Porsche won the 49th edition of the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring in Germany on Sunday. The match lasted only 9:30 this time. Due to a dense fog, the race was interrupted around 9.30 pm on Saturday. It was not until Sunday afternoon that a restart could be made, with still 3h30 to go. A total of 59 laps were completed.
The Porsche of Matteo Cairoli/Michael Christensen/Kevin Estre/Lars Kern (Ita/Den/Fra/Ger) won just 8 seconds ahead of the BMW of Connor De Philippi/Martin Tomczyk/Sheldon van der Linde/Marco Wittmann (VSt/ Dui/ZAf/Dui). The Mercedes of Maximilian Götz/Daniel Juncadella/Raffaele Marciello/Fabian Schiller (Ger/Spa/Ita/Ger) took the podium. It is the 13th victory for Porsche on this course, the first since 2018.
Of the Belgians who qualified for the win, only debutant Alessio Picariello (Porsche) made it to the finish. He finished fourth, in the company of the Germans Sven Müller and Martin Ragginger and the Austrian Klaus Bachler. Müller was unable to hold off Marciello in the penultimate lap. Dries Vanthoor (Audi), Frédéric Vervisch (Audi), Maxime Martin (Porsche) and Laurens Vanthoor (Porsche) had to retire.
Maxime Soulet (Mercedes) was fourth in the SP9 Pro-Am class and fourteenth overall. The only all-Belgian team, with Olivier Muytjens, “Brody”, Jacques Derenne and Kurt Dujardyn (Toyota) came second in the SP3.