators are grilling breakfast beside the forest.
On one side, there are eight-minute laps at the limit. On the other, camping chairs, beer, barbecue smoke, and cold air before dawn.
There is so much life in this race.
There was also the story of the No. 36 BMW E89 Z4. In the 23-hour official update, this car had a technical problem at night, and the team had no spare part. In the end, a local acquaintance removed a part from his own garage-kept Z4 GT3 and gave it to them.
Listen to that.
That is what home turf really looks like.
Not every problem is solved by a major manufacturer. Sometimes it depends on who you know around the circuit, whose garage still contains an old Z4, and who is willing to remove a part in the middle of the night so you can keep racing.
I have always felt that this is what makes racing culture truly fascinating.
It is not only the podium.
The podium is important, of course, but it is only the final patch of light. Beneath that light is a whole weekend held up by teams, mechanics, spectators, photographers, volunteers, circuit staff, and local people.
After watching this race, I really could not calm down for a long time.
Part of it was pure excitement.
The fuel-engine sound of GT3 cars, the lights cutting through the forest at night, the slipstream on Döttinger Höhe, tire choices in the rain, chaos caused by slower cars, and fate turning under Code 60.
All of it was electrifying.
The other part was awe.
Because when you look at car No. 3, you realize that even when you are that fast and that strong, one mechanical problem in the final three-plus hours can still take away every chance of victory.
When you look at car No. 81, you realize that a project that looks like a joke can, if built and run seriously, shatter everyone's expectations over 24 hours.
When you look at the small cars, veterans, locals, and grassroots teams, you realize racing culture is not only the few people standing in the middle with trophies.
It is a group of people collectively believing that cars are not only transportation.
Cars can be sound, speed, technology, local memory, weekend life, and a clumsy, expensive, exhausting, yet deeply moving kind of love.
I used to watch F1 and think racing was cool.
But this Nürburgring 24 Hours made my love for car culture take root a little deeper.
Not because I understand it better.
Because I want to understand it more.
If I get the chance, I really want to go to Germany, to the Nürburgring. Not just to take a photo with a sign, but to stand beside that forest and hear a car approach from far away. The sound arrives first, then the lights, then the whole car blasts past in front of you.
I want to know what the Green Hell actually smells like.
I want to see how narrow, steep, and frightening those corners from the broadcast really are.
And I want to visit the birthplace of the automobile, to see why a mechanical culture with more than a century of inheritance can still make people this obsessed today.
One last note.
This year's Nürburgring 24 Hours was honestly much more enjoyable than F1 under this year's new rules.
That may sound harsh, but that is how it felt to me. F1 is still one of the highest forms of motorsport in the world, of course. But this year, a lot of the time, it has felt too clean, too precise, too much like a product packaged by rules and strategy.
The Nürburgring 24 Hours is not like that.
It is rough, chaotic, and sometimes almost unreasonable.
But it is alive.
When I think back now, the clearest image in my mind is not a final result sheet.
It is the collapsing feeling when car No. 3 was pushed into the garage.
It is the unreasonable excitement of the No. 81 M3 Touring drilling forward through GT3 traffic.
It is the forest at night, the rain, the barbecue smoke, and the absurd cuteness of a Dacia Logan appearing in the same race.
It is the No. 80 AMG crossing the line after all that waiting finally became real.
That is what makes endurance racing powerful.
It does not only show you speed.
It shows you time.
Twenty-four hours will wear down and reveal the emotions of a car, a team, a driver, and a spectator.
At the end, what remains is very simple.
Do you still want to keep watching?
I do.
And I am already thinking about the next one.
Finally, from about 2,000 high-quality media photos, I picked some of my favorites (constantly updating...)
Every photo records a bit of the excitement that spilled out of the screen.
Thank you to all the photographers on site.
Really, thank you for bringing those 24 hours in the Green Hell to us in front of our screens.
That is all.
Thank you for reading my article. See you next time.
Comments