Max Verstappen accomplished his opening laps of the Nordschleife at nighttime as rain affected the second session of the 2026 Nurburgring 24 Hours weekend.
Drivers had been additional precautionary, with Verstappen solely utilizing the low gears on his Mercedes GT3 that he shares with Mercedes GT3 that he shares with Jules Gounon, Lucas Auer and Daniel Juncadella.
All 4 featured throughout Thursday’s second outing, resulting in the #3 Mercedes setting eight laps throughout the 3.5-hour session which was roughly the common throughout the grid.
Groups had been simply reluctant to move out and take any pointless dangers, as drivers reported aquaplaning at speeds above 40km/h, with elements of the observe beneath water.
Nevertheless it meant comparatively little as a result of Thursday successfully served as a testing day for these within the prime SP9 class.
That’s regardless of the 2 classes being referred to as Qualifying 1 and a couple of, as it’s used to find out grid spots 50 to 161 for Saturday’s race begin.
Pole will as an alternative be fought for by way of Prime Qualifying on Friday, so the primary takeaway from Qualifying 2 for the entrance runners had been these moist sighting laps as blended climate situations continued.
#3 Mercedes-AMG Staff Verstappen Racing, Mercedes AMG GT3 EVO: Max Verstappen, Daniel Juncadella, Jules Gounon, Lucas Auer
Picture by: Crimson Bull Content material Pool
It due to this fact resulted in slower lap instances than Qualifying 1, because the #1 Rowe Racing BMW topped Qualifying 2 with a 9m19.884s – that compares to a 9m34.713s for the Verstappen Racing Mercedes.
So the #80 Winward Mercedes (Maro Engel, Maxime Martin, Fabian Schillard and Luca Stolz) was the tempo setter on Thursday because of Schillard’s 8m14.957s from the morning.
That was 3.112s faster than the #1 BMW (Raffaele Marciello, Kelvin van der Linde, Jordan Pepper and Augusto Farfus) in second, whereas third went to the #3 Mercedes because of Verstappen’s 8m18.539s.
The sister Rowe BMW (Dan Harper, Max Hesse, Sheldon van der Linde and Dries Vanthoor) was fourth quickest on Thursday by a 8m18.602s with the #911 Manthey Racing Porsche (Kevin Estre, Ayhancan Guven and Thomas Preining) finishing the highest 5 after an 8m21.717s.
Lamborghini, Audi and Ford all then featured within the decrease half of the highest 10 with observe motion returning at 8:50am native time in Germany.Â
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