Verstappen: It's important to get lucky with traffic on this track.

      Max Verstappen's crew started from pole position in today's 4-hour race at the Nürburgring's Nordschleife, and we reported on it. The four-time world champion needs to complete one of the rounds of the German NLS series (Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie) to gain entry to the May marathon "24 Hours of Nürburgring," and today Max took another step in that direction.

      During the morning's one-and-a-half-hour session, Verstappen and his teammates, Dani Hünkadel and Jules Gounon, practiced pit stops and driver changes. Then, closer to the end of qualifying, Max set the best time of the day.

      Crew No. 3 of Winward Racing is competing in a Mercedes AMG GT3 in the SP9 Pro category, which has 26 cars entered, and a total of 132 cars from ten different classes are participating in the race. Naturally, with such a large field, traffic issues are inevitable, even though the lap length is 20.832 km.

      "It's always important to get lucky with traffic on this track, and my lap wasn't too bad in that regard!" he commented. "The car feels good, although, of course, I need to gain more experience working with it. But I must say, it's sunny today, and that makes me very happy.

      I enjoy driving GT3 cars; I've seen quite a few 24-hour races on this track, and this year I plan to drive one myself, as being behind the wheel on the Nürburgring's Nordschleife gives you a completely unique feeling."

      The race has just started, with crew No. 16 leading in an Audi RS8 GT3 Evo II, but Verstappen is in second place, trailing by less than four tenths.